Present, but not working
Almost every business is online now. The gap is no longer between having a website and not having one. It is between a site that can transact and a site that simply exists.
Irish SME research puts it starkly: around a third can take a sales order through their website, under a third can process a payment, and roughly a third can accept a booking. The rest are brochures.
A brochure is a 1998 answer to a 2026 question
A brochure told somebody who you were so they could ring you. That was the correct design when the phone was the only channel. It is not the correct design now, because the person looking at you is doing it at half past nine at night with a phone in one hand.
They are not going to remember you in the morning. Somebody else took the booking while they were still deciding.
The three questions every page should answer
What is it, what does it cost, and how do I get it. Most small business sites answer the first, avoid the second and make the third a phone number.
Pricing is the one people fight hardest about. Publishing it filters out the wrong enquiries and dramatically increases the right ones, because the person who rings has already decided they can afford you.
Graded honestly
On an A to F scale, small businesses in Ireland average a C for communicating, a D for transacting and an E for actively growing their online presence. Most owners would be horrified to see those grades on anything else in the business.