After a few years of building websites for small businesses, I’ve noticed something. Nearly every owner I speak to is in one of three states when it comes to their website. Not five, not ten. Three. And knowing which one you’re in tells you almost everything about what to do next, because the fix for each is completely different.
Here they are, warts and all.
State 1: no website at all
You’re running on word of mouth, a Facebook page, maybe a Google listing, and it’s working well enough that a website has never quite made it to the top of the to-do list. Fair enough. Plenty of good businesses start this way.
The problem is what happens after someone hears about you. The first thing they do, before they ring, before they book, is look you up. If all they find is a Facebook page they have to scroll through, or nothing at all, a bit of that interest quietly leaks away. You did the hard part, earning the recommendation, and then lost some of it at the very last step.
There’s a bigger issue too. Your Facebook page and your Instagram account aren’t actually yours. You’re renting that space, and the landlord can change the rules, bury your posts, or suspend the account overnight, sometimes by mistake, with no way to appeal. A website is the one place online that is genuinely yours. I wrote a whole piece on that if you want the full argument: do you need a website if you have Facebook?
If you’re in this state, the fix is simple. A tidy, honest website that shows what you do, who you are, and how to reach you. It doesn’t need to be big. It needs to exist, load fast, and be easy to find.
State 2: a tired website that’s quietly costing you
This is the sneaky one, because on the surface it feels sorted. You’ve got a website. Box ticked. But it was built five or eight years ago, it’s slow on a phone, it looks dated, and if you’re honest you’re not sure it has ever actually brought you a customer.
The reason this state is dangerous is that it’s invisible to you. You rarely look at your own site, and when you do, you see the site you remember, not the one a stranger sees on their phone on a patchy signal. Meanwhile it sits there making a first impression on people you’ll never know you lost.
The signs are worth knowing:
- It’s slow, or it jumps around while it loads on a phone.
- It looks like it belongs to a different decade.
- You can’t easily get changes made, or you don’t even know who’d do them.
- It doesn’t show up when you search for what you do in your town.
If two or three of those ring true, the site isn’t sorted. It’s working against you. The good news is that a tired site is usually the easiest to put right, because you already know your business inside out. It just needs rebuilding properly. If that sounds familiar, here are the signs it’s time for a redesign.
State 3: you paid too much for too little
You did the responsible thing. You got a website built. And somewhere along the way it went wrong. Maybe an agency charged you thousands and you’re still not quite sure what for. Maybe a cheap template mill knocked something out and now you can’t get anyone to change a phone number. Maybe you’re locked into a monthly contract and you’ve realised you don’t even own your own site.
This one stings the most, because you tried to do it right and got burned. It’s also why a lot of people are wary of paying for a website at all, which is completely understandable.
If this is you, the first thing to know is this: you should own your website and your domain. It’s your business, so it’s your site. If someone is holding either of those hostage, that isn’t normal and it isn’t okay. The fix is to get yourself onto a setup that’s genuinely yours, at a fair price, with someone you can actually reach. Here’s exactly how I price things, fixed and agreed up front, so there are no surprises later.
How to tell which one you’re in
A quick, honest gut check:
- Search for your business on your phone, the way a customer would. What actually comes up?
- Look at whatever they find as if you’d never seen it before. Would you trust it?
- Ask yourself who you’d contact tomorrow to change something on your site. If the answer is “no idea,” that tells you plenty.
That thirty-second exercise is more honest than any sales pitch, mine included.
Whichever state you’re in
Here’s the bit that surprises people. The answer is broadly the same for all three: a proper, custom site, built by a real person, that’s fast, findable and actually yours, at a fair price. Not a template you fight with, not an agency invoice, not a rented Facebook page. Just a website that does its job and that you own outright.
If you’re not sure which state you’re in, or what it would take to sort it, tell me a bit about your business and I’ll give you a straight answer. No sales pitch, no jargon. Just an honest look at where you are and what, if anything, is worth doing about it.