A small business website can be just what your business needs to survive in this competitive world. Not only is it important to have a website as more people turn to the internet to buy most things, but it can also be quite beneficial to your business.
One of the most obvious benefits of having a website for small businesses is that it enables people to find you online and get in touch with you easily. Having an effective and compelling website can even lead to sales you wouldn’t have made otherwise.
In this post, we’re going to discuss some reasons why it makes sense to set up a website for your small business.
Websites Develop an Online Presence
These days, the first thing a lot of people do when they hear about a business is to look it up online. If you don’t have a website set up — or at least some social media profiles — you might as well not exist for all those potential clients.
Possible to Target Local Customers
If you’re anything like us, you look up the closest businesses to you when you’re trying to make a specific purchase. You’ll probably jump online, and look up nearby barbers or hair salons.
If your website shows up among the first search engine results for these types of local queries, then you might land yourself some extra business (building a strategy to rank well for keywords is known as search engine optimization or SEO). On top of drumming up more customers, your site can also help build brand awareness of your local business in the community.
Save Money on Paper Advertisements
It used to be that if you wanted to advertise your business, your options were limited. You could hand out flyers, take out ads in the local newspaper, or maybe pay for a TV spot. However, the web provides you with entirely new ways to reach your audience.
Even if you don’t want to pay for online ads, your website itself can help market your business. You can, for example, reach out to visitors when you’re running offers they might be interested in. At the very least, you can publish the latest news on your site, so people have an incentive to visit your business.
Content Build Online Reputation
There are plenty of successful businesses that give back to their community by helping to keep them informed through content marketing. Take WEBiFeeds’s blog, for example — it’s all about updating you on the latest news and sharing knowledge to power your website.
Over the long term, you can also use your website as a platform to publish content and blog posts that help your clients. Content marketing not only makes you look like an authority in your field, but it can also build an online reputation.
Websites Drive Sales
By the year 2040, 95% of purchases will be made online. If you don’t have a website for people to buy from, you will be missing out on a huge percentage of potential customers.
Not to mention the fact that having a website makes your customers trust you enough to buy from you online. If you are just making sales through email or DM’s, then you are just making yourself available to customers that are willing to take the chance that you are legit and not a scam. A website makes you look credible enough to buy from.
Websites Provide Free Traffic
If you take the time to create a premium website that is custom-coded for SEO optimization, it will perform well on search engines. Especially if you take the time to ensure it is easily navigational and designed to appeal to the eye, it will stick out as a great option to potential customers.
If the website performs well on search engines, then it will draw in free traffic to your business. Once on your user-friendly website, you can then turn that traffic into sales.
Websites Make Customer Service Easier
Your website acts as a place for you to communicate with your customers. You can provide the key information about your business such as office hours and products/services offered. By doing so, you will be saving your customer service team the hassle of having to answer phone calls and emails about easy to answer questions.
Let us be honest too. As a small business, you may not have a customer service team, it may just be you. By providing the answers to these common questions on your website, you can free up your time for more important things, like growing your business.
Every small business owner needs a website. If you don’t have one yet, now is the perfect time to get started on it. While it is possible for your business to succeed without a website, a web presence can help you open so many doors.
If you don’t know anything about website design, don’t worry. You don’t need to spend months and thousands of dollars to set something up. Our website designers teach you to create a powerful and professional-looking website — even if you’re a complete beginner.
