Short answer: it depends on what you sell. If your calendar is full from referrals and you have no interest in growing, you can skip the website and nobody will stop you. For everyone else — the shop that wants more walk-ins, the contractor bidding against three other trucks, the clinic competing for new patients — the answer is yes, and the reasons are more specific than "everyone needs one."
Your Google Business Profile is the front door — but you don't own it
When someone in Killeen searches "plumber near me" or "barber Harker Heights," the map results at the top are where the calls come from. Your Google Business Profile is free, and claiming and completing it is the single highest-value marketing task a local business can do. Do that first, before you spend a dollar on anything else.
But understand what it is: a listing on Google's property, under Google's rules. Profiles get suspended — sometimes for clear violations, sometimes for reasons Google never explains — and competitors and strangers can suggest edits to your hours and details. A profile with a real website behind it gives Google more evidence that your business is legitimate, gives your profile somewhere to send people who want more than a phone number, and gives you a fallback you actually control if the listing ever goes sideways. The profile gets you found. The website gets you chosen.
A Facebook page is not a website
Plenty of Central Texas businesses run entirely on a Facebook page, and it feels free and easy right up until it isn't. Two problems. First, Facebook reaches your followers — people who already know you — and only a fraction of them unless you pay to boost posts. The customer searching Google for what you sell mostly never sees your page. Second, you're one policy change, one hacked account, or one mistaken automated flag away from losing it, and there is no support line to call. Ask around the local buy-sell groups; someone in there has lived it. Keep the page — it's a fine channel. Just don't make it the foundation.
What customers check before they call you
People vet a business on their phone in about thirty seconds before calling. Here's what they're looking for:
- Prices, or at least ranges. "Call for pricing" on everything sends a chunk of them to the next name on the list.
- Photos of your actual work and your actual place — not stock photos of smiling models.
- Proof you're real. A name, a face, how long you've been at it, where you're based, and reviews that read like humans wrote them.
- Hours and a phone number they can tap without hunting for it.
If those answers aren't findable fast, you don't get a chance to explain. They just call someone else.
What a local business site actually needs — and what it doesn't
For most Killeen-area businesses, the whole job is five to seven pages done well:
- A home page that says what you do, where, and for whom — in the first screen.
- One page per major service, with real pricing or honest ranges.
- An about page with a real name and a real photo.
- A service-area or contact page naming your cities in plain text.
- Fast loading on a phone — most local searches happen on mobile, often on a cell connection.
- A click-to-call phone number at the top of every page.
- Name, phone, and hours that exactly match your Google Business Profile.
Here's what it does not need:
- Animations and video backgrounds. They slow the site down, and speed wins local search.
- A blog you won't write. A "latest news" page last touched in 2023 looks worse than no blog at all.
- A $10,000 build or a monthly agency retainer for "SEO" on a six-page site with no reporting to show for it.
The honest cost math
A professionally built local business site should run $1,500 to $3,000 depending on page count, photography, and how much writing you need done — with a care plan around $75 to $125 a month covering hosting, software updates, security, backups, and small edits. Those are our prices, and they're the range you should hear from any honest local shop.
DIY builders like Squarespace and Wix cost $20 to $40 a month and are genuinely fine — if you will actually finish the site and keep it current. That's the real failure mode we see: not bad DIY design, but the half-finished site with last year's hours, quietly costing its owner calls. Be honest with yourself about which kind of person you are, and pick accordingly.
The takeaway
- Claim your Google Business Profile first. Fill in every field, add real photos, answer every review.
- Keep the Facebook page as a channel — never as the only place you exist online.
- Put up a real site: five to seven pages, fast on a phone, click-to-call, your cities named in plain text.
- Show prices or ranges wherever you can. The businesses that do get the calls.
- Match your name, phone, and hours exactly across the site, Google, and Facebook.
- Budget $1,500 to $3,000 to have it built right — or go DIY only if you'll truly finish and maintain it.