How relevant are websites today? 2018?

For small to mid size businesses

[explorador]

Hi webmasters, can't post "Are websites still relevant?" because we know they are. We all here visit tons of websites per month be it for work, hobbies, research, information, buy stuff, order parts, etc. But what about small to mid size websites?

I created my first websites on 1998 I think and since then learned how to create diff things until creating my own CMS and also a framework, why? it was fun and there were lots of small to big jobs about it. The relevance of what I'm saying here is: over a long period if someone new someone / or me designed - coded websites, chances are they would ask for time to talk about projects, needs, tools, business, soon-to-launch-projects, etc. I mean, you can see it, lots of people wanted or needed a webpage.

Things changed or course but this is not a matter if YOU or ME are still relevant (if people think you are worth their time and money, it's how suddenly people were talking about blogs (less about websites except for specific applications) and then... it's been a while since I hear someone wanting or needing a website in the small to mid businesses range. There have been situations where the topic slips into the conversations and people don't even blink. For quite a while (years) I've seen how more and more people want fanpages and want to see stats (whatever stats, even if there is no conversion), the case of FB and fanpages is amazing but that's another topic.

I see now lots and I mean lots of new active businesses who have no website and from what we talked about it: they don't even plan one, it's not that they don't see the need, it's actually the case that when you ask them, they give you the face of "wtf, web.. what? ah? huh? noooo, no no.. wait, what?".

As a general user I see the usefulness of fanpages as an ok replacement for lots of businesses, but there is so much information they can't post or organize there, so many issues about usability (remember the content defines the form) so, when it comes to businesses there you can find general stuff and then it's up to you to find out how to search for other types of information that you can put a click away on a webpage but not on facebook.


In my region, and I'm serious... 95% of job positions for coders or "webdesigners" are absolutely garbage, actually most of those are direct jobs on banks, financial institutions and insurance, yes, numbers and numbers, accounts, etc.

[keyplyr]

How relevant are websites today?

How long is a piece of string?

[robzilla]

Not much has changed, from my perspective, except that it's always getting a bit easier for people to make their own website. But for most new business owners, one of the first things they think is something like, "OK, I'll have a business soon, I'll need a logo, some business cards and a website". (Usually with the addition "and I'll need it cheap!") Maybe a Facebook page in addition to that, but generally not as a replacement.

Of course, if your business is based around a certain platform like Etsy, eBay or YouTube, a website may not add much to that.

Not sure what you're referring to with "fanpages".

[keyplyr]

Maybe a Facebook page in addition to that, but generally not as a replacement

I have no idea what the big picture is, but the people who have traditionally been my clients (musicians, recording studios, music teachers, etc) *do* choose a FB page instead of paying for a site of their own more and more.

They cite reasons of cost, self management ease, targeted traffic with connected FB Groups & other SM and lack of awareness about the alternatives. They typically don't even research site development pricing.

With various free choices for video & audio hosting they don't need a programmer or a page of their own.

I can envision similar scenarios with other prospective business niche clients.

[fix typo]

[edited by: keyplyr at 10:25 am (utc) on Aug 12, 2018]

[Dimitri]

It depends of the target audience. For a lot of people The Internet = Facebook + Twitter + Instragram + Snapchat + Youtube + Google and that's all.

[tangor]

For many the reality is all a small to med actually want is a brochure page and FB fills the bill. All the work has been done for them. The rise of blogs came about because they were usually offered cheap, community style hosting, and again, the work was done by somebody else.

Few of these folks, looking for the path of least resistance (and their pocketbook) fail to recognize they are actually hostage/captive to third parties closer to them than most web sites are distant from their DNS. :)

That said, quite a few are waking up about how little control they actually have over their "product" (fan, family, brochure, what have you) and FB, in particular, is beginning to bleed users. How many of those who are leaving will look into setting up their own sites is unknown, but I suspect a few will do exactly that.

The biggest reality is that most do not NEED a website. A large number don't have the dedication, or the business, to maintain a website for the long run, even though the costs of operation have become extremely reasonable for most purposes.

Relevant is relative to ... what? Those who need a website will set one up, sooner or later. The real question is with all the noise of sites out there, can that site rise and BECOME relevant?

[TorontoBoy]

Having a website is work and costs money. For those businesses that are not tech savvy and only need a single web page, a Google page is very easily indexed, all the info they wish to publish is there, and there are reviews. There's no need for much more than a a single page web site.

[iamlost]

Just as people are increasingly using multiple devices to access the internet so are smaller - especially B&M - businesses increasingly using multiple platforms to connect with audiences. The most common 'array' I see is a small static website of one to two dozen rarely changing pages that serves as an online foundation, a weekly double opt-in newsletter to highlight major changes/offerings, Twitter for near real time customer service and updates, FaceBook for ongoing conversations and minor changes/offerings (note: increasing number of 12 or 24-hour auctions of items as marketing and store-pull, etc.), and Instagram. For most of these, once set up it requires one person perhaps 2-4 hours a day depending on business; quite a cheap marketing exercise.

