Do I Need a Website, or Is My Google Profile Enough?

You have a Google profile, a Facebook page, and enough work coming through both to wonder why anybody is telling you to add a monthly cost on top. That is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer from somebody who builds websites for a living. Two things are worth saying up front. Some businesses genuinely do not need one yet, and this piece names which. And the argument for having one is not that everybody should. It is a short list of specific things a profile cannot do, each of which you can check against your own week.

There is a set of conditions under which a profile plus word of mouth is a reasonable place to be, and pretending otherwise would be a sales pitch.

Your work is one thing, describable in a sentence. If somebody can understand your entire offer from a category and a photograph, a website has less to add.

Your customers repeat, or come from people who already know you. A referral arrives pre-sold and does not usually go reading first.

There is one action, and it is simple. A call, a message, a booking through a link that already works.

You are deliberately testing. A new venture, a side business, a service you are trying for six months before committing. Spending on a site before knowing what you are selling is how people end up rebuilding.

And you would not keep it current. A site with last year's prices and a service you stopped offering is worse than none, and that is an honest reason to wait.

If most of that describes you, spend the time on making your profile complete and accurate instead. It costs nothing and it is the surface doing the work.

Here is where it stops, and each of these is checkable against your own experience rather than something to take on trust.

A question that takes more than a sentence. What is included, what is not, how the process works, what happens if it goes wrong, why you cost more than the other quote. A category and a photograph do not carry that, and answering it repeatedly by phone is a cost you are already paying.

An action that has to be completed. Google's business link policy is specific here: a local business action link has to lead to a dedicated landing page for that business, the named action must be completable on it, and social media and messaging links are not permitted for those links. So, the moment you want a booking, an order or a quote request attached to your profile, the profile itself needs somewhere to send people.

Surviving a suspension. Google says a removed profile is unavailable to the public, and its owners and managers cannot act on it while it is removed. It also says an account restriction can suspend the profiles associated with it. Whether that ever happens to you is unknowable; what it costs when it does depends entirely on whether anything else of yours exists.

Being found for what you do rather than who you are. A profile answers people searching your name and people searching your category nearby. Somebody researching the problem before they know who to call is a different visitor, and pages are what meet them.

Notice that none of those is about looking professional. They are all about a specific thing failing on a specific day.

The brief that produces a waste of money is "we need a website". The brief that produces something useful is "somebody should be able to do this without ringing me".

Start from the action. Book a slot. Request a quote with the details you always have to ask for anyway. See what a job like theirs involves. Order the thing.

Then the questions that come before it, which you already know because you answer them every week on the phone. Those are your pages, and there are usually three or four.

Then the proof somebody needs to believe you can do it, which for most trades is photographs of real work rather than words.

Then the handoff: what happens after they submit, who replies, how fast. A form that lands nowhere is the most common failure in small business websites, and it is worth reading contact form not sending email before you rely on one.

That is a small site. It is also the version most likely to earn its cost, because every part of it removes a phone call you were making anyway.

The order below front-loads the free work, so you find out whether you need a site before you buy one.

Start with an inventory rather than a design. Which accounts exist, who owns each one, which domains you hold or once held, the services you actually sell, the areas or locations you cover, where referrals come from, and the one or two actions a customer needs to complete.

Then check the profile itself. Is it verified, accurate, named the way your sign is named, and eligible? Google requires a business to make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours to qualify at all, and requires the real-world name and the address or service area to be accurate. Fixing that is free and it is the highest-value hour available to you.

Then decide the smallest thing that closes the gaps you found. One landing page, a small service site, or something with bookings or payment, depending entirely on the action.

Then build it around the questions, the proof and the handoff, and connect the profile to the relevant dedicated page rather than to the home page.

Then test it on a phone before a desktop, because that is where most people will meet it. Submit the form yourself. Complete the booking yourself.

Then set up Search Console so you can see how the site performs in search, and write down the ownership register: domain, hosting, analytics, profile, forms, email.

Anybody quoting a standard price for professional work without seeing your scope is quoting a sales figure. What can be shown are published platform prices from the vendors themselves.

Squarespace's 2026 pricing document lists US annual-billing monthly equivalents of $16 Basic, $23 Core, $39 Plus and $99 Advanced, with monthly-billing figures of $25, $36, $56 and $139. Its plan guidance says plans are per site and that domains, email campaigns, scheduling and Google Workspace can be separate subscriptions, and lists payment processing on the higher plans at 2.7% plus $0.30 and 2.5% plus $0.30 for domestic cards. The vendor notes pricing and availability vary by location, so check at purchase.

