Do you actually need a website for your small business?

Probably yes, but not always, and not always yet. If you sell directly to consumers, your schedule is full, and nobody screens you before they call, a free Google Business Profile and one active social account can carry you for another year without costing you a dollar. If anyone with authority looks you up before deciding, which includes a county case manager, a funder, an insurer, a licensing reviewer, or a first-time customer comparing three names, then not having a website is already costing you money you will never see on a report.

I have been building sites in Minnesota for 14 years, and I turn down website projects fairly often. Not out of modesty. It is because the question is never really “website or no website.” It is “who is looking me up, what are they trying to find out, and can they find it out somewhere else.” Answer that honestly and the decision usually makes itself.

When is a Google Business Profile and an Instagram genuinely enough?

There are three situations where I tell people to skip the website for now and I mean it.

The one-person service business with a full book. A mobile detailer, a snow removal operator, a house cleaner, a lash tech, a handyman working out of a truck in Brooklyn Park. All of your work comes from repeat customers and referrals. Your phone rings enough. In that case, a complete Google Business Profile with real photos, correct hours, a service area, and a steady flow of reviews will do more for you than a website nobody visits. It costs nothing. Spend the time on reviews instead.

The pre-revenue idea. You have not sold the thing yet. You are still changing what you offer and who you offer it to. A website built this month will describe a business that does not exist in six months, and you will pay to rebuild it. Sell to ten people by hand first. Take notes on the questions they ask. Those questions are your future website, and they are cheaper to collect than to guess.

The market where everything runs on referral and WhatsApp. This is real and I see it constantly in the Twin Cities. A tailor, a caterer, a home daycare, a small importer serving a tight community where trust travels by phone and by name. If you have never once been asked for a website, and your customers do not search for services the way Google expects, a website will be a beautiful thing that nobody opens. Get the profile claimed so you appear on Maps, and revisit in a year.

One more that gets overlooked: if your business is genuinely seasonal and you are in the off-season, wait. A Minnesota landscaping or roofing company that builds a site in January and launches it into a dead market has paid for four months of nothing. Build in February so it is live and indexed before the phone starts ringing in April.

When is the absence of a website actively costing money?

The moment a decision about you gets made when you are not in the room.

That is the whole test. If somebody with a list of options has to pick one and you are not there in a form they can evaluate, you lost without ever knowing there was a contest.

Situation	Does the absence cost you?	Why
County case manager choosing a provider for a client	Yes, immediately	They compare providers by what they can verify in five minutes. No site usually means no referral.
Grant officer reviewing your nonprofit	Yes	Funders check that you exist, that your board and mission are public, and that your program descriptions match your application.
Parent choosing a school for next fall	Yes	Enrollment is a research process. Calendars, tuition, staff, and the application form all have to be findable at 9pm.
Insurer or credentialing body reviewing you	Yes	Verification is document-driven, and a real domain email address is part of looking legitimate.
Someone hiring a contractor for a $12,000 job	Yes	Higher price means more checking. People do not spend five figures on a business that only exists on Instagram.
Customer picking a coffee shop	Rarely	Hours, photos, and reviews on Maps answer everything they need.
Repeat client rebooking a service	No	They already trust you and they text you.

The pattern is straightforward. The higher the stakes and the more strangers involved in the decision, the more a missing website costs you. A five-dollar purchase from a walk-in needs no website. A placement decision, an enrollment decision, or a $20,000 contract needs one.

This is why the categories we build for most — home care agencies, autism and disability service providers, charter schools, mosques, and nonprofits — almost never get to skip it. Their referral sources are professionals with compliance obligations. When a case manager at a Hennepin County agency has three provider names, the one with a site that clearly lists services, service areas, staff credentials, and an intake phone number gets called first. That is not a marketing claim. That is just how a person with 40 open cases triages.

The other quiet cost is competitive. If a competitor ranks for the thing you do in the city you do it in, and you do not appear at all, you are not losing a fair fight. You are absent from it. If you already have a site and still cannot be found, that is a different problem with a different fix, and why your website is not showing up on Google covers it.

What is a minimum viable web presence, and what does it cost?

Less than most people assume. You do not need fifteen pages, a blog, or a video header.

