Research conducted by the SCORE association showed that Google processes 63,000 search queries per second, which amounts to 5.6 billion searches per day. So, an average person conducts 3 to 4 searches each day. Besides, 97% do online searches for local businesses near them. Yet, 51% of small businesses do not have a website.
The lack of technical knowledge often cripples business owners from creating a website. To add to that, there is a common misconception that website building is expensive. We have busted that myth with this ultimate guide on calculating the average cost of website design.
How A Website Will Benefit Your Small Business
Source: Blogs. Brighton
1. Your Website Gives You A Digital Identity
How are customers supposed to find you without you being visible on the internet? Today, having a presence on the internet is equivalent to setting up an office to legitimize your business.
2. It Is What Your Customers Expect Of You
Now that the world is at our fingertips, it has brought the fraudsters home. This has made the customers more vigilant. One study shows that 6 out of 10 customers will only trust a website if they wish to make a purchase on the internet.
3. Your Competition Already Has One
If that wasn’t reason enough to convince you to make a website, this will. There is a high probability that your competition already has one. As mentioned above, in this day and age, your business cannot last if you don’t have an online presence. This is the same mantra your competition probably abides by as well.
4. Your Ticket To A Good First Impression
Did you know customers make a judgment in seven seconds? That is all it takes for your business to make a first impression. So, given that a website is the first contact a customer has with your business, it needs to be perfect.
The key is to have it be easy to understand without any technical jargon as much as possible. When you put in efforts to get even the minute details of your website right, it shows your customers that you care.
5. Showcases Your Professionalism
A website is the reflection of your business. This allows you to showcase your professionalism. At the very least, you need a synchronized website and an effective landing page. By that, we mean consistency in language style, tone of voice, image style, color palette, and core message.
6. Improves Your Trust With Your Customers
The Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) developed a pyramid of trust, which is adapted from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It shows the basic trust needs that are required to be met before being able to progress in a professional relationship.
Source: Nielsen Norman Group.
The aim is to have minimum to no friction between the different hierarchical levels. The first hurdle in gaining the trust of customers is to have a secure website. Start with the URL of your website. Make sure it is HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) instead of just HTTP.
7. Having A Website Builds Credibility
The reason every small business needs a website is that it is proof your website exists. It’s your job to provide a well-tailored website to your customers with details about your services that will help you close deals easily.
Many companies are providing the same service as you. Thus showcase your industry partners, relevant accreditations, certificates, and awards, as it builds trust. If a reputed third-party website featured your website, you need to display it.
8. Increase Your SEO Rating
Source: Mikekhorev.com
93% of web traffic comes from search engines, not just by brand names but by category or keyword. A good SEO ranking is one of the most important factors for branding. Think about how your user might search for your products on the internet and customize accordingly.
Your website helps you optimize your SEO ranking. Having a link-worthy site that is updated regularly lets you stay relevant. When a third-party website links to your blog, it increases your rating.
9. It Is Your Digital Brochure
A website is your digital catalog. When your customers land on your website, they get to know about the products and services at the first glance. They get a sense of what your business is about and if they want to invest further or not.
Another perk of having a digital brochure is that you can keep updating it timely. Without having to spend a fortune on flyers and brochures.
10. Your Website Creates Your Brand Identity
The internet doesn’t stop to take a breath. If your website doesn’t have a domain name, your potential customer is moving on to a website that does. Domain name and logo help you communicate what your website is about and your vision for the future. To achieve this, you need a team of skilled individuals who can put your thoughts on paper, or in this case, the internet.
11. A Good Website Will Attract More Leads
93% of business decisions start with an internet search, which means if you don’t have a website, you are selling only to 7% of the population. To attract more leads, you need to create a holistic content strategy. This means your website needs to cater to the customer’s experience.
There are certain tips to drive traffic to your website, like is every page on your website optimized? Do you have a Call To Action (CTA) on every page to generate leads? You need to design your website from the point of view of your customers. Also, if you guest blog on popular websites, you can share information on what your business is about, thus attracting new leads to your company.
12. More Leads Result In More Traffic
Having a website gives you a platform to host reputable people to write for your blog. This helps you to organically generate traffic on your site. However, the mistake people make is that they forget that not everyone likes to read. So, while a blog is a great way to increase traffic, it is not always feasible.
A website gives you the liberty to include different lengths and formats of content. You can choose between long-form articles, videos, and snippets- the list is endless. Did you know videos can increase your sales? When your website is responsive and an amalgamation of different formats, you can send your content to other aggregator sites where you think your content will be relevant and the traffic will pour in.
13. A Good Website Is Easy To Access By Customers
Relying solely on social media pages to run your business can have an adverse effect in the future. The algorithms of these pages are ever-changing with every update, thus keeping up with it can be difficult.
The website should also be mobile-friendly. If your customer has to pinch or zoom in to access your website, they will soon get frustrated and leave.
14. Helps You Understand Your Target Customer Base
The benefit of having a website is that it acts as a data center for your employees, customers, and prospects. You can use the performance metrics to know how well your business is doing and locate your target audience.
