There are many compelling reasons why your business must have a website. Some brick and mortar businesses do not see the reason why they should have a website. Most often, they think of it as a waste of time. Some think it is just an extra overhead in terms of expenses. Going through the process of actually building a website is just daunting to some people. Hiring someone to build it, giving them the write-up, data and all the information needed comes across as too much work for others.
“Having a website tends to automate a whole lot of your business processes, keeping them running around the clock when the brick and mortar store closes to the public. It also places the most critical information about your business in front of millions of prospective customers.”
Here are a few reasons why every business must desperately get a website to save themselves:
A website takes your business Online
Going online equates to having a slice of the online business pie. Having a website helps you to accomplish just that if not for anything at all. There are many different ways to get online these days but having a website is the surest and the most reliable method.
Having A Website Gives You Full Control
You have total control of your content when it is on your domain and you are hosting it yourself on WordPress or whatever platform.
Considering you have placed your content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other platform of your choice. You will be enjoying unlimited traffic and marketing to your content. Then all of a sudden things change, your traffic is cut, marketing becomes difficult and you start losing business. What happened? Your guess is as good as mine. The guys controlling your traffic source have changed the rules on their terms because the can do so.
The control is theirs, not yours. That is why you want to set up a site on WordPress, on your host and have total control without anyone messing with your sleep at night.
Your Website Has a Significant Impact on Branding
How easily is your business noticed in a locality, town or city? Most companies are identified by their logo. So if you have a good and recognizable logo, people can identify the presence of your company as soon as they see it.
This leads to word of mouth and other modes of referral and with time, you become a household name. Now think about it for a second: For you to be known online, the same thing happens. People identify your logo and that must lead them to a place where they can find you. Guess where that is? Yes, you guessed it, your website.
So as time goes on, as you become hugely popular and people need your help and service, they just log on to your website and your popularity soars from there. Your appearance then becomes consistent online with your local brick and mortar office, Win-Win.
Your Website Provides Information Around The Clock
Your physical business building will never be able to open around the clock. It cannot be located around different time zones. Even if it does your financial overhead will be out of this world.
So if people or prospective customers want information, access will be very limited, Your phone lines and reception desks will have time limitations. So when you have a website, customers or interested parties can obtain information about your company at any time, from anywhere on their schedule but not on yours.
They can research your products and services as and when they want to, without any limitations. You can, therefore, tell your company’s story in a unique way to different audiences in different languages around the world. All these by just building a website for your company.
A Website Will Help Establish Trust In Your Market.
Irrespective of whether your business is brick and mortar or online, people will have things to say about you. People will write reviews about your business on “Yelp” for instance, which is totally out of your control. This will be a huge minus for your business because negative sentiments can spread like wildfire.
But when you have your website, you can highlight the positive reviews and testimonials on it. This is under your control and highlighting your strength will go a long way to dispel any negative sentiments on third-party review sites.
Secondly, prospective customers who may want to do business with you, many not have any point of reference to trust you. But your website showing testimonials from real human beings will go a long way to work in your favor. They will trust your happy customers more than negative feedback on Yelp.
A Website Will Bring You Organic Traffic
Having a great online presence can increase your business in many ways. But Google and other search engines are not super friendly with brand new websites. For this reason, you must build a website for your business as soon as you can. So that your site can gather enough authority to start giving you organic traffic when it matters.
Gaining authority is a slow process involving onsite and offsite SEO. You also need to update your content consistently and very often by adding pictures and other visually appealing attributes. You also need to update your blog frequently and consistently. Doing all these overtime, your website will catch the attention of Google and other search engines. This will give your site the authority is requires and eventually bring you organic traffic in hundreds of thousands if not in millions.
Websites Make Digital Marketing Easier
Marketing is an essential part of many businesses if not all.
Digital marketing to be specific can revolutionalize the way you do marketing in general.
These days, with your credit card to hand, you can buy adverts on may platforms that will bring you instant traffic. It will then be entirely up to you, what you want to do with that traffic.
But if you do have a website, then things become easy in that regard. If you think you have a great offer, just post it to your website. You can even create one page specifically for that offer, pay Google or any other platform, run pay per click adverts and push traffic to that offer.
Then relax and watch the leads and sales roll in. Nothing can be easier than that in my opinion.
References
- 7 Reasons every business needs a website (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5WiSkvFCMc)