--- title: Do You Really Need a Website date: 2020-04-07T05:00:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-1/do-you-really-need-a-website/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 03 Episode 1 – Apr 07, 2020 23:41 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Do You Really Need a Website  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-03/01-Do-You-Really-Need-a-Website-master.mp3) This episode delves into why some businesses might not require a website and offers tips on how to measure the success of your site in helping your company grow. ### Show Notes What are the reasons you are building a website? Is it because everyone is doing it? What do you want your website to accomplish? You need a good business reason to have a website. - Analytics - Conversions - Reasons why your business doesn't need a website - Social media should your satellite sites and your website should be your home planet - Building authority by giving away knowledge for free ### **Timestamps** \[00:00\] Intro \[00:22\] Discussing the question of whether every business needs a website \[01:12\] Measuring the success of your website \[05:12\] Examples of businesses that may not need a website \[10:06\] Importance of owning your online content \[17:03\] Positioning your business as an authority on your website ### Show Links - [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/) - [Home Stars](https://homestars.com/) - [Own Your Digital Content](https://caffeinecreations.ca/blog/own-your-digital-content/) - [Use social media to promote your website, not replace it.](https://belikewater.ca/blog/entry/social-media) - [Do I need a website?](https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/do-i-need-a-website/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi, and welcome to season three of the website 101 podcast. Welcome back. I'm Sean Smith, your co-host, and with me, as usual, is Mike Mella. Hey, Sean. How's it going? It's going great. So, we're going to open this season by talking about, do you really need a website? **\[00:22\]** **Mike:** Yeah. It's a provocative question, isn't it? **\[00:25\]** **Sean:** Yeah. most people are going to say every business needs a website but you know it's really not as simple as that. There's some complexities involved in it and the too long didn't list an answer. Not every website needs a website, not every website needs a business, but every business needs a website. There's a spoonerism for it. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say 98 to 99% of our businesses should have a website. Like, what do you think about that? **\[00:58\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I would agree with that. The vast majority of businesses in 2019 and beyond would benefit from having a web presence of some form, but it's not always the case. **\[01:12\]** **Sean:** Exactly. Yeah, so one of the things that we think that you should do before you get your website out, and we're gonna assume right now that you do need a website, all go later in the episode, we're gonna talk about why you might not want one or might not need it. But let's start off with, hey, we need it. What do you want your website to do? Yeah. Are you just building a website because your competitor, a few blocks away, has got a website? Are you just building a website because everybody's doing it? I don't know, is that the best reason? What do you want your website to do? **\[01:51\]** **Mike:** Yeah, if you're going to bother building one, you should have a good reason for why you're doing it. And you should be on top of that. It's a function of your own business. It's an extension of your business, so it should have reasoning behind it just like any other facet of whatever it is you do. This should be a reason why you did it. **\[02:13\]** **Sean:** So what is it that a business owner building a website for the first time should be looking for? not just building to have a website like the competitors but what should they be **\[02:23\]** **Mike:** looking on it? How can they measure the success? Right. So yeah that's a good point because if you're going to bother building the website you want to make sure you track how effective that website is in the long term. So what is it meant to accomplish and then is it accomplishing that for your business? So you can do that in a number of ways. You could use, you know, the obvious example will be tracking tools like Google Analytics where you actually measure visitors and where they go and are they go into the pages you want them to go to and how long are they spending there and so on. So that's a good way to sort of measure how effective your website is. A very basic example would be conversions. So what we call, what do you mean by conversion? Yeah, I don't know if we had an episode once about terms that you should know as a website owner and, you know, SEO and CMS and so on. I don't know if conversions were... **\[03:18\]** **Sean:** That was a two, that was a two-parter back-and-two. **\[03:20\]** **Mike:** Yeah. But I don't know if conversions was in there. I think it was, but anyway, to go over it again, conversions would be an example, would be like, you know, the thing you want your visitors to accomplish on your website. So like if you're a, if you're some kind of a store that sells things and you want people to buy them on your website, someone goes there, someone buys one of your products, that is a conversion. **\[03:42\]** **Sean:** Okay. **\[03:43\]** **Mike:** And it doesn't have to be purchases, it could be awareness if you're a nonprofit, like a lot of my clients, it could be volunteering, sign up for a volunteer position through a form, things like that. **\[03:56\]** **Sean:** Right. Another conversion could be calling or contacting the business to discuss further work. Like maybe you're hiring a contractor to work on your home, while you're going to look at their contractors website and find out if they do the kind of work you want and then contact them to get more information in a quote because they can't just have prices **\[04:22\]** **Mike:** on their website. Each project is unique. That's right. And another reason you would want to make sure that you're measuring the success of your website is you probably are spending money on it if you're hiring someone like me or Sean to do your website. It's going to cost you money and there's not only developer fees, but hosting and bandwidth and everything else. And you want to make sure that your website is a good investment for your money. Is it doing