> When did having a website become something exclusively for old people?

It's more that having a website never became a thing for many businesses in the first place. 30 years ago they might have had a listing in the phone book. Nowadays that kind of business might have a facebook page, or more recently an instagram account. Creating a website (even with something like wix) requires a level of skill and effort above that.

They're just being cheap. Facebook is free (and "everybody has Facebook") whereas Wix and Squarespace are $12-$15/mo for businesses.

For a lot of businesses, a website receives way fewer views than any one of their top-3 social media sites.

I’ve seen a lot who are still paying for a site but rarely bother to update it. All the traffic’s on Facebook.

It is not just 15$ a month. You need to pay someone to develop the website in the first place and then deal with all kinds of issues that eventually arise (updating the underlying framework and/or getting hacked and dealing with the consequences, solving random stuff like expired SSL certificate, etc.).

Idk how something like a cafe would necessarily benefit the business to have a dedicated website. A facebook (or google maps) page presents relevant info such as location/hours/menu in a predefined schema, so neither the owner or the customer need to worry about formatting it (or understanding the format).

Their competence is measured by their success, not your opinions. And it turns out that in many professions, an insta is the thing you need for success.

If you don't like it, that's your problem, not theirs. You're part of a small enough group they don't care about. I'm not sure how that's an age question in the first place, though. The "being run by millenials" throwaway by GP is just... well, at best, sloppy thinking.

There are GenZ businesses websiting, there are boomers insta-ing. You pick the tool for your niche.

Well, I went to the bakery and I can attest that they are indeed run by millennials. I will argue with the technical ineptness point made earlier though. If you can figure out how to make videos with music and edit in animated graphics using the tools Instagram or whoever else provides, you can figure out Wix's website builder.

Why do you need them to have a website? A thing that has no traffic, no discoverabilty, needs to be updated, paid for, etc?

All the information is already on google maps and IG/Facebook.

They have 2-3 billion people in their target audience.

Well presumably a website would be accessible to everyone, account login and government ID or not.

I guess that’s my point though. isn't it a very rational BUSINESS decision to go some where 80% of people and probably 99% of their target market are on these platforms that provide them with free distribution? Outside of the moral qualms of that 1% of people that don’t have a social media account or use google?

Sure. Would you also remark on their hair color? Shoe size? First letter of their name? Because those are likely about as relevant to their choice of advertising medium. It might be true, but there's no relevance.

And the point isn't if Wix is hard or not. It's that they answered the question "where do we need to advertise" for themselves, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.

Placing your online marketing behind an auth wall (Insta) is the definition of incompetence.