
Ask HN: Do SMBs still care about their websites? - rodolphoarruda
Do you see in your local market a movement of B2C SMBs shutting down their websites, leaving their web presence to Facebook&#x2F;Instagram&#x2F;Twitter only?<p>Edit: added &quot;B2C&quot; context to question.
======
pc86
Context: I own a CrossFit gym with my wife which happens to be the largest
(both in physical size and active membership) in an ~80-100 mile radius. I
also have a full-time job developing applications for enterprise and
government clients and I used to be a full-time freelancer focusing on custom
websites and custom WordPress plugins.

Our website is invaluable. We have all our ad landing pages there so it's a
constant source of warm local leads. I think it's grown in importance since we
tightened the integration with Facebook and Instagram. We don't really do much
search/display advertising, it's all social proof, boosted posts, ads to get
people to our events, "people whose friends have liked our page," etc.

If the website's importance is 10/10 I'd put Facebook at an 8 and Instagram at
a 5. I'd take simple website + solid FB ad strategy over flashy website +
leaky bucket ad strategy 100% of the time.

------
tyingq
I've seen this. Google's changes to search over the years have made it
increasingly difficult for an SMB website to show up in organic searches.
Google seems to be biased towards big national brands in a way that they
weren't in the past. That, of course, led to more bidding for AdWords, which
drove the pricing up there.

So, SMB owners then try to find some other way to get a presence, many of
which make it difficult to use your own website. Facebook, for example, is
setup in a way where your FB biz page is highlighted, but the url to your
actual site is obscured and buried.

Aside from your examples of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter...I've also seen
SMB's move their ecommerce sales to Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and the like.

~~~
devgutt
I read an interesting post just some days ago about Ads in Local Business. The
site is horrible, but the content is good:

[http://neilpatel.com/2016/12/15/we-analyzed-120000-google-
ad...](http://neilpatel.com/2016/12/15/we-analyzed-120000-google-ads-and-
discovered-how-local-businesses-can-crush-their-competition-on-a-small-
budget/)

~~~
rushabh
> That site is horrible

That's an understatement. I wonder how can a site, that is so designed _not_
to make you read anything, say anything of value.

~~~
fapjacks
I wondered if it could really be as bad as you were saying... And it sure is,
but not in the way that I expected!

------
dpcan
Not in my case, our website is VERY important.

I opened an escape room business in Idaho about 3 months ago, and we have a
website, facebook page, google (+,mybusiness,etc), twitter, and instagram
account.

Our website is so important because it's how we connect people to our booking
system, and for ranking in Google and we link our Adwords account to it as
well.

Then we send people to our website first and on our business cards, promo
materials, signs, and more, because it has our FAQ, email contact form,
photos, the format we want, Book Now link, the message we want at the top,
details about our services, and more.

I couldn't imagine just trying to manage all this with just a Facebook page or
Google stuff. People would be very confused.

If I said, just got to our Facebook page, you'd be surprised at how many
people say they aren't on Facebook. If I say go to our Google+ page they don't
even know what I'm talking about. People call all the time to book because
they say "I don't do the Internet thing" (not kidding)

Asking people for reviews is easiest through Facebook. I don't even know how
to tell people to review me on Google. Not many folks here appear to be on
Yelp it seems. But having a "Review us on..." section of our website will be
nice when I add it, and then again, I can just send people to the site.

Lastly, the website is where I can put company specific information like our
downloadable flyer, rules and regulations, orientation info, faq, specific
details about each of our rooms, some player stats, and official info about
our promotions.

So yes, a website for a small business is extremely important in my opinion.

That being said, I have heard of people just going to a Facebook Page, but I
believe these are people who don't see the value in connecting EVERY aspect of
the web to maximize their online exposure, and don't see the benefits they
could reap if they use all these tools together effectively.

~~~
bshimmin
I had no idea "escape rooms" were a thing. Here's the Wikipedia page, for
anyone else who is perplexed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_room)

~~~
icebraining
Yeap, and they're spreading fast. Lisbon alone has about a dozen now.

~~~
tonyarkles
And while this is getting more and more OT from the original article... if you
enjoy puzzles, it's definitely worth it to go and try it. Me, my partner, and
two friends (also a couple) had a really great time doing one. There was a 1hr
time limit, and we solved it with about 2 minutes to spare.

