Is a company without a website a myth or a new reality of the digital market?

In 2025, there are more points of contact with the brand. QR bots and offline events are available as well as social networks, marketplaces and messengers. For many microbusinesses, this is enough: you can establish your presence in the digital space quickly, without making large investments in the site and its promotion. Let’s figure out when a business doesn’t need a website, and when it turns into a strategic digital hub.

Trending channels of presence: where the customer meets the brand today

According to a study by Data Insight and Yandex Pay, the audience distributes attention between different ways of interacting with brands. Over the past year, 59% of Russians have made purchases not only on marketplaces, but also in independent online and offline stores; 83% have used additional store services; 87% have participated in loyalty programs. This suggests that the client’s path is becoming more and more multi-layered and is not limited to one universal channel.

Social networks remain a tool of dialogue: through comments, stories, and direct messages, companies quickly respond to consumer questions, provide advice, and form the first contact.
Messengers and chatbots turn into mini-offices: the client can receive payment, book a service or place an order in a matter of minutes, without going to the website.
Marketplaces and industry platforms provide a complete purchase cycle: search, selection, payment and delivery.
Geoservices and local maps deserve special attention. For offline businesses, a card or profile in a service like Yandex.Maps or 2Gis often becomes the first point of contact: the client checks the location, reviews, opening hours and decides on a visit without visiting the site. Such a presence is especially important for those who depend on a physical location — cafes, salons, and service centers.
Offline events and BTL formats gain new strategic value. Art fairs, pop-up shows and brand installations allow companies to reach an audience where customers, tired of digital noise, come to relax. The examples of the latest Blazar and Cosmoscow show how the brands “Scooter”, Ekonika, “Mistral”, Bork and others use the art space to convey values and emotional contact with the audience. Direct interaction without data collection creates an impression that remains with a potential buyer for a long time. It is difficult to replace it with a digital channel, but nevertheless, on an emotional level, it forms a special type of “entry point”, not only for premium and conceptual brands, but also for the mass market.
More and more users formulate their queries by voice. They ask Alice or the built-in assistants in the marketplaces. It is convenient on the road, driving or at home, that is, where there is no time to type. For brands, this means another point of contact: it is important that the name, address, or product is correctly recognized by the services and displayed in the responses.
People have started using neural networks instead of direct search. They do this by contacting Alice, ChatGPT, or Deepseek directly, or through built-in AI assistants in search or on marketplaces. The brand’s neuroimage (whether the neural network includes the brand in its recommendations) has become a new “entry point” for the client.

Today’s trending channels show that the modern customer journey has ceased to be linear. It begins and ends where the audience is comfortable, combining digital and offline, service platforms, neural networks, and emotional experiences. How important is a website in this business landscape and is it possible to act without it?

What kind of business can live without a website

Microbusinesses with simple services such as cleaning or minor repairs are particularly effective without a website.

Here, the key success factor is not a long story about the brand, but the speed of response and convenience of the order. In such models, the low average receipt and high frequency of purchases make secondary-level digital platforms a full-fledged sales channel.

A local offline business can also effectively build a presence without a website. The emphasis can be on:

maps and geo-services, where the nearest service is shown to the user, for example, tire service, a potential customer checks reviews and contacts in maps and can sign up for the service immediately via messenger;
outdoor advertising and packaging, for example: a coffee shop places a QR code on the cups, which will get the customer to the telegram bot for pre-order;
social networks where the consumer receives payment services based on photos, such as cleaning services.

The main value of such a model is saving resources and focusing on what is really important: quick response, simple instructions, and convenience of ordering. Through different platforms, you can close almost all points of contact and build trust through reviews, ratings, and built-in services.

But the strategy of completely abandoning the site has a downside. The key risk is dependence on other people’s platforms. An account on a social network may be blocked, marketplace algorithms may change, reducing coverage, and commissions may increase.

When a website becomes an important point of presence

There are business segments where the lack of a website limits opportunities. First of all, this applies to companies with complex products, expensive services, and B2B businesses.

For expensive products, the website allows you to accumulate information about the offer: technical specifications, prices, delivery terms and service support. Loyalty programs, bonus systems, special offers and exclusive services are introduced through the website, making the purchase in the eyes of the customer not only safe, but also profitable.

For B2B businesses and complex services, the website allows you to formalize processes: you can describe in detail the order process, specifications, stages of interaction and documents. This is important for corporate clients who go through several levels of approval before purchasing. The site structures all the data, simplifies the assessment of costs and conditions, and allows to compare options.

Neuroimage: the next level of brand presence

Even if the company is already working effectively through social networks, marketplaces and messengers, a new criterion for success has appeared on the horizon — it is neuroimage. This is the brand’s ability to be noticed and recommended by AI algorithms. Customers search for products or services directly through neural networks, voice assistants, or smart search platforms.

This is where the website becomes a strategic asset. For AI algorithms, it is the website that is the main source of information, the very anchor on which they rely.

The website makes the brand visible: it collects products, services and cases in one place. For AI, this is a signal that the data is complete and structured, which means that you can include the company in the response.
On social networks, posts are lost in the feed, on marketplaces, the content is limited to the product profile. And on the website, the brand sets the tone and guarantees the accuracy of the data.
Neural networks are looking for an answer to the user’s main question: “why do I need this product?”. And the website only gives you the freedom to show all application scenarios, without restrictions from other sites.

There are a few more bonuses that you can get if the brand has a website:

Regular updates. On the website, you can quickly change information about the company, remove outdated data and add new ones. It is important that neural networks rely on up-to-date information about the brand, rather than data, for example, about an old office two years ago.
Algorithms love structure. Quick answers or FAQ sections can be arranged correctly on your site and increase the chance of getting into the AI output.
SEO effect. Well-optimized pages are indexed faster and better by search engines, and this directly affects how easily neural networks find and use your content.
Brand history. The archive of projects, publications, and expert articles on the site becomes a knowledge base for the neural network, and a sign of expertise for clients.

At the same time, working on neuroimage does not require creating an ideal website from scratch. You just need to adapt existing resources consistently. Start with a visibility audit, structure the content, and add “talking” texts for AI that are easily interpreted by voice and chat platforms.

Neural output is a new source of traffic. Now small and medium-sized businesses have a chance to take positions on a par with large brands. Everything will be decided by speed and willingness to act right now. AI algorithms are already learning from what companies publish about themselves. Yes, information from social networks, marketplaces and maps also gets into the neural output. But working on a website is more important than ever. The website remains the hub where the brand controls the content and guarantees the full picture for the algorithms.

In addition to neuroimaging, the site gives businesses access to their customers: they can collect contacts, analyze audience behavior, build loyalty programs, and offer personal promotions. It turns into a strategic growth tool: it helps to manage customer relationships, build trust and scale the business. As a result, the website is not just a showcase, but a hub that unites all the brand’s points of contact and turns them into a measurable result.