[explorador]

I won't quote one by one, but in order:

True, twitter, youtube, fb and alike IS the internet to a lot of people. Very true, it depends on the audience.

Terrible site search is also to blame (I've seen in the usability realm how lots of people only use Google, or use it after the Site search failed, only to end up out of the website they were visiting)

True, many don't need a website. Relevancy? one thing is usefulness, but another is the idea people have (on the market) if they don't even think about a website, they won't even consider it (regardless of usefulness) I guess FB succeeded on creating a lot of noise. It's difficult for people to understand numbers, stats, while FB has openly acknowledge their issues with fake stats (but anyway people are happy with fake numbers).

Also true, websites do cost money. It's amazing how this is somehow related to email (hosting ->your email) because many won't even send you a mail nowadays, instead they look for FB contact. So a lot of people don't even see the need for corp mail.

And that (it's easier for people to learn how to update their FB rather than any webpage).


What I see is websites covering a lot of needs, but nowadays the market covers most of the high end, the lower end is almost gone.

[TorontoBoy]

I continue to believe that there will always be a need for better information, regardless of convenience, cost, market dominance, etc. The internet is a vast ocean, yes, but often starved for oxygen and dead. For those of us that seek knowledge there will always be a need for better sources and better knowledge. The internet is a conduit, a library of knowledge, but still does not adequately cover all of human kind's knowledge.

There continues to be a need for web sites. We just need to find the right customer with the right mindset.

[keyplyr]

Many websites are obsolete to the contemporary user. SM and Apps are, and have been, the trend for a large demographic, especially those under 30 years old. Progressive Web Apps are moving into that space as well.

However, there still are niches where only a website can accommodate the level of information the user is after.

[csdude55]

Maybe a Facebook page in addition to that, but generally not as a replacement.

^^^ this

I would say that any business that thinks a Facebook page is a replacement for a website is very naive. According to Facebook's own ad manager, only about 14% of people in the US have a Facebook account, but it doesn't say how many of those are fake, duplicates, or unused.

So at best, a business with only a Facebook presence has a 1 in 7 chance that their customer will be able to find it or use it. Or, better said, there's an 86% chance that their customer will NOT be able to find it.

Some businesses might be fine with that... people who think of their business as a glamorized hobby, for example, and really don't care if their customer can find them. I know plenty of small business owners with that mindset.

I know a small business in my county that sells used ATVs. They recently showed me that close to 90% of their business comes from outside of the state, though! And how do those customers find them? Through a cheap little website they have for $100 /year that includes a photo gallery.

(They're not on any social media)

[SumGuy]

We sell a very niche set of scientific research equipment. We're in Canada, but > 90% of our sales is outside of Canada. US, western Europe, Japan, S. Korea, Australia, even some to China. Our current website was designed in 2000 and practically unchanged since then, apart from some photo and document updates. Our website is pretty much like a yellow-pages ad. Cost to maintain since it was created? Pretty much zero - only the cost of electricity to run our NT4 server. We've never done or paid for any SEO, and have no links to ad networks, adwords, etc. Google and Bing hitting our site constantly every day (pretty stupid, they can't figure out that our pages and pdf documents rarely change?). I usually see 3 or 4 "organic" hits a day to different parts of the site (usually google referrer, sometimes bing or opera mini/proxy), and maybe 10 hits directly to our pdf files. That's after I filter out the activity of the garbage bots (I block entire countries from accessing our site now, along with every hoster I discover like OVH and Digital Ocean and hundreds of others, and the russian and chinese search bots). Social media? That's a joke. But something I've noticed very recently, over the past month and accelerating just this past week, is Fecebook bot is hitting our site and (I didn't know this until a week ago) but an auto-generated FB page for our company was created a year ago. And something else that's strange - FB is hitting several of our reserved domains (like .us, .net, etc - I have them all pointing to our main .com site) but I can't figure out how FB discovered them. We don't link to them or mention them in our site code. I've never even seen google or bing bots hit these domains. From some of the FB hits it appears that some people have mentioned us or posted our links to each other and we'd like to know who or read what they're saying about us (if anything) but even for those of us that have a FB account, there's no way to get this info. The many secret conversational internal worlds inside FB is of no use from a business intelligence point of view when it's not visible or accessible to you.

[tangor]

With all the above, websites are still relevant.

Content is always relevant.

The question is can the USER find it because that site is better than all the others in same niche.

It is the final in above that is the determining factor more than anything... and for that we don't have solid answers for those who think their site is that special that it should be at the top ... and RELEVANT.