This also helps you can keep a tab on the number of visitors to your site. How much time are they spending on your site? Are there users who have been on the site only once? Or is it being frequented often?
15. You Can Market Accordingly
A small business needs a website to help understand its buyer’s persona. Thus, we are emphasizing the importance of SEO ranking factors to optimize your website. This will help you can create a relevant marketing strategy. Once that is in place, you can invest in paid advertising to get your money’s worth.
16. You Can Conduct Email Marketing With Proficiency
Email marketing is the most cost-effective way to have positive ROIs. Helps you build a relationship with leads, customers, and future customers as well. This method helps you create a personalized experience for your customers.
17. Aids In Building A Relationship With Your Customers
The first step in building a relationship with your clients is to keep all modes of communication open. Take the comment section of your website seriously and respond to dissatisfied emails.
Read here: Ways to deal with negative online reviews for your business
Accepting your mistakes and giving incentives will help you build a relationship of trust with your clients. You can offer live chats on your website. A 2016 study conducted by FurstPerson found out that 77% of customers won’t purchase if there is no live chat option on the website.
18. Helps You Retain Your Existing Customers
You have aced your SEO strategy, now what? Is ranking high on Google enough to get more sales? Unfortunately, it won’t matter how much traffic you get if you fail to retain them. Research shows that only 1% of e-commerce websites generate 40% of their total revenue. Website personalization plays an important role in the purchasing decision of 86% of customers.
Another way of showing your customers you care is to ask for their feedback. When you ask for feedback and work to be better, your customers will feel heard.
19. You Control The Narrative
Research shows that when people go to a website, they look for informative content. Therefore, your “about us” page is so important. This is your opportunity to tell your story. Make your audience familiar with the knowledge about why you began this business and what are your aims for the future.
Telling them about your services and products will make them like and trust you. As your target demography is coming to your website to know about the services you offer.
20. You Can Improve Customer Support
A website helps you communicate smoothly with your customers. Especially if you are an eCommerce business and have an omnichannel eCommerce platform, website is going to be one of the most important channels to interact with your customers and drive sales. A few ways to do that are;
- FAQs
- Chatbox or call now button
- Have an active customer support department.
21. Educate Your Clients About Your Brand, Products/Services
Digital marketers have realized that website visitors respond better to educational content rather than promotional. If your customers find your blog to be valuable, they will be are more likely to become your clients. Your website can have an enormous influence on your potential customers.
Acknowledging your shortcomings can go a long way in building trust among your customers, as it will show you are actively working on improving your company. The aim is to pull your customers in rather than push promotional content out.
22. Create A Knowledge Base For Your Staff
Your website can be of great aid to your small business, as you can create a sub-domain. This platform will not be visible to your customers. This will act as a knowledge base for your staff, where you update them regularly about different things.
Source: Wpbegginer
23. Provide Your Customers With Updates And Announcements
First, I said having a website is not enough; it needs to project what your company is all about. Now I’m telling you, even that is not enough. Your website needs to be optimized.
As you introduce new products and services in your business to keep your customers interested. Similarly, your website helps you keep your customers updated about your products and services.
24. A Platform To Showcase Your Work
Having an optimized website that showcases your past work besides the services you provide adds to your company’s reputation. You don’t have to rely solely on reviews to advocate for your work. But you can display the work you do on your website too.
25. Display Your Customer Testimonials
There is a lot of power in online reviews. It can make or break the reputation of your business. You can either rely on third-party review platforms like Yelp, FourSquare, and Google reviews to host your customer reviews. Or you could choose to display it on your own.
A majority of customers have said that online reviews influence their purchases. Your reviews can be in any form you wish, ranging from quotes to videos, audio, case studies, or blog posts.
26. Helps You Provide A Better Service
The tip that digital marketers swear by is to let customers make a user account. By doing that, you let them save their important details on their website. This helps them save the products and services they want to indulge in.
Another effective way your website helps provide a better service is by providing navigation. If your website has a lot of pages, it is important to have a prominent and easy-to-use navigation function that will guide your users. Your website should have these tabs easily available,
- Contact us
- Product information
- Social media pages
- Blogs
- Testimonials
27. Customers Can Conduct Easy Purchase Or Book Appointment
By letting your customers save their payment, contact, and shipping details, the payment and checkout process becomes a breeze. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, online sales saw an astronomical increase. Confined to their homes, customers found themselves turning to the internet to purchase even the smallest of things. From daily groceries to medicines, the internet came to aid.
28. Grow Your Business
If you are under the illusion that a website translates to leads. Then that is a big misconception. In fact, the wrong website can kill your business. Your site won’t instantly appear on google results.
There are over 1.7 billion websites on Google and the list is ever-expanding. Think about what your customers want to achieve when they visit your website and build your website accordingly.
29. You Are Never Closed For Business
Another reason your business needs a website is that your company is always online. This is not to be mistaken for you having to be available to your customers 24/7.
We have all been guilty of shopping at odd hours. Having a website covers that demography as well. Essentially, your website sells and promotes your website even when you’re sleeping.
