7 Reasons You Need a Small Business Website
Website designer in Houston
- Business Credibility
A 2015 study performed by Verisign reported that 84% consumers believe that small businesses with websites are more credible than those without an online presence. To take it one step further, the study also concluded that 65% of consumers considered a company branded email to be more credible than to a generic email account such as Gmail, Outlook.com, AOL, or Yahoo mail.
The days of matchbook advertising are long gone and to remain relevant and credible, small businesses must invest in a small business website. Looked at another way, if all your competitors have websites and your business does not, who do you think looks more credible?
- Business Discoverability
The same study by Verisign also reported that 9 out of 10 consumers rely on the internet to locate and evaluate local goods and services. Understanding these numbers and the online habits of consumers makes it difficult to understand why 46% of small businesses do not have a website. But for the 54% that have developed their business website, they benefit from a clear advantage when considering discoverability.
In a 2015 survey by Redshift Research, and commissioned by GoDaddy, it was found that 59 percent of very small businesses (made up of one to five people) do not have websites. Of those, 12 percent have Facebook pages.
Additionally, the same survey found that 83 percent of the surveyed businesses that had websites said "their online platforms gave them a competitive advantage over businesses without websites."
With over 3.5 billion Google searches occurring each day, your customer could be seconds away from locating and patronizing your small business. Business websites allow potential customers to access your business and learn about your products and services 24/7.
- Relatability
The ability to relate to a defined audience and build relationships is a game changing benefit of creating and maintaining a small business website. Using your site to tell a story about you and your business begins the relationship.
Understanding your audience and how your product or service could provide a benefit to their lives continues to strengthen the relationship. Using your website to earn and retain a customer is the ultimate goal and the result of successfully relating to and serving the customer.
Consumers are more likely to visit your website to learn about your business than they are to pick up the phone and call. Replying to emails and social media comments is a great way to build trust and personalize your small business experience.
- Flexibility
While your business may still have a need for printed advertising materials, these items tend to be costly, especially when they need to be updated. In today’s world consumers expect to see fresh marketing campaigns and information on a continuous basis. Small business websites allow for demographic information, services offered, business hours, and pricing to be edited at any time for no cost.
Easy to use website platforms, such as WordPress, are user friendly even from mobile devices and allow for ongoing updates. Having the flexibility to keep your audience informed encourages strong relationships and keeps your customers coming back.
- Business Sales Tool
Although a small business website serves many purposes, the main objectives are:
- To inform
- To engage
- To convert
The most effective ways to use a business website to this end is to provide high quality information, learn about who your audience is, what they want, and create a sales funnel that nurtures them through the sales process. Small business websites allow for automation of the sales process and for sales to be converted at a much higher rate than traditional sales methods.
- Market Expansion
Perhaps your business began by serving a local community. Maybe your business is a brick and mortar business that would like to expand to a larger market. The ability to expand the market of a small business is one of the most lucrative benefits of creating a small business website.
Making your products or services available across time zones and even across the world can grow your business and revenue exponentially. Regardless of their geographical locations, the people who visit your website are there because they have expressed an interest in what your business offers. Use that to your advantage.
- Web Presence Analytics
Unless you specifically ask each customer who comes through your door how they found you, you may not know the origin of your customers or which marketing campaigns work. Using your small business website as a marketing and analytics tool will provide real time data about the following:
- Demographics of your website visitors
- How visitors find your site
- The number of monthly/weekly/daily visitors to your website
- Which website pages are most visited
- How many pages visitors access per visit
- How much time they spend on each page
- How frequently visitors return to your website
Source: Webpresencesolutions
About LaraNet: We are a web design firm focused to help you to grow your business and communicate with your customers and prospects using two simple but powerful tools: 1) Interactive Website and 2) Internet Marketing Strategy on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc… Whether you want to work with just a web page, or launch or improve your presence on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or communicate with your customers through newsletters, or improve the location of your business in the search engines through Search Engine Optimization, or start marketing your products or services online, in LaraNet we can help you.
