Do I need a website for my business?

Short answer: yes. Despite the falling number of clicks from search engines, the rise of AI, and the continued power of social media, websites still serve a valuable purpose for small businesses. They act as a trust signal for your customers, a source of truth for your content, and a place where you can fully control how the user experiences your brand. Let’s break down the question in more detail and look at each of those reasons in turn.

A ‘zero-click’ search world

In June 2026, SparkToro and Similarweb published research showing that 68% of Google searches carried out in the US ended without a click to a website.

That’s right. 68% of people who searched on Google did NOT click on a link to a website.

In the UK it’s even worse. A follow-up study across six countries put the UK at 69.5%, the highest of the group. Only around 232 in every 1,000 UK searches sent someone through to a website on the open web.

Now, overall search numbers are still big. Google says it handles more than 5 trillion searches a year, which is roughly 14 billion a day.

But the share of those searches that ends up on sites like yours is getting smaller, and it’s shrinking faster than at any point in the last decade. Which is why marketers are now starting to talk about a ‘zero-click’ search world.

3 reasons you still need a website

Put that alongside everything else on offer and the question makes even more sense. If you want to sell products, you can open an Amazon store, list on Etsy, eBay or Vinted, or sell directly through Facebook and Instagram. If you want to talk to customers, you’ve got LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, Reddit and plenty more.

If you’re trying to save time and money, dropping the website can look like an easy win.

I don’t think it is. There are three reasons why.

1. Your website is a trust signal

Before people buy from a business they’ve never dealt with, they look for reassurance. They want to know there’s a space on the internet that actually belongs to you. Not your profile on somebody else’s platform, but your own presence.

They want to see your address, your phone number, how to get in touch, and maybe the faces of the people who run the business.

That matters more now than it used to, because we’re surrounded by pop-up businesses. Shops appear on social platforms one month and disappear the next. A website with real details on it doesn’t prove you’re trustworthy on its own, but not having one raises a question in a lot of buyers’ minds. Your website gives potential customers some confidence that you really exist, that you’re genuine, and that they can trust you.

2. Your website is your source of truth

If you’re doing a good job with your marketing, information about your business spreads. You might be listed in directories, reviewed on comparison sites, mentioned in a partner’s guest post or included in a “best of” roundup. Then there’s everything you publish on social media yourself.

That’s great, until it goes out of date. Prices change, services change, you move premises or stop offering something, and the old versions stay online.

Search engines, AI tools and the people making recommendations can’t always tell which version is current. There’s no clear signal about what’s true about your business today.

Your website is that signal. It’s the one place you control completely, so you can make sure everything on it about you, your products and your services is accurate and up to date. When information elsewhere disagrees, it gives Google, AI assistants, potential partners and customers somewhere reliable to check.

This matters more as AI answers become part of how people search. SparkToro makes a similar point in its report: even as traffic falls, what’s on your website still shapes the answers Google and AI tools give, so you still need to publish the right information there.

3. Your website is where you control the customer experience

If you sell through Amazon, you’re relying on Amazon’s checkout and Amazon’s follow-up. If you publish on YouTube or X, you control the content itself, but the page it sits on is designed and run by somebody else. It isn’t your brand, and it isn’t your tone of voice.

Your website is. The fonts, the images, the colours, how people move around it, and how it feels to buy from you or book your services are all down to you.

That’s important at the moment someone arrives ready to act. You can make sure they’re convinced it’s the right purchase, confident they’re making the right choice by doing it through you, and satisfied enough afterwards to come back again and again. That retention and follow-up is much harder to shape on a platform you don’t own.

Increasingly, people meet a business somewhere else first, on social media, in an AI answer or through a recommendation, and then visit the website to check details and take the next step. You may get fewer visitors than you used to, but the ones who arrive are often closer to buying.

Can I run a business without a website?

Absolutely. Some businesses do well selling only through marketplaces or social platforms. And if you’re a creator or influencer, your main channel is normally YouTube and/or social media. So a website doesn’t really apply to your model. But if you have a more traditional business model, then solely relying on social media and blogging platforms means you’re building on land someone else owns, under their rules, fees and algorithms, and you give up the three things above: a trust signal, a source of truth and control over the customer experience.

It’s also worth knowing that SEO hasn’t stopped working. Branded and high-intent searches – the ones where someone is searching when they’re just about ready to buy or book – still deliver traffic and sales to websites. They may not be as high in volume, but arguably they convert better, so are worth the effort.

Summing up

If you’ve got a website, keep it, and keep it up to date. If you haven’t, it’s worth building one sooner rather than later. It’s a place that helps customers see that you’re real, tells those same customers, as well as search engines and AI tools, what’s true about your business, and gives you full control at the moment someone is ready to buy.

It doesn’t need to be expensive or time-consuming, either. I’ll be covering affordable hosting, website builders you can manage yourself, and simple workflows for keeping your content current, so you can spend your time running your business.