I suspect that how much fun it is is going to be pretty specific to how well
the room is put together; ours was great. The puzzles were tuned so that the
difficulty progressed nicely; a couple quick wins, and then they got harder.
It was a mix of searching (find the hidden key) and thinking (from these
clues, figure out the combination for this lock). This results in a great mix
of individual effort and collaborative problem solving.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Great fun with the right group of people and well-done
puzzles.

------
afloatboat
I've seen and have encouraged small business to move their web presence to
Facebook and Google Local Business.

We've built a solid amount of websites for small businesses, and in most cases
they don't care about maintenance. So in the end they spent a solid amount on
a website and hosting, don't change anything for four years and build a new
site. Having gained nothing in between.

Having a Facebook page doesn't cost you anything, and on the plus side, if you
maintain it you will get free exposure by appearing alongside organic posts on
users' timelines. You'll have to work for your likes, but it's your
responsibiliy to provide fresh and interesting content. The more users engage
with your posts, the more visibility you will get as well.

Twitter seems to be mainly for support and quick updates when you have service
problems and Instagram is nice if you have something more in the graphics or
design sector. In my country it's also mostly used by geeks and doesn't work
if you want to reach a general crowd.

However, as a customer it all depends on what I'm looking for. Want a new tap
for the kitchen sink? I'm not going to look for that on Facebook, you'd best
have a website with some examples and pricing. If I want to go to a restaurant
I only care about their contact information and the menu. If I can find that
on Facebook or the Google sidebar, I'm happy.

~~~
GFischer
For your kitchen sink example, as a customer, I'm far more likely to go to the
local eBay/Amazon equivalent (here it's Mercado Libre, an eBay subsidiary),
than to google the web (of course in the U.S. you might find more relevant
pages).

------
anexprogrammer
For most non tech SMBs a website was a necessary evil, like all advertising.
Then they get caught up in an SEO scam or two and talking of promotion or
online advertising is like suggesting tax fraud.

Google could have dreamed up an Adwords Lite for SMBs and stop defaulting to
broad match. If done well it could have made Adwords worthwhile for those who
can't just hire an adwords consultant and spend 4 figures. I know several SMBs
who would never touch Adwords again. The two I know who use adwords well both
have someone pretty technical around. One of those does more on Etsy than
their site.

As @tyingq says Google's updates have mostly promoted brands and large
businesses. Now add the freshness updates and they're hurting all the mainly
static small sites. Facebook did much the same when they hugely cut the views
pages can achieve. FB went from hugely helpful to almost a waste of time for
many.

It's little wonder so many aren't seeing the point.

~~~
ssharp
Google does have a much simplified version of AdWords tailored to small/local
businesses. I'm not sure how keywords work in there as I've only seen it a
handful of times and don't remember.

I'd think broad match modifier works how someone new to search ads would
expect normal broad match to work.

------
rodolphoarruda
I do. It is happening everywhere in Brazil. Small companies see no reason in
keeping a stand alone website with very low visit figures whereas their
fanpages, profiles in massive social networks leverage engaged visitors. I can
see many companies not renewing their domain names registrations simply
because it does not matter to have a domain name. Custom branded email
address? Pointless, since all comms are made inside the social network.

~~~
warp
Here in Ecuador I see the same thing. Part of the reason is that carriers
compete by offering free social network access even for plans which don't have
any data (there is no net-neutrality here).

So if you are targeting consumers, a big chunk of those consumers cannot even
access your website at all, but they can find you on facebook.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
Yes, that's one step farther into the darkness. We are not there yet in
Brazil. You still need to pay for data, even if it's for 100MB a month, which
would give you access to the open web. But, of course, the preference would be
to browse Facebook and likes with no limits.

------
mathattack
Only a few samples, but:

\- Restaurants seem to keep them up. They need to post menus, and links to
OpenTable and other reservation sites.

\- K-12 Schools keep their own sites

\- Other small businesses (martial arts schools, dry cleaners, etc) seem to be
leaving their old sites on standby. Big drop in forum activity.

~~~
overcast
All I want from restaurant websites is a grid of pictures with prices, and a
reservation button with hours of operation prominently displayed. I don't care
about anything else, but the food, price, and when I can go. Amazingly this is
hidden under nonsense mission statements, and other fluff no one cares about
except the chefs.

~~~
tluyben2
What is even weirder is that many restaurants actually don't contain that
information at all. I have been to many places that did not have opening times
or wrong (old) opening times. Weird.

------
wattt
I have seen this happen a few times. Sometimes businesses switch to
turnkey/template sites, but if all they need is an address in Google Maps it
isn't necessary a lot of the time.

Conversely, as a web developer, I have stopped working with this segment
completely. Non-tech organizations of 1-2 people are way more hassle to deal
with than larger organizations.

