If your business has gotten this far without a website, you might be wondering: do I need a website for my business? What’s the point if my business is already successful without one? 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.
1) It makes you appear professional
84% of today’s consumers think a website makes your business more credible than companies that 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 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) Attracts new customers through google
You may be happy with the current size of your business, but every company experience 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.
3) 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. You can also use your website design, along with the featured images, to give people a sense of what it feels like to enter your physical location. 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) Reviews and testimonials
Displaying your best reviews and/or testimonials prominently on your website is a great way to establish social proof. If your business has appeared in articles from newspapers or popular local blogs, you can also feature those. Publishing your best reviews on your website also serves the secondary purpose of creating a permanent archive. This means that even if third-party review sites close at some point in the future, you’ll still have access to your best reviews.
5) Visibility
Without a website, your business is invisible to a lot of people. As we progress further into the digital era, your business will become invisible to everyone unless you invest in a website. So to stay competitive in this increasingly digital world, your business needs to get online.
6) Easy contact
A website is a great place to make your contact information easily available to potential customers. You can even publish your contact information in a header or footer so it appears on every single page. Modern website builders also make it easy to create a contact form, which can protect your business email from spam.
7) Now affordable
Building a website isn’t just easier than it used to be; it’s also more affordable.