Having a website boosts your credibility, increases your visibility, and improves lead generation. It’s your property; therefore, you have absolute freedom about how you want it to look and what you want to promote. It’s an excellent place to highlight positive reviews and answer any questions potential customers might have about your business.
Many business owners ask, “Since I have a small business with a small workforce, and since we don’t sell anything online, do I need a website?” or "Business is good, do we need a website?"
The answer is YES!
If you have a business, you should have a website to avoid losing business to competitors that already have one.
You don't want to be left behind.
But Can't I use My Facebook Page?
If you like but... you don't own it, there are SEO limitations, FB visitors have very fleeting attention spans and most importantly a website has a lot more CREDIBILITY.
Benefits of a Website
Whether you’re a small or big business, a business website offers plenty of advantages. Here are the most significant benefits of having a business website.
1. A Business Website Makes You Look Professional
Anyone can create a company page on Facebook; it’s free and can be done in a jiffy. This low barrier to entry takes away much of the credibility of a business social media page. Customers don’t know who’s behind a Facebook page, where they are, and whether it’s all a scam.
On the other hand, creating a business website is not free and indicates that you’re relatively serious about your business. Therefore, a business website makes you look more professional and credible.
2. It’s an Essential Step in Your Customer’s Journey
Your website is like a physical shop—people walk by it until they come in to look at what you offer. So even if they don’t buy something the first time they walk in, they might buy something on subsequent visits.
On a similar vein, customers come across your business via different channels like social media feeds. If the social feed ad is interesting, they’ll expect to visit your website to find out more about the business. If there isn’t a website, they might not take the next logical step in the customer journey.
3. A Website Increases Your Visibility
There are over 4.5 billion active internet users worldwide, and over 90% of them accessed the Internet via mobile devices.
Without a website, your business is virtually invisible to these people. With COVID-19 pushing the global market even more digital, your business will become invisible to those that matter unless you invest in a website.
4. It’s Essential For Local Businesses
Many small business owners don’t see the need to invest in an effective business website. However, they’re currently missing out on an incredible source of revenue.
The following statistics show how important a website is for a local business:
46% of search on Google include local intent
97% of users use search to find local businesses
28% of users purchased an item after a local search
70% of users will visit a store because of what they found online
A business website will help you capture all of this potential and make your business even more profitable.
5. It Offers Social Proof
What your customers say about your business can determine whether others patronise you or not. So while review websites like Yelp are good, your website is the best place for people to get more information about your business.
Displaying your best testimonials on your website is an effective way to establish trust and social proof. What is more, publishing your best reviews on your website ensures that third-party review sites don’t minimise the good things people say about your business.
6. Creating a Business Website is Easier and Cheaper Than You Think
Many business owners refuse to create a website because they believe it’s difficult and expensive to create an effective website. However, that’s not true.
Creating a website and hosting a website is pretty straightforward and Herself the Elf can help.
7. A Business Website Lets You Sell Online
Even if you aren’t a traditional ecommerce business, having an online storefront can help you attract new customers and help you continue selling even when your physical store is closed.
8. You Have Complete Control Over Your Website
Since your website is your property, you get absolute design freedom — unlike with social media platforms.
You can share user reviews, videos, images, and whatever else you desire.
Also, you don’t have to follow the constantly updated rules of social platforms. And if there’s a social media blackout, like when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all disappeared for several hours, your website and its content remain safe.
9. A Business Website is Easy to Manage
Managing websites used to be daunting. However, It’s now easier than ever to manage a website. In addition, you don’t need any technical skills to keep your website up to date.
10. Websites Improve Customer Service
An effective website will contain plenty of important information your customers need. Therefore, there’s no need for them to call about location, hours of operation, and other simple questions. By helping customers, a website improves the overall customer experience.
Furthermore, since simple questions from customers don’t bog down your workforce, they can focus on other vital processes that increase company productivity.
11. A Website Helps You Edge Out The Competition
Even as a small business, an effective website allows you to compete with your industry’s “big boys.” If you play your cards right and properly optimize your website, it’s possible to outrank bigger websites, and get quality leads organically from search engines.
But even with the many benefits a website provides, is it still possible that you don’t need one for your business? Yes, and here are some reasons why.
5 Reasons why your business may not need a Website
Here are some reasons why your business might not need a website.
1. You’re Not Looking to Grow
One of the primary reasons for having a working, effective website is to increase the number of clients you have and grow your revenues. If you’re not looking to grow your business significantly, there’s probably little reason to try and find more clients or increase your revenues.
2. You Have Enough Leads
Many businesses do a great job of getting referral customers and tapping their existing network for new business. If this is you, then perhaps a website is not that important. This assumes, of course, that your Rolodex will continue to be an effective mechanism for you to get all the new business you need.
3. You’re Not Hiring Any Time Soon
If you are looking to increase staff, the chances are that your prospective hires will likely want to learn more about you. And they’ll probably turn to your website.
With all other things being equal, potential recruits will pick a company with a vibrant website over one with a brochure on the web.
Small businesses would be well served by a website, as they don’t have the resources that can help attract exceptional people outside of their immediate network. A website can help with that.
But if you’re not looking to hire top talent, then you can do without a business website.
4. You’re Operating in a Virtual Monopoly
If you have the luxury of running a business for which there’s very little (if any) competition, and you’ve got an offering that people must have, a website is probably not crucial. Your clients need what you have, and there’s nowhere else to go. Congratulations! Though a shiny new website might impress your spouse and colleagues, you probably don’t need one to improve your business.
5. You Don’t Expect to Sell the Company Any Time Soon
For more and more types of businesses, the website is an important asset that factors into valuation discussions. This is particularly true if you have a startup business, a hi-tech business, or one that “scales” well (i.e., adding new customers does not increase costs proportionately).
The reason is quite simple. If you have an effective website and can demonstrate that it is successful at helping you get new clients, you have a better business than someone who doesn’t. The Internet is an excellent way for many companies to have a low customer acquisition cost.
The other nice thing about the Internet as a vehicle for marketing and sales is that it can be more easily measured. Imagine if you are selling your business and showing the acquirer a chart of your web traffic (and how it’s grown over time) and precise data on how that traffic translates into revenues — you will likely find that the two are highly correlated. If I were on the buying side, I’d sit up and take notice.
Final Thoughts
The decision to either create a website for your business or not is ultimately yours to make. However, if part of your business goal is to improve lead generation, visibility, social proof, and authority, then creating a website is an excellent place to start.
Thank you to Hubspot 2022 for this article
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