something productive for your company, right? **\[04:51\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I absolutely agree about that. Okay, so right at the beginning of the show, I said that we should talk about why you might not want a website. Mike, can you tell me any examples of a business that probably doesn't need a website or it might be a waste of money and time to invest in building one? **\[05:12\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so this is a very rare situation, but I do have one really good example that I sometimes bring up. So when I grew up in a province in Canada called Prince Edward Island, and in the capital city there, Charlottetown, there is a barber, his name is Ray, and it's where I used to get my haircut when I was a kid. And my dad went there to get his haircut and he took me and I went there and now my brother still lives there. He also went. He now takes his kids to Ray to get his haircut, get their haircut. Anyway, it's been going on for years and years and Ray does not take bookings online. You can't book an appointment online. You just get first come for a serve. He has no interest in growing his business and opening another shop. And really, there's very little reason I can think of for why he might need a website. The only thing I could think is maybe to advertise the hours when he's open. But honestly, everyone knows when Ray is open, it's right. And the hours are on the window and you could go to Google and probably find the address and it would give you the hours. So an entire website for him maybe not needed at all. **\[06:23\]** **Sean:** Yeah, even a brochure site sounds like a little bit too much for that guy. He's serving a community, everybody in the community knows who he is. There's something similar here, I live in Toronto, there's a little independent convenience shop, it's not a 7-11 or a big chain, they don't have a website but they're the only place in walking distance to anybody. So that's where you go if you want an ice cream or a snack or whatever you need, you just Walk over to the convenience store corner store, but nobody even knows the name of it. It's just the convenience store, right? Right. They don't need a website. They don't need a website. They barely need a name. Exactly. So, other things that I've looked online and I've seen people say they don't need a website is like my business is too small. I don't have a budget. Mike, what do you think? Is this a fair argument or is it a straw man? Like, what's the deal? **\[07:27\]** **Mike:** No, I think, I mean, I think there are some cases when if your business is too small, and it's certainly if you don't have the budget for a website, if you're putting your investment into other aspects of your business, and it really does, sometimes it might make sense. Maybe you need inventory or what have you, and you need to put your money into that at first. Certainly if you have a small business, If you have no interest in, like I say, promoting it online and doing all those kind of things that most businesses need to do, then maybe you don't. Or maybe you could take sort of an early, the early steps of a website, of getting a full-fledged website up. So in the form of having a Wix presence or a square space or something like that, where as we've talked about before, you could pay $9 a month or something and have a very simple site online and then just have that running for as long as you need, and either upgrade or downgrade or cancel it later on. **\[08:23\]** **Sean:** I think that Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow are great options for businesses starting out on a budget. And even for some websites, these might be something that you stick with for the length of your business. But if your business grows or changes and you need something more custom, well then that's where we would come in. But as a starting point, our wicks are a square space where you're paying a low monthly fee. These are perfect. They're a great investment. And honestly, I think that the cases like Ray or the convenience store to me are rare and far and few between. They're not very common. I think almost any business could do well to have their own website. So I'm gonna jump a little bit off of our agreed plan. And I just said it's some thoughts that going back to the contractor who does work on your house or things like that. A lot of contractors actually don't have their own website, especially these small independent contractors. They use something like home stars and competitors like that. So that's a third party site where you get reviews and you put up your contact details and the type of businesses, business that you do for people. These are great to start off with, but what happens if home star changes their terms or things like that, and you're no longer getting featured the way you used to? You also don't have control over the type of reviews that show up at home. **\[10:06\]** **Mike:** Exactly, that's right. I mean, home stars is a special example because it's based on ratings. But I mean, yeah, there's always that risk when you don't have 100% control of your website that something will change. And suddenly, it's not doing for you what it needs to be doing or what it was supposed to be doing all along. Hi, hope you're enjoying this episode. We're always looking for topics suggestions from listeners. So if there's anything you'd like us to discuss in the future, **\[10:35\]** **Sean:** please let us know. And we're also looking for guests. If you know somebody who would make a great guest, if you think you would be a good guest, please let us know. You can reach out to us at website 101podcast.com slash contact. Well, yeah, and this isn't just a home stars example. There's a lot of people who market their business, and I'm using square quotes here, with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and their entire business online is all on social media. Now, don't get me wrong. Social media is very important for almost any business. But it should not be your only approach. You need to own your content. And I have a great article that I wrote called Own Your Digital Content. And I'm gonna include it in the show notes. But the basic idea here is if LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever the hot cool new social networking tool is, and they change their terms or the way they work, it can deeply affect your business. I've seen articles recently about how Facebook business changed their terms and a lot of businesses lost their ranking. It's now paid a