10 Reason A Website Is Crucial For Your Business. Learn Why!

1. The Internet is the Reason Why Phone Books are Obsolete

When was the last time you’ve seen a phone book in homes and businesses? I’m going to guess that it’s been a while. Nowadays, people use the internet like a phonebook. When a customer first starts to think about the buying process for almost anything, it usually looks about the same for everyone. First, they realize they have some need for a product or service. The next step is to start a Google search to find what they’re looking for.

At this point, they will get search results that will show what they are looking for and they will start reading and comparing different products and business websites that carry that product or service.

If you are a local business and you have a website with a Google My Business account, there is a very good chance you will show up in the top search results for your business location, even if you can’t compete with some of the larger or national chains.

This puts you front and center for potential customers that may not have even known that your business exists, all while providing contact information like email and phone number for customers with ease and little effort.

2. A Business Website Provides Quick Answers for Customers

A business website can provide quick answers for customers that you get all the time, freeing up your valuable time. Questions like:

• What are your business hours?
• Where are you located? 
• What brands do you carry?
• What areas do you service?

Many of these questions come in through phone calls and can consume valuable employee time that could be spent helping customers or clients physically at your business. A website allows you to put as much information as you want about your business online so your customers can find what they’re looking for fast, with no added effort to them.

3. A Business Website Helps Legitimizes Your Business

A business website helps legitimize your business by allowing potential customers quickly and easily find you and start to find out what places to contact further. When a customer starts the buying process and they are reviewing products or services, they usually go online and compare different businesses. If the search results for businesses pop up and 3 of them have websites and yours does not, many times a customer will not bother contacting you. Why? Either they found information that they already needed on a competitor’s website or they don’t want to go to any further effort on their part by having to pick up their phone and wait to talk to someone. Another reason they won’t contact your business is that without a website, they may consider you too small, out of touch with current technology, or assume that you’re unable to handle their business. They may also view you as less professional than others because you don’t have a website. 

4. A Business Website Provides a New Channel for Marketing

A business website provides many new channels for marketing. If you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on a huge marketing potential as well as adding to your potential client base by ignoring the internet. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than two-thirds of U.S. households have access to the internet through computer and/or mobile phone access. A website allows you to reach more people with little effort.  A website also allows you to take control of the content that is on it and what you are displaying or advertising. This allows you to put up specials or featured items with the click of a button. You can use those featured items in an internet campaign using click ads to market those featured items to specific, focused people. Even if they’re browsing on other websites, they can be looking for a certain product. Your ad will pop up and have a better chance of bringing them back to your website to complete the purchase.

You can also use your website to post related blogs or articles about your items that you want to sell and can further reach more potential customers by posting them on your business social media accounts which people freely share with others.

5. A Business Website Allows You to Create a Contact List of Customers

A business website can be set up to allow you to capture email contacts for potential and current customers. This allows you the freedom and control to send out newsletters, product updates, or specials and sales on your schedule. You could easily be sending out your specials or featured items directly to hundreds of people at a time. Let your website do the work for you by gathering customer email addresses (with consent) without any additional effort on your part after the initial set up. If you don’t have a website doing this currently, think about all the information your customers are missing out on. How much more business could you be doing with active, email campaigns?

6. A Business Website Shows Up in Local Search Results

A business website allows your business to rank for local search results, regardless of the potential customer knows your business name or not. This means that if somebody goes to Google, Bing, etc. and looks for electricians in Seattle, they are going to find a long list of local electricians in the Seattle area that they can contact. In a way, it’s a new way of looking up electricians in the Yellow Pages but now, all you need to do is ask Google or Bing from a web browser or your mobile phone.

7. A Business Website Allows You to Showcase Your Services and Products

A business website allows you to showcase your services and your products, easily and effectively. Everybody loves to window shop. Having a website and utilizing it to display your products or services on it allows customers to review and compare with other businesses, on their time. Whether you are displaying information only or selling as an e-commerce site, this is a powerful tool. Not only does it do most of the work for you, but it can also be ever-changing, allowing you to keep customers visiting.

8. A Business Website Helps You Keep Up with Your Competition.

If you’re in a competitive field, you may think that you don’t need a business website but you might want to rethink that opinion. More than half of all businesses have websites these days and will continue to increase with the rise of technology.  Regardless of the size of your business, a website allows you to advertise and communicate with your customers, on your schedule. If your competition has a website and is able to communicate and advertise to their customers and you cannot, then you are at a severe disadvantage.

9. A Business Website Means That You Never Have to Put Up a Closed Sign.

Who needs a closed sign when your business is open 24/7?  Imagine it’s the end of the day and you’re closing up, but you’re still making sales during your off-hours. Sounds great, right? Well, it’s all possible if you have a business website. Even if your customer drives to your business and finds your store closed if you have a website they can look up your information find out when you’re open and view your products or services. This may allow you to keep customers that otherwise might have gone to the next business that is open or has a website.

10. A Business Website Helps You Reach Customers Outside of Your Circle

A business website helps you reach customers outside of your current customer circle, meaning anyone from anywhere could find your website and see your products and services. You are no longer limited to somebody looking you up in the phone book for that particular city or town. So whether you’re in a big town or a small city, your website can be found by all. This allows you to send out a huge net for potential business.

A website can help level the playing field between a small brick-and-mortar store and big business. Being a brick-and-mortar store with the website can help you easily personalize your store, allowing you to keep more customers or even take customers away from those impersonal, big box stores

Do you need a website? Let us help you with your website design.