Do Small Businesses need a website in 2025?

In 2025, most small businesses, even freelancers, have been quick to start their business by creating an Instagram, Tiktok, or Facebook Page. In my small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, so many new food trucks, restaurants, shirt & mug printing, and many other small businesses have popped up in local markets, street corners, and business plazas. It's a great thing to see in our small town.

However, one thing that i've found is that while they may have a Facebook page, Instagram, or Tiktok... I rarely see a business that has their own website. In this article i hope to shed light on what these small businesses are missing out on by not having an official website!

Why not having a business website is a problem.

The way social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and others work is by showing a constant stream of small updates, by text, photos, or videos, to users so they could like, comment, and share if they want. For a small business, that can be great to spread the word about your business... but that's really it.

If your business sells a variety of food, where do you add the menu? Sure you can post about it, but are you gonna post about every menu item everyday? Are you going to comment all the menu items with ingredients, pricing, and options every time someone asks?

What if the people who see your posts about tacos aren't in the mood for tacos that day, instead they would rather have a burger? Sure you can make two posts but we all know their algorithms won't show both of your posts to all you followers, if at all!

What about a printing service that can print custom designs on shirts, mugs, hoodies? What about all the options each product has?

Aren't you tired of posting a long list of options, menu items, pictures of your products and services for every customer that has a question?

This is where a custom website comes in! Custom websites have the benefit of having one central place where people can see exactly what you want them to see. That can be a menu with information on each plate, like ingredients, order options, prices, and pictures.

If you get questions on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Whatsapp, Tiktok, or any other platform at the same time asking the same questions about your "Texas Tacos special", you can just send them a link to your webpage instead of sending pictures and all the details in the comments or inbox every time they ask you. That saves a lot of time from your social media strategy!

Full Control

A custom website gives you full control of what your clients/customers see. Want them to sign up to an email newsletter? Easily add a form that connects to your mailchimp or other email newsletter service. Need to show them a photo gallery, you can add that.

Need your customers to send you a design file for you to print on shirts? File uploads can be added to your website with services like formspark and uploadcare, or custom made with S3 Object storage. And if you want to sell physical products online, you definitely need a Shopify website!

Professional Credibility

Anyone can create a social media account and a page for their business. But a website takes more planning, care, and a small monetary investment to get a website up and running. This lends to a professional image and credibility that your business is legit and not a pop-up scam. So while it's okay and valid to start a business primarily using social media, eventually you will need a website to gain credibility.

Detailed Information and Content

I had a client that had customers who lost (or threw away) their high-ticket products' user manual. He later would email them for a copy of the manual. Emailing every customer asking for a copy of the manual was exhausting, and keeping track of sending the latest version every time was tricky.

So i created a page on their website where all the user manuals could be linked. This meant that my client could print out a QR code that links to the product manuals page and place it on the product. And for those that also got rid of the QR code, they could look for the page on our website.

And for those who still asked by email, they just sent them a link to the products manual page where we knew the link to download the product manual would always be there.

Like this, there are many cases where a small business needs to give out detailed information, like in-depth explainers, tutorials, or other resources to customers that you just can't provide in social media platforms. Again, social media platforms prefer engaging short content.

Only a website can provide the appropriate space for this detailed long-form content.

Search Engine Optimization

While people on social media may stumble upon if you're lucky, people searching on search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Start Page have a much higher chance of finding you if your SEO is just right.

By structuring your website in a certain way, creating engaging content, and having relevant titles, descriptions, and images, you could be found on the first page of Google and other search engines!

The best thing about finding leads through search engines is that those leads are already pre-qualified! They searched for what you provide, unlike social media posts where the people who do see your post may or may not necessarily be in the market for your products or services at that time.

Conclusion

Social media has its strengths and weaknesses, and websites really shine in areas that social media platforms are weak. So if you have a small business, and you are serious about growing, consider building a website that solves problems that your social media presence can't solve.

Today there are many options for building a small business website. From DIY platforms like Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, to hiring professionals to build it.

Here at Odd-Stop Media, i build custom websites for small business' and organizations with either Framer for clients that want to be able to make simple changes themselves, or fully custom websites with frameworks like Astro, Nextjs, and React Router. If you're interested hiring someone to create your small business website, send me a message through our contact us page.