Do you still need a website in 2026?

Give people a place to check the details

A social post can introduce your business. Your website can hold the information someone needs when they're deciding whether to contact you, book an appointment or buy.

Think about what you'd want a customer to find after seeing your work on social: what you offer, where you work, how to reach you, what to do next. Put those details together on a page you can send them to, rather than asking them to piece everything together from separate posts.

That's the job.

Your site doesn't need to reproduce everything you've ever posted. Give it a different role: keep the business details together, and let social carry the updates, conversations and new work you want to share.

What should go on the site? Start with the questions you'd want answered before contacting a business like yours. A visitor shouldn't need to follow your account to understand what you're offering.

The BrightLocal consumer result answers a narrower question than the business surveys: people visit business websites after reading positive reviews. It doesn't say every visitor buys, books or gets in touch.

And the Pew figures are about platform use, not the share of those people who will become your customers. Use them as background, not as instructions to open an account everywhere.

Keep social, but give it somewhere to point

You don't have to choose between a website and social media. Keep using the accounts that fit your business, and give people a direct link to the details you've put on your site.

A post about a service can point to the service page. Your profile can point to your main page. When someone asks for information, you can send the relevant page instead of writing the whole answer again.

The useful distinction is how you arrange the information. On your site, you choose which details belong together, what deserves a page of its own, where the contact or booking link goes. Treat that as a separate task from deciding what to post next.

There's a specific warning worth remembering here: Google Business Profile websites were shut down on March 5, 2024. Don't confuse having a business profile with having a website.

Start with the site you need

Before choosing a builder, write down what the site has to do. Showing your services and linking to bookings is a different requirement from running a store with its own checkout.

Heya, which publishes this guide, is a no-code option among website builders. You sign in with Google to publish.

Heya Free costs $0, with no credit card and no time limit. It includes 3 sites with up to 5 pages per site, all 68 templates, and a free yourname.heya.bio address with HTTPS. There's a small Made with Heya badge.

That gives you room for a basic business site without committing to a paid plan (or filling every available page). Start with the information you need to publish.

Heya Pro Lite is $3 a month. It allows 3 sites with up to 20 pages per site, removes the badge, and stops marking links nofollow.

Heya Pro Standard is $6 a month. It includes 5 sites and 1 custom domain per account with HTTPS. Heya doesn't sell domains, so you'd bring yours from a registrar; custom domains start on Pro Standard.

Heya Pro Plus is $15 a month. It includes 25 sites, up to 10 custom domains, and the option to download your site as a ZIP of HTML files.

Check how bookings and sales will work

Don't leave this until after you've built the pages.

Heya doesn't have a built-in store, checkout or form builder. You can link a button to your checkout or store page, link to a Google Form or a Tally form, and use the Calendly embed for bookings.

If you want those tools built into the website builder itself, choose with that requirement in mind. If linking to them suits your setup, make the buttons clear about where they lead.

You can also set a page title, description, favicon and share image in Heya. The title allows up to 120 characters, and the description allows up to 300 characters. Write them for someone encountering your business for the first time.

Then check the page from that person's side: can they find the information they came for, and does the contact, checkout or booking link take them where you intended?

Related guides: Make a business website for free, Types of websites, What replaced Google Sites? and How to make a free website.

More from Heya: All guides, Templates and Pricing.