Skip to main content

Why have a Website in 2015?

Why have a website when there’s Facebook? Isn’t that enough?
I've been getting this objection every time I offer my web services. I found that funny ten years ago. But hearing the same excuse to not create a website for their business is disheartening.
Here in Cavite Philippines, most of SMEs(small/medium enterprise) does not have websites. And, I think they have the same reason like what the rest of the world has. And that might be because:
  1. websites are expensive to make, or
  2. you don't have the time to do it, or
  3. you'd rather use facebook, or
  4. all of the above
I don't blame them if these are the case. However, the way they see website doesn't change the fact that having a website is valuable. It is so needed that asking why get a website feels like living in the cretaceous era. We can scour the net and get several reasons why your business or even just you need a website. But I'm not here to do your homework. You can leave this page now and go to google and search "why have a website". I even got the link for you. Or, you can stay and scroll down to what I've got to say.

Why have a website?
I'll narrow down my article to one reason why a websites' significance for your business should be considered a top priority.

Short answer: Credibility
Let me get to details.
I took the liberty of researching the same question "why have a website?". I got several results listing down all possible reasons. Below is the top answers I found. There are so many of them that I will only list the top five reasons aside from credibility.
  1. Marketing (affordable, wider target, accessibility)
  2. Time saver (presentation, faq, education)
  3. Customer (service, relationship, communication)
  4. Online presence
All of those listed above are already covered by social media.
Affordable Marketing - social media is free. A domain name and hosting would cost you. Not to mention the webdesign cost.
Wider Target - Everyone and anyone has a social media account.
Presentation - You can upload photos, videos and any kind of material in social media.
Customer Service - customer can chat with the company representative.
Online Presence - Social media is online presence.
There is one thing that social media cannot do that websites has been doing for years. That's boosting credibility.
So, why have a website?
Because social media is free, anyone can make an dummy account and pretend that it's the company it's pretending to be. On the other hand, you have to purchase domain name and/or hosting which makes pretending a hassle.
Another way that it gives credibility is the full control of the design of your website. From the user interface to the brand color to file organization, you're in complete control. With social media, there's only so much that you can do. Probably a profile pic or background color would be it.
To top it of, having your brand as your domain name is credible enough that it shouts your company means business. Your company is not just another profile on a social media site. And you can definitely say your company has an online presence.
So, why have a website?
It's about credibility. And that's here to stay.

Popular

Understanding Large Language Models (LLMs) Using First-Principles Thinking

Instead of memorizing AI jargon, let’s break down Large Language Models (LLMs) from first principles —starting with the most fundamental questions and building up from there. Step 1: What is Intelligence? Before we talk about AI, let’s define intelligence at the most basic level: Intelligence is the ability to understand, learn, and generate meaningful responses based on patterns. Humans do this by processing language, recognizing patterns, and forming logical connections. Now, let’s apply this to machines. Step 2: Can Machines Imitate Intelligence? If intelligence is about recognizing patterns and generating responses, then in theory, a machine can simulate intelligence by: Storing and processing vast amounts of text. Finding statistical patterns in language. Predicting what comes next based on probability. This leads us to the core function of LLMs : They don’t think like humans, but they generate human-like text by learning from data. Step 3: How Do LLMs Wor...

Contextual Stratification - Chapter 8: Scales

  The Microscope Analogy Imagine looking at a painting. Stand close, inches from the canvas and you see individual brushstrokes, texture, the physical application of paint. Step back a few feet, and you see the image: a face, a landscape, a composition. Step back further, across the room, and you see how the painting relates to its frame, the wall, the space it occupies. Step back outside the building, and the painting disappears entirely into the larger context of the museum, the city, the culture. Same painting. Different scales of observation. And at each scale, different features become visible while others disappear. The brushstrokes that dominated up close are invisible from across the room. The composition that emerged at medium distance fragments into meaningless marks up close. Neither view is "wrong". They're both accurate descriptions of what's observable at that scale. This is what scale means in contextual stratification: the resolution of observation, th...

Contextual Stratification - Chapter 6: A Different Possibility

The Uncomfortable Question We've spent five chapters documenting a pattern: frameworks work brilliantly within their domains, then break down at boundaries. Physics, economics, psychology, medicine, mathematics; everywhere we look, the same story. We've examined why the standard explanations fail to account for this pattern. Now we must ask the question that makes most scientists uncomfortable: What if the boundaries are real? Not artifacts of incomplete knowledge. Not gaps waiting to be filled. Not temporary inconveniences on the road to unified understanding. What if reality itself is genuinely structured into domains, each operating under different rules, each requiring different frameworks to understand? This is not the answer we want. We want unity. We want simplicity. We want one elegant equation that explains everything from quarks to consciousness. The history of science seems to promise this; each generation unifying more, explaining more with less, moving toward that ...