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The honest answer: not every business needs a website on day one.
If all your work comes from word of mouth and you have more jobs than you can handle, a Google Business Profile might carry you for a while. We would rather tell you that than sell you a website you do not need yet. But there are three signs the answer has become yes.
They heard your name from a friend. Before they ring, they search you. If nothing comes up, or worse, something half-finished comes up, a chunk of those people quietly call someone else.
You never see the jobs you lost this way, which is what makes it expensive.
A social profile is rented land. The algorithm decides who sees you, and the platform can change the rules overnight. A website is the one place online you own.
With us, you own your website and your files, always.
Prices, service areas, opening hours, "do you do X". A good website answers these while you sleep, and the people who do call are already half-decided.
A proper small business website does not need to cost five figures.
If someone quotes you $8,000, ask exactly what the extra $6,000 buys. Sometimes there is an answer. Usually there is a strategy deck.
Some businesses can wait, and it is worth saying so plainly. You probably do not need a website yet if you are fully booked through word of mouth and want to stay that size. Same if your whole business is one or two big contracts a year, won through relationships, where nobody is Googling you. Same if you are still testing an idea and do not yet know what the business is.
In those cases, set up a free Google Business Profile, keep your reviews coming, and put the website money back in the business. When one of the three signs above shows up, you will know, because it usually arrives as a lost job you hear about after the fact.
Plenty of businesses run happily on Instagram or Facebook for their first year or two. The platform brings the audience, the DMs bring the bookings, and it costs nothing. Then a few things start happening at once.
Your reach drops without warning, because the algorithm changed and your posts now land in front of a fraction of your followers. Your DMs fill with the same three questions about prices and availability, asked one at a time, answered one at a time. Someone hears about you at a barbecue, searches your business name, and finds a profile grid instead of answers, so they keep scrolling. And if you ever try paid ads, there is nowhere solid to send the click.
None of that means social media stops mattering. It means the profile needs a home base behind it: somewhere you own, that answers questions while you sleep, that search engines can actually read. The profile brings people in. The website closes them.
Less than you think. A first small business website has one job: let a stranger confirm you are real, understand what you do, and contact you, all inside a minute. That is five things: who you are, what you do, where you do it, proof it works (reviews, photos, results), and an easy way to get in touch.
One well-built page can carry all five. That is why our landing pages start from $700: not because it is a cut-down website, but because for a lot of businesses it is the right-sized one. You can add pages when the business asks for them, not before.
If customers check you online before buying, yes. If you are fully booked through word of mouth, maybe not yet.
It depends on where your next customer comes from.
Until the algorithm changes, or your account gets locked.
Social profiles are rented. A website is owned.
Landing pages start from $700 with us, and full websites from $1,900. Most projects sit between $1,900 and $3,800.
We wrote the full breakdown: how much a website costs in Sydney.
Because the checking happens without you. Before people call, they search. The website's job is to be your best salesperson in the ninety seconds you are not in the room.
It is also the only online presence you own outright: no algorithm, no account lockouts, no rented land.
Book a free 20-minute chat and talk it through. If the honest answer is "not yet", that is what you will hear.
No pressure, no salesy merde.
Book a free 20-minute chatRelated: Talk through your website · Website design & development · Website costs in Sydney
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/ Written by Manon Vernay, founder of Creative Baguette · her story