~~~
mercer
> Conversely, as a web developer, I have stopped working with this segment
> completely. Non-tech organizations of 1-2 people are way more hassle to deal
> with than larger organizations. reply

I'm seriously considering doing the same. What keeps me working with the
'small guys' is that on some level it's more enjoyable to me. I like making
people happy, and when things go right these small clients are very happy, and
they care, whereas no single individual in the typical company I work for
really gives a shit in isolation.

With the small clients, I get to advise them about every step of the project,
and they care about the result because it affects them directly in some way.
As a contractor for a bigger company, however, easily half the decisions come
from up the hierarchy and lead to work that I truly consider unnecessary.
Usually this doesn't matter and they don't mind paying and nobody ultimately
really cares about any of it. It's just work.

With the small clients I hate 1) often working fixed-price, 2) haggling over
tiny budgets and taking risks, 3) incessant micro-managing in my area of
expertise, 4) managing the personal psychological make-up of the client
because there is no organization to temper it (or being a manager, I guess).
But these same things mean that what I do is _cared_ about, and money I
receive is _worth_ something more than just a higher number on my bank
account...

Of course, as far as 'just work' goes I'm pretty happy with my situation. The
actual work is still challenging and the output can still be somewhat
rewarding. But in the back of my head there's this constant little voice
asking me if this 'convenience' is actually worth energy and creativity (at
least programming-wise) that I end up losing just to pay for my lifestyle.

I mean, if I have so many options as a programmer, would it not be silly to
'just be thankful for how good things are right now' when I'm one part of a
small group of people who can actually choose to do other things that make me
happier?

Any suggestions for a next step or alternative?

(this is from the perspective of a web developer, although I've reached a
point where I'm looking into other programming fields)

~~~
eric-hu
I get that it's more gratifying when things go well. Personally, I've dealt
with enough assholes in the tiny end of SMBs to never want to go into that
space again.

If you're wondering what else is out there, perhaps the work isn't that
challenging to you. You have a lot of freedom right now though. Why not
explore other forms of programming in your free time and see what piques your
interest?

~~~
mercer
Yeah, I'm trying to do that. I guess I was just wondering if anyone had good
suggestions, both when considering future work and considering the 'fun' side
of it.

For now I've been having fun doing more serious app-development, I'm looking
into native (mobile) development via React Native, and I'm eyeing chat bots in
the context of psychology/health (CBT, lifestyle, etc.).

So I'm okay for now with not moving beyond the UI/app-ey side of things, but
part of me is curious for more intellectually challenging stuff that requires
a bit more 'computer science' (although I never studied that).

~~~
eric-hu
I'm in that discovery phase myself. I've found that some things which sounded
interesting were interesting sounding achievements, but not actually
interesting for me to do. For some kinds of open source projects, I completed
some work then my interest died; I spent some time in the midst of my 2nd or
3rd issue not getting to the work and feeling bad about it.

So my suggestion is to just try different things out and see what you enjoy.
Don't be afraid to put a project down and tell yourself it's okay.

------
swingbridge
In my, completely unscientific but likely not that all inaccurate, observation
SMBs are pushing hard on Facebook. Twitter is dead and people don't waste
their money adversiting there. Google is still there but it's become such a
mess that the difficultly of getting high rankings combined with the much less
precise targeting (compared to say Facebook) has made it a lot less attractive
recently.

------
ryandrake
Sorry, it would be nice if someone could explain what "SMB" means. To me, it's
a network file sharing protocol, and a basic Google search confirms this as
the top definition.

~~~
rattler
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium-
sized_enterpr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium-
sized_enterprises)

------
samuellb
I know a small company that shut down it's Facebook page while keeping it's
website (an old one, from 2005). Probably because it's not selling directly to
it's end-customers, so the web site is focused on contact info (for store
chains etc) + static web pages with product information. B2B doesn't seem to
use Facebook very much at all.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
Yes, I agree with your point. I have edited the question to add the B2C
context around SMBs.

------
jagermo
It probably depends if you use your website to generate income.

I currently work for a small business that sells dedicated lines, MPLS etc.
They invest heavily in their website and use it to generate leads for the
sales team.

