Read the title again and think, ‘What would actually happen?’
Not hypothetically or just in a “that would be annoying” way. From an operational perspective, what would stop working in your business? Would enquiries drop off immediately? Would bookings or payments pause? Would job applications disappear? Would your Google Ads campaign stall halfway through? Or would the day carry on more or less as usual?
This is not necessarily a “resilience” conversation or testing scenarios. This question matters because if the website goes offline and nothing changes, the issue is not resilience. Its relevance and opportunity. The website exists, but it is not doing any meaningful work.
A website is no longer just a marketing asset (though it remains one of the main functions). Websites are, or should I say, must be sales, recruitment, operations, automation and decision-making tools.
That gap between what your website currently supports and what it could support is where the opportunity sits. Which is why that question matters more than most website wish lists.
A quick reality check
Our clients rely on us to bring ideas to the table and turn them into creative, technical, and practical solutions that make their day-to-day work easier. What has changed over the last year is not the nature of the conversations we have, but how prepared people are when they walk into them.
The brief has shifted. It is no longer just about building something that looks good. It is about connecting the website to CRMs, accounting systems, booking tools, and offering genuine self-service for users.
This shift reflects a broader reality. Websites are no longer expected to sit on the edge of the organisation. They are expected to sit in the middle of it. They connect systems, reduce manual work, and act as the front door for customers, staff, partners, or donors.
What breaks when a website is doing real work
When a website is embedded into a business, its absence is felt in seconds. Not in theory or vanity KPIs (views, impressions, clicks or time on site) but in very practical ways affecting teams, revenue and momentum.
Lead generation is usually the first thing to move, and for many of our marketing clients, they notice results in a matter of hours. Enquiry forms stop flowing, booking systems slow down and that’s when sales teams and staff members will raise their hand not just because the CPA is going up, but because conversations, calls and emails dry up.
Another area that is unforgiving is payments, donations, memberships and subscriptions. If the website handles transactions, renewals or sign-ups, downtime is not an inconvenience; it is a disruption to the business, and the impact is immediate and measurable.
Then there is the quieter layer most people forget about. Data capture, automation, and internal workflows. Forms that trigger emails, update records, notify teams, or sync with other systems stop working. This might not disrupt the whole business, but it will definitely increase admin and manual work, and small inefficiencies quickly multiply.
None of this is accidental. When these things break, it is usually because the website was doing real work in the first place. It was not merely publishing content. It was actively supporting how the organisation operates.
I am good. We can live without a website
Think twice. If the website goes offline and no processes are affected, no teams are disrupted, and no revenue streams pause, that is not a sign of stability. It is a sign that the website is not embedded into the business in any meaningful way and naturally is not adding much value to the organisation.
And yes, in many cases, a website exists only on a surface layer. It presents information, looks professional, with About Us, our team, services, “yada yada yada”, but it sits outside the real flow of work.
Enquiries might come via direct email or phone calls. Bookings are handled manually, and job applications arrive as PDFs. Naturally, that’s not always a bad thing, and in some cases it is by design. But this is not a technical gap, as web platforms are usually capable (I would say always, but let’s keep things real). The integrations usually already exist, and the tools are available. The problem is that the website was never designed to support these processes and was just built to represent the business online.
When nothing breaks, the question is not whether the website is resilient. The question is whether it is doing enough to justify its existence beyond looking presentable.
This is where many organisations find themselves today. Not because they made bad decisions, but because expectations have moved faster than the role the website was originally designed to fulfil.
The real question to ask
Some of the questions are still the same and should be considered: does your website look good, load fast, represent the business, and use the right technology to support your business? Those things matter now and probably always will. However, there are better questions that can be asked, which will shape how your website operates moving forward:
• What role does our website play in the organisation?
• Which processes rely on it today and which ones should rely on it in the future?
• What would improve if the website worked harder for us?
You probably can come up with the answer, but if you want to expand your vision, feel free to ask your favourite AI agent. And once you have some ideas, feel free to reach out and challenge us to build your future website or improve your current one.
Ultimately, your website does not need to do everything. But it should do something meaningful. When it is built strategically, its absence is noticeable, and its presence should make your business stronger.
