What we'd tell you if you weren't a customer

Three pieces written for business owners trying to make a decision, not for a search engine. They include the arguments against buying a website, because a guide that only argues one way is an advertisement wearing a hat.

The articles

start anywhere

Decision · 9 min read

Why every business needs a website — and the cases where it doesn't

The argument for having your own address online, made without the usual statistics. Includes the four situations where a map listing is genuinely enough and you should keep your money.

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Money · 10 min read

What web design costs for a small business in 2026

Every route from free to five figures, what each one actually includes, and the running costs that nobody mentions in the quote. Plus how to read a proposal you don't understand.

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Checklist · 8 min read

Is your website outdated? A twelve-point checklist

Twelve things you can check yourself in five minutes, on your own phone, without asking anyone. Score it honestly and you'll know whether this is urgent or not.

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The short version of all three

If you only have a minute, this is what each article concludes. The articles themselves are the reasoning that got there.

one line each

What each article concludes
Article	The conclusion	Read it if
Why every business needs a website	A website mostly converts people who already have your name and are checking whether you're real — that, not attracting strangers, is the strongest reason to have one.	You have no website and keep putting the decision off.
What a website costs in 2026	There is no correct price bracket, only a match or mismatch between what your business needs and what the bracket is built to deliver. Compare year-one totals, not headline prices.	You've been quoted a number and can't tell whether it's fair.
Is your website outdated?	Fix correct information first, contact routes second, mobile layout third — and design last. Most redesigns start at the end of that list and never reach the beginning.	You have a website and a nagging feeling about it.

Who these are for

Not for web designers, not for marketers. For the person who runs the business and has been meaning to sort the website out for two years.

the reader

You have no website Start with the first article. It will tell you honestly whether you need one at all — and four situations where you don't.

You have one and suspect it's bad Start with the checklist. Five minutes and you'll have a number instead of a nagging feeling.

You've been quoted a price Start with the costs article. It explains what different price brackets actually buy, so you can tell whether the quote is fair.

You're just comparing providers Read any of them. How a company writes when it isn't selling tells you more than its sales page does.

What you won't find in these

Four things that are standard in this genre and absent here on purpose.

deliberately missing

Invented statistics No "75% of consumers judge credibility by the website" without a source. Numbers like that circulate for years detached from whatever study they came from. Where we don't have a real figure, we make the argument without one.

Fear as a sales tool Your competitors are not stealing all your customers this afternoon. The cost of a bad website is real but gradual, and we'd rather describe it accurately than dramatically.

A pitch in every paragraph There is one call to action at the end of each article, which you can ignore. The rest is the actual content.

Keyword filler These are written to be read once by a person deciding something, not to rank for forty variations of the same phrase.

Read first, decide later

If you get to the end of any of these and conclude you don't need us, the article did its job. If you get to the end and want to get on with it, the price is $999 and the process takes a week.

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