Why do businesses need websites?

Having a website makes it very easy for people to find you, read up about your company, what you do and answer a bunch of questions they have on your company. By having a website people will be able to find your company when they search for your company on a search engine like google, yahoo or bing. It is true that if you don’t have a website your business may be found in a search engine if you have a listing in a directory, the yellow pages or your business could just automatically show up in a google places result. Do you really want to leave this to chance though? Plus why not have a website so that you can influence what is displayed about your company and know your website will be listed in addition to having all those other search results.