rank. Oh, yes. Yeah. And that's not included in my article, which I wrote a couple of years ago, but the premise is still there. If you don't own your content, somebody else does, and that means you have no control. Right. They change the way it works. You either have to adapt or face life like a dinosaur. **\[12:21\]** **Mike:** Yep. And I actually have an article that I wrote on my blog that will also, we'll put all these in the show notes. And it's called Use Social Media to promote your website, not replace it. And the example... Oh, it sounds exactly like my... Yeah, it does. We didn't realize we wrote save article, basically, but that's great. Yeah, and the example I like to, sort of the sort of saying I like to use with regard to that is, your social media sites should be satellite sites and your main site should be sort of your home planet. So definitely have social media presences on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, but have, you You know, use them to send people back to your main website, which you would have total control over. So, no matter what happens on those social media sites, you know, your content is not going to be negatively affected if you have your own website that you're in control **\[13:13\]** **Sean:** of. Exactly. And while Mike was talking, I just Googled and found his article. **\[13:20\]** **Mike:** Yeah, we'll put these all in the show notes. **\[13:25\]** **Sean:** And I like how you call it satellite sites rather than the peak show. **\[13:29\]** **Mike:** I mean, I think it's obviously important if you don't have a social media presence these days. That's going to be a detriment, but yeah, it shouldn't be your main focus. Another thing you might want to keep consider when building a website and deciding what kind of a website you need is what are your long-term goals for your business on the web? So rather than just, okay, we have a budget this year, we want to put together a website, you know, we'll spend 10 grand or whatever higher this guy and it'll be done than boom. And then we'll kind of let it sit there for five years until we want to resign. That's probably not going to be the best use of your investment or your time. And instead of that, you could, you know, right at the outset decide, where do we want this website to be in, you know, two years out, even three or five years out? You know, what do we think because you're probably thinking that far ahead with your business. You know, if someone were to ask you, where are you going to be in five years, whether even if you're a small business or sort of a large organization or company, you probably have a long-term plan. So you should apply that same reasoning to your website. What are you going to have the website do in the long-term? **\[14:42\]** **Sean:** I couldn't say it any better. You do need to know where you're going, and this should inform how you build your site. Right. So it should inform how you plan it. Not just looking at your competitors and saying, I need this and this and this. You may need that, but you also need things like planning out how you're going to get to where you want to be in the future and setting your website up to be as flexible as possible to adapt to those changes coming in the future. **\[15:20\]** **Mike:** So Sean, do you have any examples of or any information about how effective a business is if it has a website or not? Does it have any influence on how people perceive the quality of that business? **\[15:35\]** **Sean:** Okay, well, just before we were recording the show, I did a little googling and I came From across this article called, do I need a website on bluecorona.com, which will link it to you in the show notes? And one of the big things I took away from it is 30% of customers won't consider a business without a website. Uh-huh. So how? How? 30%. 30%. If you don't have a website, you're potentially losing 30% of your revenue. **\[16:04\]** **Mike:** That is huge. **\[16:05\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Intuitively, to me, that feels correct, because the first thing I do is I look for a website. Yes. If I'm looking for something, I Google it and then I take a look at the results and look around and find what I want. 30% actually might be low. I don't know when this article was written, but honestly, how often are you looking for something? And do you ask your friends or do you Google first? Yeah. You know, I bought my house a few years ago, used my fireplace a couple times, and then I realized, hey, you know what, I haven't cleaned the chimney in a while. That's probably a fire hazard. Did I call up Mike or my other friends and ask them who they're using to clean their chimneys? No, I went on Google, right. And I got a chimney guy now to come in because I googled him. **\[17:03\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and that's I'm so glad you brought that up because I have the same example. I too have a chimney in fireplace and it's a same deal and I Looked online and I did some research now. I'm we're not probably the the tarp, you know We're unusual as far as How often the average person uses the web for anything like you and I use the web for everything in our lives probably **\[17:26\]** **Sean:** It's our business, right? Yeah, but I looked online **\[17:30\]** **Mike:** I found a chimney cleaner and the reason I went with that guy I can I can tell you is He posts videos of him on his website. He posts videos of him up on people's roofs Saying now you see this chimney. This is a roading away because of the water coming down And he explains exactly what the work is he's doing puts it in it He just records it with his smartphone puts it on YouTube and then he has his whole page on his website with all these videos And I was like so impressed that he really first of all that he was telling people what I think I think I need to switch chimney guys Yeah, maybe I can I can recommend this guy for sure But I just like the fact that he was really incorporating his business into his website and knowing that people are gonna come here **\[18:14\]** **Sean:** One of the deal is I might as well show them this brings up something I wanted to mention later is One of the reasons you want to have a website is to build authority You want to position yourself as an authority and this guy who does the chimney thing those videos That's building authority exactly. He's giving away knowledge for free Telling you how to spot these problems. He might even be telling you how to fix it if you're a do it yourself for yeah But he's giving