Myself, on the other hand, I switched from a Wordpress powered blog to a
simple, html "About me" website, mainly because I didn't use it and didn't
want to keep up with the maintenance.

I can understand if smaller companies, that need nothing more than a business
card on the web, use Facebook or some other hosted service for their presence.

------
curun1r
I used to work for an online booking company that supplied its SMBs with a
business profile page, Facebook widget, website widget and reputation
management. Almost universally, they all felt that their website was very
important and spent an inordinate amount of money on it...some well into the
6-figures, which was much more than they spent on our service. However, also
almost universally, they'd get almost no bookings through the website widgets.
Customers overwhelmingly preferred dealing with them through Facebook and our
business profile page. Also, our business profile pages showed up much higher
in Google for non-name searches.

I'm sure there are some SMBs that really do have a need for a website and it
really is important to them, but for the verticals that we dealt with, there
was a huge perception gap between the perceived and actual value of the
website and a profound misunderstanding of the preferences of their customers.
The question of whether SMBs still care about their websites is, to me, less
interesting than the question of whether SMBs _should_ care about their
websites.

------
GFischer
During an "Entrepreneurship" class, some classmates started investigating
about SMBs web presence.. and yes, a LOT of SMBs find their Facebook page to
be a lot more valuable than their website, often forgoing the website.

It's been a lot worse for them since Facebook started asking for money in
order to promote posts, but the ease of use and features of Facebook coupled
with an audience beat a website hands down.

Companies included home cooking / office meals, small design and deco items
sales, nail polish and beauty supplies, even a general hardware store.

I do think a website is important, but a Facebook page even more so.

Another huge channel here is WhatsApp.

------
tezza
Yup I've witnessed the same migraion... food stalls like The Poutinerie are
facebook / twitter only.

I would've expected a website 5 years ago, but they seem fine.

Google "The Poutinerie" and their 'website' comes up top billing ( London
based peep )

------
tomashertus
I had actually spent a lot of time researching this particular use case -
creating and maintaining website as B2C SMB and their way of promoting
themselves to customers. I came to the conclusion that if you are mortar-and-
brick business, focused on local people, the current web is actually totally
broken for you and the only feasible solution for ads are location based ad
systems.

In this particular case I distinguished between businesses which are location
based and businesses which are able to sell their goods and services on the
Internet. For those who are able to sell on Internet, there is plenty of
options for e-commerce solution etc, but for local businesses it doesn't make
economically sense to maintain website.

During my research I talked with 50 local small-business owners in SF and each
one of them had website. They all agreed that it is luxurious expense and half
of them had problem to maintain the site and only 10/50 were able to update
their website at least once a month. What was kind of shocking for me to find
out was that around 60% of these people was paying $50+/month for shitty
website and almost nobody was willing to spend more money on their website.

When asking about social media(Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter,
WhatsApp) - 95% had profiles there and were actually having them more updated
than their business websites. Unfortunately, majority of the owners were
pretty skeptic about the advertisement there and never tried, for example,
targeted FB ads. Most of them never heard about this option.

Here is couple of findings:

\- When asking, why do they have a website, some of them replied that it is
must have in eyes of the customer - you don't exist if you don't have website,
right?

\- When asking what's their monthly number of visitors on their websites, 60%
didn't know.

\- When asking about the most used communication channel, almost everyone said
phone. One barber was actually running WhatsApp group and worked pretty well
for him.

\- When asking how much they will be investing into a website - the majority
said that they will not increase their costs for web and ads.

From my point of view, web is actually total nonsense for local businesses,
it's unnecessary expense and the owners could do much better if they orient on
social media and local advertisement. The real problem for them is that they
are not willing to maintain 10 social network accounts and constantly update
them, because they need to run their real business as well.

One funny thing I found out was that 10 out of 50 said that old-fashioned
promotional flyer into mailbox still works best for them and has the biggest
response and they will spent more money on that. Kinda surprise for me in SF
in the beginning of 2016.

~~~
eutropia
It's interesting that they're spending $50/mo on a shitty website. I wonder if
they'd be happy with a static site with their location, hours, and contact
info (something to prove to millennials that they exist) for google to scrape,
with links to their social media profiles. This costs less than $2/mo on S3
after the setup.

------
sharemywin
curious about things like thumbtack and homeadvisor for small service
businesses.

I've heard of business using those as alternatives to their own websites. To
me I'd much rather own my own website site, but I think I'm in the minority.