[edited by: phranque at 7:22 pm (utc) on Oct 9, 2018]
[edit reason] user-requested edit [/edit]

[graeme_p]

I would say that any business that thinks a Facebook page is a replacement for a website is very naive. According to Facebook's own ad manager, only about 14% of people in the US have a Facebook account, but it doesn't say how many of those are fake, duplicates, or unused.

I agree, but a lot of business owners do not. I remember a conversation i had with a small business owner who was convinced that FB page was a great way to get people who needed her services. Given that her more profitable services were the niche ones, I doubt it - what you want there is to appear in search engines.

FB is something someone else controls.

[DXL]

I think websites for smaller to mid-size businesses are still relevant. But the problem is that many business owners don't seem to realize that they shouldn't just rely on social network marketing.

Plus you've got the usual companies promoting do-it-yourself sites. But then, the business owner doesn't realize that they're not necessarily easy to optimize for Google. How often have you seen a Wix site on page one of the SERPs for competitive target keywords? Also, a website builder won't help you write good copy.

Even the businesses that go with social network promotion, rather than a traditional website, usually won't get it right. Restaurants that simply post on Facebook "come try our food today." Or an electrician simply stating what they do. Nothing that people will be inclined to actually share with others. So they're still not benefiting from social networks, unless someone walks them through how to promote effectively.

TL;DR websites are still important, but not as many business owners seem to acknowledge it (or want to spend to get results).

[explorador]

I agree, but a lot of business owners do not

A lot of people are really dumb (the word is stupid and I mean it as what the word means, not as an insult).

There is this client: website built, good set of content, a very decent set of professional pictures (in house), the articles to launch the website were done professionally as if the site was my own, SEO, focused on their client reading etc. Results? pretty good, the site went to the top on their niche, yes it took a while. Was the client happy? oh yes. Their phone rang beautifully and mailboxes full due to clients asking for more information and buying.

Then the client wanted more, why? issues at his facilities killing the recent clients, wasn't such a big deal but a lost client is a lost client. OK, so there was this new offer: a set of articles + advertising on one of my largest sites, why? because it's somehow related to his business. The client accepted and this ran FOR CHEAP over 2 years, good results. Then the client decided to stop investing in this. Incoming mails went down, the phone didn't ring as it used to, you could see the fall exactly on the dates such strategy was suspended.

- So, he knows how it works.
- So, he knows IT WORKS.
- 2 years of stable results.

Does he wants to invest in the same strategy again? nope. He insists on FB, FB ads, etc. Results? not good. How do I know? a colleague manages their social media, she is the first to insist over him to go back to the previous strategy, he says "oh yes that worked like a charm" but he is convinced a penny on FB would be better despite the reality being different, it's exactly as people refusing to take their medicine but preferring homeopathy. Since 2016 he's been going to worse ideas and wasting money, why? who knows... He is killing the business.

Recently one of his friends (an ex sales manager of whatever company) insisted on a new strategy on FB, he bought it. Results? terrible, not to mention his social media filled with ads with terrible grammar and typos. No results, expensive, and the client doesn't complain. Why? God knows why.


I saw similar situations on the big media company I worked for (tv, newspaper, etc) when the newspaper started to decline... oh boy what a set of stupid ideas they bet on. They could see how expensive such ideas were and the terrible results, and still decided to go on despite the looses. God knows why.

[LifeinAsia]

For me (admittedly, not a general user), I have serious doubts about a business if they don't have a web site.

If they have just a FB page, I assume they're cheap. To me, that means they are too narrowly focused and/or can't be bothered to spend the money/effort to develop their brand and have control over their image. To me, that's bad business and gives me serious pause as to the experience I would have being a customer of theirs.

[piatkow]

A lot depends on the sector but a lot of people don't understand how social media has segmented the market for many businesses. It isn't an "either - or" situation, you need a presence in all relevant platforms both electronic and real world.

[explorador]

I remember a joke about lawyers and attorneys, and it ringed bells because I dated a few women in the field: "you just build complex names for simple terms, just to sound smart". I get the same feeling regarding social networks. Clients enjoying a sea of terms that they don't understand (pretty simple stuff) but it sounds as if they have such a complex marketing strategy. It's a selling strategy yes, they fall for it, yes. It's just salt water.

[engine]

The purpose of a site has changed from years back. It's now the basis of much more, besides just being a brochure. It's a database, it's an ecommerce site, it's the backup to apps, it's the content for social media, it's the basis for answers, it's the branding, it's the business' credibility, etc.

Having said that, I can see why many small businesses use FB for free, and don't need to be concerned about the technology, or the cost implications of their own site.
Of course, if you're a major corporation you'll want your own site.

[graeme_p]

I make a large chunk of my income (the rest is not web related) from web sites for small businesses.

The reason they need me is typically because they have specialist needs that would not be satisfied by either an FB page or DIY sites or an off the shelf CMS. They need a booking system with specific features, or a tailored way of searching products or services, or support for/integration with other systems, or because it is their major sales channel.