Anybody telling you that you do not need a website for your business is simply incorrect. Your tech-savvy customers are expecting that you have a website in order to learn more about your business. With 85 percent of consumers searching online before making a purchase, there is never been a better time for your business to have a website.
The short answer is that there has never been a better or more important time to invest in a website for your business. A website offers a wide variety of benefits for small businesses, and most of these benefits increase in value exponentially year over year, just like the Internet itself.
Ten reasons why you need a website for your small business
Does your small #business need a #website? 10 reasons that the answer is yes!
While review websites such as Yelp are great, your own site is where people will go for more information on your business. More importantly, publishing your best reviews on your site will make sure that third-party review sites will not downplay what great things people are saying about your business. Asking your customers for reviews, then publishing them on your site, is a great way to put fresh, high-quality content on your website that makes your small business look more appealing. It is obvious that the best way to showcase your business to potential customers is through a professional website.
If you get a stellar website in place, customers who stick around will be able to find your business 24/7 – whether you are selling products, running a blog, or pushing your personal brand. Even brick-and-mortar businesses benefit from having a website that displays updated information.
1. A website makes you look professional
84% of today’s consumers think a website makes your business more credible than companies who only have social media profiles. Your website is also the perfect place to show off any professional certifications or awards your business has.
Beyond that, having your own website lets you create a branded email address (e.g. dianna@yoursite.com) which adds a level of professionalism to all of your correspondence, especially if you’ve used a personal email address to conduct business up until now. In addition, some email marketing tools no longer allow users to send emails from personal addresses. This means that if you want to take advantage of the power of email marketing, you’ll need a business email account.
2. Your website can attract new customers through Google
You may be happy with the current size of your business, but every company experiences customer turnover. To encourage continued success, you need to attract new customers, and one of the best ways to do it is by making yourself more visible on Google. Social media networks are indexed on Google, and social media posts can be found with the search engine, but a website gives you access to many more tools and strategies for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And SEO is the key to making your business appear on the front page of Google.
The phrase “search engine optimization” might be intimidating, but in practice, it’s fairly simple. You enter words and phrases related to your business into a keyword research tool, figure out which ones are getting the most traffic on Google, then build your content around those phrases. As a rule, each piece of content should be focused on a different keyword, so that as your list of content grows, your site is able to rank for more keywords. There are some excellent SEO plugins for WordPress that make it easy to do this, no previous training required.
3. You can clearly showcase your products and services
You can show potential customers what they’ll get when they work with you by displaying high-quality photography on your website. Take a look at how B Brows & Beauty has accomplished this on their website: B Brows & Beauty
Another thing you can do is publish important information about your products and services on your website to make sure you’re attracting the right customers. For example, if you run a restaurant, you might want to mark any items on your menu that are gluten-free so people with Celiac or other conditions that make gluten dangerous know they can eat in your establishment.
4. You can display your best reviews and testimonials prominently on your website
Displaying your best reviews and/or testimonials prominently on your website is a great way to establish social proof. This might come in the form of personal customer testimonials, like this review on the website of Dancin’ Tots
