Why a website and a proper email address still matter
Plenty of good businesses around the Downs run on a Facebook page and a Gmail address. It works, right up until the day it doesn't.
// overview
It's about what you own.
The real argument isn't about looking professional, though that's part of it. It's about control. A Facebook page is a room you rent in someone else's building, on terms they can change, in a building they can lock you out of without explanation and without a phone number to ring.
We've watched local businesses lose a page with eight years of reviews and photos because an account got compromised or automatically flagged. Everything they'd built lived somewhere they didn't own, and there was no realistic way to get it back.
A domain name you own, with a website and email on it, is yours. Hosts can be changed, designs can be redone, but the address stays. That's the whole point.
// the email part
What a gmail address quietly costs you.
- 01
It reads as temporary
Rightly or not, quoting a $30,000 job from a Hotmail address invites doubt. It signals either very new or very small, at exactly the moment a customer is deciding whether to trust you.
- 02
You can't take it with you
Staff come and go. If jobs are quoted from someone's personal address, that history walks out the door with them, and customers keep emailing an address nobody reads.
- 03
It's easier to impersonate
A domain you own can be configured with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, settings that make it substantially harder for someone to send convincing invoices pretending to be you. You can't do that with a free webmail account.
- 04
It weakens what you're building
Every email is a small advertisement for a domain. [email protected] reinforces the name people should be searching. Free webmail advertises the webmail provider.
// the website part
A page you control, that Google can read.
Social media is good at reaching people who already follow you. A website is what turns up when someone in Highfields searches for what you do at nine on a Sunday night, having never heard of you.
That's a genuinely different job. Search traffic is people actively looking to buy right now, and if you're not there, the answer is whoever is. For a local trade or service business that's usually the single largest source of new work available.
It doesn't need to be elaborate. What it does need: what you do, where you do it, how to reach you, and enough substance that Google understands which searches you belong in. A handful of solid pages beats a large empty one.
- Register a domain in your business name, and set it to auto-renew
- Put email on that domain, through Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC so nobody can convincingly forge your address
- Build a small site: what you do, where you serve, how to contact you, proof you're real
- Claim your Google Business Profile, for local searches it does more work than the site
- Keep the social pages. They're good at what they're good at; just don't build the foundations on them
// cost
What it actually runs to.
This is where people expect a large number, and it usually isn't. A .com.au domain is a modest annual fee. Business email is a few dollars per person per month. Hosting for a small site is similar. All up, most small businesses we set up land somewhere around the cost of a coffee a week.
The build is the variable part, and it depends entirely on what you need. We do straightforward, fast, honest sites for local businesses, the kind that load quickly, work properly on a phone and say what you do. Not a rolling monthly retainer for a page that never changes.
If you've already got a domain sitting unused from years ago, dig it out before buying another. We can usually work out who it's registered with and whether it's still yours.
// questions
Good questions, straight answers.
Is a Facebook page enough?
It's a good supplement and a poor foundation. It reaches people who already follow you, but it won't reliably turn up in a Google search, and you don't own it. Keep it: just don't let it be the only thing you have.
What's the difference between a domain, hosting and email?
The domain is the address you own. Hosting is the space the website lives in. Email is the mail service attached to the domain. Three separate things, often bought together, and worth knowing apart so you're never locked in.
Can you move our existing email to a proper address?
Yes, and it's a routine job. We migrate existing mail across, set up the new addresses, get the security records right, and put forwarding in place so nothing sent to the old address gets lost while people update their contacts.
Do we need .com.au or is .com fine?
For a business trading locally, .com.au signals that you're Australian and it requires an ABN to register, which is itself a small trust signal. If both are available and affordable, plenty of businesses take both and point one at the other.
$ inspyred --book-a-callout
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