The Uncomfortable Truth
Your competitor has a Google presence. You don’t. Right now, at this exact moment, someone within three miles of your business is typing “[your business type] near me” into their phone. Google returns a list. Your competitor is on it. You are not. That customer clicks a result, reads two sentences, and books the competitor — all in under 90 seconds. You never even knew they existed.
This is not a hypothetical. It is happening hundreds of times per month for every invisible small business in every local market in the United States. The frustrating part: the fix costs less than a month’s worth of coffee runs.
The Math Nobody Wants to Run
A typical local service business — a plumber, a framing shop, a dog groomer — loses an average of 2–5 new customers per month simply because they cannot be found online. At an average transaction value of $200, that is $400–$1,000 in lost revenue every single month. Over a full year: up to $12,000 gone.
Compare that to the one-time cost of a professional website: $500. The return on that investment happens inside the first month. Everything after that is pure gain. When people say “I can’t afford a website,” they have the math exactly backwards. They cannot afford not to have one.
The Bar Is Lower Than You Think
The majority of small business websites are genuinely poor: slow, not mobile-friendly, impossible to navigate, outdated information, no clear call to action. The standard is low.
A clean, fast, mobile-first site with a clear headline, a tappable phone number, and five straightforward pages will outrank and out-convert most of what currently sits at the top of local search results. You do not need to be perfect. You need to be better than average — and average is not trying very hard.
97% of consumers search online for local businesses. Of those, 88% will visit or call within 24 hours of finding what they were looking for. A mediocre website still captures the majority of that traffic. A good website dominates it.
What $500 Actually Buys
When someone hears “$500 website,” they picture a template thrown together in an afternoon. That is not what this is. Here is the exact breakdown:
| DELIVERABLE | WHAT YOU GET |
|---|---|
| 5 core pages | Home, Services, About, Portfolio / Gallery, Contact |
| Custom domain | yourbusiness.com registered and configured |
| Business email | info@yourbusiness.com — looks professional from day one |
| Mobile-first design | Works on every screen size, load time under 2 seconds |
| On-page SEO | Title tags, meta descriptions, Google-indexed within 48 hours |
| Google Maps pin | Your business appears in “near me” searches |
| Contact form | Lead capture delivered straight to your inbox |
| 72-hour delivery | Live site in three business days, guaranteed |
Now compare that to the alternatives. Squarespace charges $16 per month — that is $192 per year, forever, plus the hours you spend learning their editor, building the pages yourself, troubleshooting mobile issues at midnight, and wondering why Google still cannot find you. Wix is similar. Hiring a local web agency typically starts at $2,000–$5,000 and takes four to eight weeks.
Five hundred dollars, once. Live in 72 hours. No learning curve. No ongoing platform fee for the first year. No mystery.