This is a slightly awkward article for someone who builds websites, but it comes up often enough that it is worth writing down.
If you are a local business — a plumber, a mobile hairdresser, a man with a van — a free Google Business Profile does a genuinely large chunk of what you probably want a website for. It puts you on Maps, shows your phone number, collects reviews, lists your hours, and appears in the local pack above the actual search results. It costs nothing and takes an afternoon.
Where a profile is enough
A Google Business Profile does the job on its own when all of the following are true.
- You serve a local area and people find you by searching for what you do plus where they are.
- Your service is easy to understand in one sentence.
- You do not need to show a portfolio, prices or detailed options.
- Most enquiries come by phone, and you are happy for it to stay that way.
- You are not competing against businesses with a much stronger online presence.
If that is you, go and fill in your profile properly before you spend anything with anyone. Add real photographs, list every service, and ask your last ten customers for a review. That will do more for you this month than a website would.
Where it runs out
A profile stops being enough surprisingly quickly. You have outgrown it when any of these apply.
You need to be believed, not just found. Anybody can create a listing. Once a job is worth more than a few hundred pounds, people check whether you are a real, established business. A site with your work on it does that. A Maps pin does not.
Your service needs explaining. If your customers ask the same three questions before they will commit, a profile has nowhere to answer them. That is exactly what a page is for.
You want work that is not local. Google Business Profiles are geographically anchored by design. If you want customers two counties away, you need something that ranks on merit rather than proximity.
You need to show, not tell. Wedding venues, photographers, builders, anyone whose work is visual. Profile photo galleries are cramped and you do not control the presentation.
You are competing with people who have both. If your three nearest competitors have decent websites and you do not, you lose the comparison even when you are the better tradesperson.
The honest recommendation
Do the profile first, always. It is free, it is fast, and it will tell you something useful: if you fill it in properly and the phone still does not ring, the problem is not your online presence, and a website would not have fixed it either.
Then, if you find yourself repeatedly explaining the same things to prospects, or losing jobs to competitors who look more established, that is the signal. That is the point where a website starts paying for itself rather than just existing.
And when you get there, you do not need to spend thousands to start. You need something that loads fast, says what you do, shows a bit of proof and makes it easy to get in touch. Everything after that is refinement.