Yes, a small business still needs its own website, and good small business website design is cheaper than most owners expect, because it is the only place online that you control and the one page every other listing points to.
Social profiles, review sites and Google Business Profile all send people somewhere when they want to know more. If that somewhere does not exist, or looks abandoned, the enquiry goes to a competitor whose site does.
This article covers what the UK data says about who has a website, what a sensible one looks like at under £3,000, and what to leave out until you have a reason to add it. It sits inside our wider guide to web design agencies in the UK, which covers the buying process end to end.
How many UK businesses have a website?
About two thirds do, and the smaller the business, the less likely it is to have one.
The government's UK Business Data Survey 2024, published in June 2024, found that 68% of UK businesses had a website. The gap by size is wide. Ownership was 99% among large firms and 65% among sole traders.
xychart-beta
title "UK businesses with a website, by size (%), UK Business Data Survey 2024"
x-axis ["Sole trader", "Micro", "Small", "Medium", "Large"]
y-axis "Percent with a website" 0 --> 100
bar [65, 74, 93, 97, 99]
Workplace Journal, reporting analysis of the same survey, put it the other way round: 35% of sole traders and 26% of micro firms had no website at all.
Those numbers are not an argument that having a website is optional. They show that a third of the smallest businesses have not got round to it, which means a decent site is a cheap way to look more established than the competitor down the road.
Is a social page or Google listing enough?
No, because those channels set the rules, can change them and do not let you present your offer the way you want.
A Facebook page or Instagram profile is useful for showing recent work and answering quick questions. It does not rank for the searches that bring in people who do not know you yet, and the layout is the platform's, not yours.
A Google Business Profile does rank for local searches, and for many trades and clinics it is the main source of calls. Even so, the profile links to a website, and what people find there decides whether they ring. Our monthly Business Profile routine covers the listing, and the website is the page behind it.
There is also the practical point of ownership. If a platform suspends your account or changes its reach, your site and your domain stay put.
What should a small business website under £3,000 include?
A site at this price should have a clear homepage, one page for each main service, a page about you, proof that you do the work well and an obvious way to get in touch.
One UK guide to small business website costs puts a good basic site at roughly £400 to £800 and an advanced one at £1,000 to £4,000, though it cites no underlying data. Treat £3,000 as the upper end of what a small service business needs for a first proper site.
Here is what the money should buy.
A homepage that says what you do
The first screen has to answer three questions: what you do, for whom and where. A line like "Emergency boiler repairs for homes in Northampton and Daventry" does more than "Welcome to our website". We go through the wording in writing a homepage hero in one sentence.
One page per main service
A single "Services" page that lists everything in bullet points will rarely rank for any of it. A separate page for each core service gives you something to rank and something to send an advert to. Our piece on a 15-page service site against a 200-post blog makes the same case.
Proof
Real reviews, named case examples, accreditations, photographs of your own team and work. Stock images of handshakes add nothing. If you have a regulator number or membership, show it in plain text.
A contact route that works on a phone
A tap-to-call number in the header, a short enquiry form and your address with a map. Most small business traffic arrives on a phone, so test the form on one before launch.
The technical basics
HTTPS, a sensible page speed, a sitemap submitted to Google, analytics that count enquiries and a privacy policy. Speed has a measurable commercial effect: a Google-commissioned study by Deloitte and 55, covering 37 brands, found that a 0.1 second improvement in mobile load time lifted retail conversion by 8.4% and, for lead generation sites, increased progression to the form by 21.6%.
What can you leave out for now?
Leave out anything that does not help someone decide to contact you: a blog written for the sake of it, animated intros, chatbots, live feeds and a dozen plugins.
You can add a blog later, once you know which questions customers ask. Add booking or payment tools when you have a process that needs them, not before. The integrations that pay for themselves are worth planning early, but not all of them need to ship on day one.
The same goes for a custom design system or a 12-page brand guide. A first site should be quick to launch and cheap to change.
Builder, freelancer or agency at this budget?
At under £3,000, a website builder, a freelancer or a small agency can each deliver a good result, and the right one depends on how much of the work you want to do yourself.
A builder costs the least and puts the work on you. A freelancer or small agency costs more and gives you someone to hold to a brief. The longer comparison is in our article on website builders versus an agency.
Whichever you choose, ask for the domain to be registered in your name, and ask what the site costs to run each year. The same guide lists domains at £3 to £10 a year, hosting at £10 to £60 a month and maintenance at £20 to £100 a month.
What does year one cost?
Plan on the build price plus roughly another £1,000 in running costs, so a £2,000 site comes to just under £3,000 in its first year.
Take the cost guide's ranges and pick middle values. A £2,000 build, a domain at £10, hosting at £30 a month (£360) and maintenance at £50 a month (£600) comes to £2,970. From year two you drop the build and pay roughly £970 to keep it running and current.
Those running costs are the ones that catch people out, because a quote for the build alone says nothing about them. Ask the agency or builder to put the second-year cost in writing before you agree to anything. Our article on what you are paying for in a £50 a month plan explains what sits behind the figure.
How do you tell whether the site is working?
Count enquiries, not visits. A site that gets 300 visits and nine calls is doing better than one that gets 3,000 visits and two.
Set up three simple counts from day one: phone taps from the site, form submissions and clicks on your Google Business Profile's website link. Check them monthly. If visits rise and enquiries do not, the problem is usually the page the visitor lands on, not the traffic, and our piece on rankings up and enquiries flat shows the order to check things in.
What if you already have a website?
Check it against the same list before you pay for a new one, because many old sites need a rewrite of the homepage and two or three service pages, not a full rebuild.
Open the site on your phone and ask a friend who does not work with you to find your phone number and describe what you do. If they take more than ten seconds, the first screen needs work.
Look at the date in the footer, the oldest news item and whether any plugin or page warns about being out of date. Visitors read those as signs the business has stopped trading.
A rebuild makes sense when the platform holds you back: pages that load slowly on mobile, no way to edit without a developer, or a theme that is no longer supported. It does not make sense because the design looks a few years old.
Redesigns also carry a search risk if old addresses are not redirected, which we cover in why redesigns lose traffic for three months.
Which small businesses gain the most?
Businesses where people research before they buy gain the most, because the website is where the research ends.
A clinic or dental practice gets patients who check the team, the treatments and the reviews before they book. A retailer or ecommerce brand needs a place where stock, delivery details and returns are set out, which a social feed does badly.
Trades and local services sit in between. They get a lot from Google Business Profile, and the site is what converts those views into calls.
Next step
If you are not sure what to include, start with a one-page list: your three main services, your area, your proof and how you want to be contacted. That list is the brief.
If you would like an opinion on scope or a quote, our website design service covers small business builds, or you can talk to us about your project.