How often have you heard or read that every business needs a website?
Although it’s advice that’s widely accepted as the truth because of frequent parroting, I think it falls apart under the scrutiny of some straight thinking. Really, it’s a sweeping generalisation that shows a limited view of the world and is easy to challenge with a few questions.
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Every business where? When you work all day in front of a computer screen in an air-conditioned office and go home to your widescreen television, it’s easy to forget that roughly one quarter of the world’s population has no electricity. You’re welcome to prove me wrong, but I don’t think websites are high up the hierarchy of needs for business owners in that particular demographic.
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Every business of what kind? Farms are businesses. Some have capital investments and operating costs that would scare the pants off many suburban business owners. But how useful is a website to a farm that sells wheat under contract to a centralised agency and sends its cattle to the markets?
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Every business with what goals? Consider, for example, someone like the bookkeeper or local handyman who has more work than they can handle and no desire to “grow the business”. Do they need to spend money on creating and maintaining a website? Probably not.
I would like suggest a new mantra. Instead of “every business needs a website”, let’s change the chant to “every business needs an appropriate web presence”. Some could benefit from bigger, better, more expensive websites than they have now. Some need something very simple. Some will continue to do very well, thank you, with no website at all.