A lot of small business owners in and around Tenterden have a version of the same website story. They built one themselves a few years back — Wix, Squarespace, or a free one-pager that came with their domain — it looks fine, it has their phone number on it, and it does precisely nothing. No calls. No enquiries. Not much of anything.
So was the website a waste of time? Not exactly. But the gap between a website that exists and a website that works is wider than most people realise — and it has very little to do with how pretty it looks.
Does a small business actually need a website at all?
It depends what you mean by "need." You can survive without one. Plenty of sole traders do, running on word of mouth and a Facebook page. But here's the thing: when someone who doesn't already know you wants what you offer, the first thing they do is Google it. If you're not there, you don't exist to them.
A Facebook page isn't a substitute. Facebook decides who sees your content, and it's increasingly stingy about showing business posts to people who aren't already following you. A Google Business profile (the map listing) helps, but it works best when there's a real website behind it — something that fills in the details, builds trust, and answers the questions someone has before they pick up the phone.
For most local businesses, a decent website is the difference between being findable and being invisible.
Why free website builders usually disappoint
The appeal of Wix, Squarespace and similar platforms is obvious: low cost, drag-and-drop, looks reasonable straight away. But there are some real limitations worth knowing about:
- You don't own your site. If the platform changes its pricing, closes, or decides to alter how things work, you're at their mercy. Your content, your design — it all lives on their servers under their rules.
- The free plans are hobbled. Most show ads on your site, give you a URL like yourbusiness.wixsite.com (which looks unprofessional), and restrict features like proper contact forms or booking tools.
- SEO is harder. These platforms have improved over the years, but they still tend to produce bloated, slow-loading pages full of code that search engines find harder to read. Speed matters — Google measures it directly.
- Templates trap you. The design choices that made sense on day one become a cage. You can't always restructure the layout, add custom features, or change things without starting again.
- Support is generic. When something breaks or you want to make a change, you're on your own with a help forum.
None of this means free builders are useless — a placeholder site is better than nothing. But "better than nothing" is a low bar if you're hoping the website actually brings in work.
What actually makes a website bring in enquiries
This is where most conversations about websites go wrong. People focus on the design — the colours, the fonts, whether it looks modern — when the things that drive enquiries are more fundamental.
Speed. If your site takes more than about three seconds to load on a phone, a large chunk of visitors will leave before they've read a word. Google also ranks faster sites higher. Page speed isn't a luxury feature; it's the foundation.
Mobile-friendliness. More than half of all web searches now happen on a phone. If your site is hard to read on a small screen — tiny text, buttons that are difficult to tap, content that spills off the edge — you're losing people constantly and probably don't even know it. Google indexes the mobile version of your site first, so a poor mobile experience damages your rankings too.
Clear, local signals. This one is underestimated. If your site doesn't say clearly and specifically where you are and what area you serve, Google has no reason to show you to people nearby. That means your town name, nearby villages, your county — woven naturally into the content, not stuffed in awkwardly.
A single obvious next step. Most small business websites make visitors work too hard. The phone number is buried in a footer. The contact page is three clicks away. The best sites make it effortless: the number is at the top of every page, the call to action is clear, and there's as little friction as possible between "I'm interested" and "I'm getting in touch."
Content that answers real questions. What do you do? Who for? Where? How does someone get started? What does it cost (roughly)? These are the things someone landing on your site wants to know. If the answers aren't obvious within a few seconds, they'll go back to Google and try the next result.
Why your site might not show up on Google at all
Sometimes the problem isn't that your site is ranking badly — it's that Google barely knows it exists. Common reasons include:
- The site was never submitted to Google Search Console
- There are no other sites linking to it (even a single listing in a local directory helps)
- The pages have no proper title tags or meta descriptions
- The content is so thin — just a paragraph or two — that Google doesn't consider it worth surfacing
- The site loads slowly enough that Google deprioritises it
The good news is that most of these issues are fixable without a full redesign. The less good news is that improving your Google rankings takes time — usually a few weeks to a few months to see meaningful movement, even after you've made the right changes. Anyone who promises you page one results in a week is not being straight with you.
What to look for when choosing someone to build your site
A few practical things worth asking before you commit:
- Can I see examples of sites you've built for other local businesses? Not templates — real live sites.
- Will I own the domain and the files? You should always own your own domain name. If it's registered in someone else's account, that's a problem.
- What happens if I want changes after launch? Is there a support arrangement, or are you on your own?
- What's included in hosting? Make sure security updates, backups and SSL certificates are part of the deal — not expensive extras.
- Do you do anything for SEO? At minimum, proper page titles, local keywords and Google Search Console setup should come as standard.
A good website for a small local business doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to load fast, look trustworthy on a phone, say clearly what you do and where you do it, and make it easy to get in touch. That's really it. Plenty of Kent businesses are getting steady enquiries from a four or five page site built with those principles in mind — while their competitors with fancier designs sit quietly on page three.
If you're curious what a properly built local website looks like — and what it might actually cost — Advantec's web design service starts from £299, with a monthly option available too. Worth a look if you've been putting it off.