Domains are separate again. Cloudflare Registrar states that it charges the registry and ICANN list price with no markup, and that the price depends on the extension and the term, which is why no single domain price exists.

A Google Business Profile itself has no published fee for adding or claiming it.

What moves professional cost upward is concrete: selling and payment processing, more content, photography, writing, custom integrations, several locations, more than one language, migrating an existing site, ongoing support, and any legal or accessibility review. What moves it down is having accurate approved content already and needing one clear action. The recurring column is the one that surprises people, and what a website costs you every month covers the items that arrive after launch.

This is the part that outlasts whatever you build, and it costs nothing to get right at the start.

Six things should sit in accounts the business owns: the domain registration, the hosting or platform, the analytics, the Google Business Profile, whatever handles your forms, and your email. Not an agency's account. Not a former employee's personal login.

Give each person their own access rather than sharing one password. Google supports separate user accounts with owner and manager roles for exactly this reason, and it means somebody leaving does not mean an account leaving with them.

Keep the register written down somewhere you will find it in three years: what each account is, who holds it, what it costs and when it renews. The value of that page becomes obvious the first time somebody is unreachable, which is the situation described in what to do when your web designer disappears.

Two smaller points belong here. Agree who owns the content and images at the end of a build, in writing. And if your site will collect names, emails or messages, decide who can read them and how long they are kept, because those are decisions about other people's information rather than settings.

Whatever you decide, there is local support worth knowing about, and none of it is a website service.

The City of Arlington's business page links small business assistance, economic development, and planning and development. Its resource article names the Small Business Assistance page, permits and grants, free Urban Design Center services, Arlington Public Library workshops and digital resources, mentoring, the Arlington Economic Development Corporation, SCORE and the Tarrant Small Business Development Center.

For local discovery and referral, Downtown Arlington's Business Improvement District, established through a property owner petition in 2010 with funding renewed in 2025, does marketing and economic development work in the district. The Greater Arlington Chamber reports more than a thousand members and runs a Keep It Local directory.

Those are channels and support, not substitutes for your own profile or your own pages. A directory entry you do not control is somebody else's asset with your name on it.

If you do build something, the ongoing job is smaller than people expect and it is mostly about the joins.

Point the profile at the right page rather than the home page, and check the link still works. Google says non-compliant business links may be removed, that checks can happen as often as daily, and that a functional link has to return a successful response. A page you renamed six months ago is a link that quietly failed.

Test the customer path a few times a year: the form, the booking, the phone link on a phone. Not the design. The path.

Keep hours, services and prices current in both places at once, from the same source, so the profile and the site never disagree in front of a customer.

You will know it is working when enquiries arrive with the details you used to have to ask for, when you can send somebody a link instead of explaining, and when a search for your business shows both a profile and pages that agree with each other.

Can I run a business without a website?

Plenty do, particularly where work comes from referrals and the offer is simple. The question worth asking is not whether you can, but whether anything specific is failing without one.

Is a Facebook page enough instead?

It can carry updates and reach people well. It cannot serve as a Google business action link, because Google excludes social media and messaging links from those, and it is an account somebody else controls.

What happens if my Google profile gets suspended?

Google says the public cannot reach it and you and your managers cannot act on it until it is reinstated. What that costs you depends on whether you have anything else of your own.

What is the minimum a website needs?

One action made easier, the three or four questions you answer on the phone every week, proof that you do the work, and a contact path you have tested yourself.

Will a website get me more customers?

It removes specific obstacles: a question you cannot answer in a sentence, an action that cannot be completed, a visitor who does not yet know your name. Anybody promising you a number is guessing.

How much should I budget?

Separate the platform subscription, the domain, any payment processing, and the professional work. Published platform prices are checkable; professional cost depends on your scope and nobody can quote it without seeing it.

If your offer is simple, your customers repeat, and one action covers most enquiries, spend the afternoon making your profile complete and accurate and leave it there. That is a real answer, not a hedge.

If you keep answering the same question by phone, if you want a booking or a quote attached to your profile, or if the thought of that profile going quiet is genuinely alarming, then the smallest useful site is a short list rather than a project: one action, the questions you already answer, proof you can do it, and a contact path you have tested.

If you want somebody to tell you plainly which of those two you are in, Arlington Website Designer works with businesses around Arlington, TX and we would rather say "not yet" than build something that changes nothing. Tell us where your work comes from and what people ask you before they book, through the contact page, and you will get back whether a site would change anything and what the smallest version of it looks like.