30. Give Referrals And Discounts
Websites make referral marketing seamless. This is a business strategy implemented to get current customers to bring in more customers for the company. You can provide an incentive to your existing customers to refer new customers. This is a foolproof tactic to attract new customers and keep existing clients happy.
31. Boosts Sales
Study shows that researching online and purchasing offline and vice versa contributes to 80 percent of purchases. Thus, it won’t be a stretch to say that having a website boosts your sales astronomically.
32. A Website Lets You Fulfil Your Brand Promise
A brand promise is a declaration of assurance. A broken promise is enough to bring your entire company to its knees. When you communicate your vision of the company on your website customers can see your work proactively towards that vision.
33. Shows Potential Partners If Your Business Is The Right Fit
The key is to make the potential client feel a personal connection to your website. To do that, you need to make sure they are aware of the people they are going to get into business with.
Put the photos of the people who make up your business. Make sure your website has a “meet the team” page regardless of your company size.
34. Helps You Stay Relevant
When you’re a small business, you aim to become visible. Thus catering your content and social media promotion according to the trends of the times, you’ll grab more eyes.
35. Higher CTR
Source: Ryte
36. Target Bigger Markets
The services you provide may not be available everywhere but the internet might be. Digital marketing is the ultimate way to kick-start your small business. Therefore, a website helps you reach areas where your services are in high demand but not available.
37. Go Global
If the product you sell has a global demand, your target audience doesn’t have to be limited. Having a website can help you market your products globally. For this, having a strong and wide online presence helps.
38. A Website Provides An Excellent Return On Investment
I understand that hiring a digital marketing company requires capital. I also know that being a small business, you cannot afford to spend money on websites. However, websites are a one-time investment.
A website is a gift that keeps on giving. It will keep fetching new clients for your time and again. While you cannot say the same for other advertising methods available to you.
39. Free Advertising
Who said only established companies can find themselves on billboards? Your website is your billboard and the entire world is your audience. Having a website allows you to instantly put your business in front of potential clients.
When you build the website according to your target audience, it helps you get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. (index, visible products, and services)
40. Excellent CTA
70% of small business websites lack a CTA. While you optimize your website, you need to ask yourself. Does your website provide anything in return to your customers when except just content?
An effective CTA is the best way to book clients on social media, as it creates a sense of urgency among your clients. This also helps you get mediums to contact them for your email marketing.
Examples of CTA include:
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- View a product demo
- Consultation, estimate, or quote
- Download free brochure/e-book
41. An Anchor For Social Media Marketing
Many small business owners often argue that they don’t need to have a website, as they use social media to boost their business marketing. Although even if your customers like your Instagram page, they will still look for your website to confirm whether your business is legitimate or a scam.
Secondly, even if social media has ingrained itself in our daily lives, they are very fickle. You always carry the risk of your social media getting crashed.
42. You Can Benefit From Search Engine Results If You Have A Website
When you register your website on different search engine consoles, you can benefit from the search engine results. By doing this, you are telling the search engines your website exists.
43. Website Integration On Google Maps Will Let You Find Customers Better
Source: Google
44. Achieve Your Business Goals Fast
When your website mirrors your vision, your SEO strategy has made you visible and your sales have gone up astronomically. You can successfully be on par with your business goals.
45. Low Cost Per Impression Marketing Vehicle
Cost per impression is a traditional marketing metric, in which companies pay for views of their advertisements. As impressions are a tiny metric, we typically measure it in thousands.
Source: Snov
46. Eases Recruitment
Having a website is an excellent way to look for potential employees. You can have a dedicated page for recruitment. You can modify it, and add filters according to your requirements.
Today, more and more businesses are strictly conducting recruitment through their website. Besides, even after finding your job posting on LinkedIn or any other portal, they will look at your website to know more about your company.
47. Compete With The Industry Leaders
A potential client is not looking at the resources the company has when they are looking for services online. The thing that appeals to a customer is how well the website is made and the products or services you offer. If your website is attractive with an excellent strategy to back it up, a potential customer will avail of your services.
48. Saves Time
Your website is the first contact your customers have with your company. Thus, having a well-informed website that answers all the queries will save you both a lot of time. Many business owners get calls from customers asking simple questions like working hours and the location of the shop.
If you miss these calls, the person is unhappy and you are at risk of losing a prospect. Help your customers gain vital information about your clients without having to make a call, thus giving them an all-around satisfactory experience.
49. Save Money
In the business world, saving a dollar is just as good as earning a new one. Contrary to what people believe, website development is affordable to set up. Frankly, they are inexpensive compared to traditional advertising on TV and print. As you don’t need to spend money on flyers and brochures.
50. It Is Simple To Set Up
Your Customers Are Online
Source: The Manifest
Your website is equivalent to having a business card. An optimized website that reflects your brand helps you convert your visitors into leads. The reason your business needs a website is that consumer behavior keeps on changing and, in order to stay relevant, you need to change with it.
INFOGRAPHICS – 50 Reasons to have a website for your business!