A minimum viable presence is five pages: home, services, about, contact, and one page for the specific thing you most want to be found for. It has a phone number that dials when tapped on a phone, a form that actually reaches your inbox, your real address or service area, and hours. It loads fast on a phone on a bad connection. That is it.

Here is what the honest cost picture looks like.

Option	First-year cost	Your time	Good for
Google Business Profile only	$0	2-3 hours	Full book, referral-driven, walk-in trade
DIY on Squarespace or Wix	$250-$500	2-4 working days	Under 6 pages, no forms beyond contact, you write well
Starter site built for you	$1,800-$3,500 plus hosting	3-5 hours of review	You need it done right and you need your time back
Business site built for you	$3,500-$9,000 plus hosting	8-15 hours of review	Multiple services, real intake, funder and referral audience

Hosting runs $10 to $50 a month and a domain is $12 to $25 a year no matter who builds it, so budget the first-year total rather than the build price. Our full pricing page lists the ranges for larger projects, and what a website costs in Minnesota explains what pushes a number from the bottom of a range to the top.

Now the part that costs me money to say. If your budget is under about $1,500 and you need five simple pages, do not hire us or anyone else. Build it yourself. At that budget an agency has to move fast enough that you get a template with your logo dropped in, which is exactly what you would have gotten from Squarespace, except you paid three times more and you cannot edit it without emailing someone. Take the $1,500, spend $400 on the DIY setup, and put the rest into a photographer who shoots your real space and your real staff. Real photos of a real Minnesota business beat a nicer layout with stock images every single time. If you are weighing that choice properly, build it yourself or hire someone walks through it in more detail.

Does it matter that you own it?

More than it sounds like it does, and less than the people selling you websites usually claim.

The honest version: a social account is rented. Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts can be restricted, flagged, or lost, sometimes for reasons that never get explained and with an appeals process that amounts to a form and a wait. Your followers do not transfer anywhere. Your content is not yours to export in any useful form. A business that loses an account built up over years often has no way to reach a single one of those followers again.

A domain you own is different. It is yours as long as you renew it, it costs $12 to $25 a year, and no algorithm change can take it away. Your email at that domain outlives whatever website sits behind it. If you buy nothing else this year, buy the domain, even if you point it at a single page.

The trap is that plenty of people who do have a website do not actually own it. The domain sits in a former contractor’s account. The hosting is billed to an agency’s card. There is no copy of the files anywhere you control. That is renting with extra steps, and how to check whether you own your website shows you the four accounts to verify.

A two-minute decision checklist

Answer yes or no. Be honest, especially on the last two.

1. In the last six months, has anyone asked you for a website link?
2. Does a professional referral source, funder, insurer, or licensing body ever look you up before deciding about you?
3. Does your service have an intake, enrollment, application, or eligibility process that takes more than one sentence to explain?
4. Do people spend more than about $500 with you in a single transaction?
5. Does a direct competitor come up on Google for the thing you do in your city?
6. Do you regularly answer the same three questions by phone or DM?
7. Is your current book of business below where you need it to be?
8. If your Instagram account disappeared tomorrow, would you still be able to reach your customers?

Three or more yeses in questions 1 through 7 means a website is now a revenue question, not a branding question. One or two means claim your Google Business Profile, collect reviews, and revisit in six months. A “no” on question 8, on its own, is reason enough to at least register a domain today.

If the checklist says yes but the money says not this quarter, do it in stages. Register the domain now. Build a one-page site with your services, service area, phone number, and hours. Expand it when the cash flow allows. A one-page site that loads fast and answers the basics outperforms a ten-page site that took a year to finish and never launched. And if you already have a site that gets visitors who never call, the problem is usually the page, not the traffic, which is what traffic but no leads is about.

Where to go from here

If you read the checklist and landed on “not yet,” that is a legitimate answer and you do not need to hear from us. Claim the profile, get reviews, come back when the answers change.

If you landed on “yes,” we build sites for small businesses, nonprofits, schools, and care providers across the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, from starter sites to full builds. You can see recent work or get in touch with what you are trying to do and roughly what you can spend. If it turns out you would be better served building it yourself, I will tell you that too.