all of this information away for free showing his expertise Yep, and now people want to work with him like I just like I still have him clean my chimney before the next season And so I actually might be calling mics to me. **\[19:00\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I've got to do the same. Yeah, yeah. No, it's great. It definitely does. Yeah, it helps to establish you as the expert in your field if you can kind of promote that anywhere, and that includes on the web. **\[19:11\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. So you position yourself as an authority, and it helps you to stay in control of your brand, which goes back to the don't put everything on social media. Social media is important, but don't make social media your website. Right. I'm not saying reduce your amount of social media, use as much as you need to, but you should be pulling all of that content onto your own website so that you can display it and own it. Yes. If Twitter closes tomorrow, all of your valuable tweets are gone. If Facebook changes the way they position your business in people's feeds, the number of leads that you get is going to change. and they increase, but there's an equal chance that it's going to decrease. And then what are you gonna do? You need to have your own website. People don't go to Facebook or Twitter and search for a chimney sweep. Right. They go to Google and then they post on Google on Facebook about the great chimney sweep they got. **\[20:17\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's often what people do is they do the research and then they ask their friends, hey, have you, I mean, chimney sweeps maybe. Not the best example because not like everyone has it It needs a chimney sweep. **\[20:27\]** **Sean:** Yeah, but that's the one we went to. **\[20:28\]** **Mike:** Right. But like, you do the research first online and then you might go to your friends and ask what their recommendations are based on what you've found. But it's often not, going to your friends directly is not always the first step for finding a new business. And going back to what we were saying earlier about tracking your site's effectiveness, if your site is entirely on social media, there's only so much you can do about determining how effective anything is. And if you're running a site yourself, you can have your web developer put in all kinds of analytics goals and things like that, conversion trackers and just to see, you know, find really granular evidence of how people are interacting with your website that you wouldn't get from social media. **\[21:10\]** **Sean:** Right. And all of the social media stuff that you do can be pulled on and placed onto your website. You can embed your Twitter feed. You can embed your Facebook comments, you can embed your Instagram, your LinkedIn, you can put all of this content can be displayed on your website, and it should be, especially for websites where social media or businesses where social media is a very big concern. But it shouldn't be the focus of your website. So long story short, do you need a website, 99% chance, you do need a website. **\[21:49\]** **Mike:** But make sure you ask yourself, why do I need it, what do I want it to do, how will I measure whether or not it is doing its job later, really think about why you have that website. **\[22:00\]** **Sean:** Yeah, sit down with pen and paper, and plan it out, and then build it, don't build it and cram everything in afterwards, you need to plan it ahead of time, get your structure, your content ready, content first is the key. **\[22:14\]** **Mike:** And this is also stuff that you should be able to discuss with your web developer as well. they should be. If you have a good person working on your site, you should be able to sit down with them and they should give you all kinds of advice to this effect. They shouldn't just be like, oh, I don't know. **\[22:28\]** **Sean:** And if you are a do-yourselfer because of budget, like we talked earlier, you know, Squarespace and Wix and Webflow, all of these options that allow you to build a website on your own. Take what we've talked about here and in other episodes and plan your website ahead of time. and make sure you build a website to help your business, sustain your business's growth and revenue. **\[22:55\]** **Mike:** Right. **\[22:56\]** **Sean:** Mm-hmm. Anyways, I think that was a good episode. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to talking to you next time. Bye-bye. Bye. Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode. My name's Sean Smith, your co-host, and you can find me at my website, caffeinecreations.ca, on Twitter, caffeine creation that's spelled C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E-C-R-E-8-I-O-N. And also, I'm on LinkedIn, caffeine creations. **\[23:29\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mella and you can find me online at beelikewater.ca. And I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter. My username is Mike Mella. That's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-A. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 03 - 1 [ Do You Really Need a Website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-1/do-you-really-need-a-website/) - 2 [ Wordpress](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-2/wordpress/) - 3 [ How to Adapt During an Emergency: A Special Website 101 Podcast](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-3/adapting-during-an-emergency/) - 4 [ Video Marketing: Boosting Business with Video Content](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-4/using-video/) - 5 [ Vacations and Website Maintenance: Navigating the Challenges of Time Off](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-5/vacations/) - 6 [ There's a plugin for that](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-6/theres-a-plugin-for-that/) - 7 [ Backups: Why You Need Them and How to Implement Them](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-7/backups/) - 8 [ Using Custom Email Addresses: A Professional Touch for Your Business](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-8/email/) - 9 [ The Importance of Website Maintenance Plans and Retainers](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-9/maintenance-plans/) - 10 [ How to Conduct a Content Audit for Your Website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-10/content-audits/) - 11 [ Own Your Content](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-11/own-your-content/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>