Sign up for web development service
A website is important for small businesses to reach countless numbers of potential customers. It serves as a foundation for your online marketing efforts to attract a loyal audience. Social media is awesome for your business but with the addition of a website, people get a wholesome experience of your business with the various features that can be explored on a website.
With social media marketing, you use third-party social media websites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) to reach and engage with potential customers. Eventually, they’ll want to find out more about your service, so having a website will be a great place you can send them to for more information.
The importance of a website for small businesses in terms of marketing reaches every aspect of your digital marketing strategy.
These are some reasons why you need a website.
Website serves as a lead generator
A website helps you not only make sales. The most common misconception about business websites is that they must offer products or services for purchase, accept credit cards and process financial transactions, and so on but it also brings in traffic that can convert into sales. Your website can have the potential to be a strong lead generation tool for your business.
Your potential customers will most likely try to gather as many details about your service or product as they can before they choose to purchase it and your website is the right place to make that decision so it’s left to you to make sure that all the necessary details about your business are on the site
Your Competitor Has A Website
All your competitors more than likely have an established online presence. This includes having a modern-looking and responsive website, active on appropriate social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, and even YouTube).
Not having a website when your competitors or similar businesses have one, can make potential customers wonder. Does your company not care enough to have one? Or are you so cash-strapped that you can’t even afford a site? Or is your business even legit? All the things you don’t want potential customers thinking of your business.
It’s important to consider that with all the other businesses that also offer the products or services you offer, your average customer is exceptionally impatient. Put simply, you are losing a big piece of revenue to your competition online if you don’t have a prominent online presence.
Easy Reach for Local consumers
Having a website offers a fantastic opportunity for local businesses to get in touch with clients in the area they service. 70 to 80% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person or making a purchase.
Search engines focus on local searches and typically rank results according to location, which is a benefit to local businesses. In fact, “near me” or “close by” type searches grew by more than 900% over two years.
Customer Support
By having a Live Chat on your website your potential customers can speak to someone in your company immediately. This can likewise assist in responding to concerns from potential customers and can save you time and money.
Having an online chat on your website also increases customer satisfaction.
Apart from having online chat available, including a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page on your website as well. You know your market better than anyone. Why not answer frequently asked questions right on your website?
Your website can have a huge impact on your business, as it can continuously provide the information your potential customers are looking for as well as being able to answer any questions they may have.
Credibility
Would you trust the credibility of a company if they don’t have a website?
In today’s digital world, believe it or not, your clients and even potential investors expect your business to have a website. Your potential customers are already looking online for your products or services. 97% of consumers go online to find and research local businesses. Prospective customers are utilizing their smartphones and tablets to decide where to go and what to purchase.
Google is responsible for 94% of searches online, so if you do not have a company website, today’s digital-savvy customers will merely find another company online without the smallest hesitation.
Also, having customer testimonials on your website is an excellent method to attract possible customers.
Simply put, having a website is crucial to developing your credibility online.
Website as a Marketing Tool
While traditional marketing methods (print, flyers, signboards, radio, etc.) are still used by bigger businesses, they might not be the best solution for SMEs.
The greatest factor, of course, being how expensive it is to run such projects. And apart from being expensive, there are several significant disadvantages of traditional marketing:
Lower engagement rate: Traditional marketing is a one-way street. You can’t engage with your potential customers.
Minimal customization: You can’t personalize your marketing strategy, nor can you segment your audience based on market or age group.
Intrusive: People do not typically buy the paper or listen to the radio for advertisements.
Poor measurement: Measuring the results of your marketing efforts is crucial for long-term success. You don’t want to waste your efforts and purchase the wrong display. Unfortunately, determining the outcomes of traditional marketing campaigns is rather difficult.
Whereas, digital marketing flips all these downsides into something advantageous for business:
No matter how active you are on your social media, absolutely nothing can change the power of your business website.
Updates and Announcements
A website can act as a catalogue or a brochure for your services and products. If something changes, like your office address, product names, costs or plans for your services, you can easily make these changes.
Again, this is your “online storefront and your online office”. You can immediately put your business in front of numerous prospective clients. Having a website doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything else. You still need to promote your website and business. You can read how to have a productive Website Marketing
Collect Customer Information and Feedback
Acquiring client or customer data such as email addresses for lead generation or gathering feedback for improvement can be quite tough if all your marketing efforts are offline.
However, getting website visitors to type in their email address and/or other information in exchange for free additional service or product can serve as another excellent digital marketing technique- email marketing which will help you nurture your leads and eventually convert them into loyal customers.
All these reasons listed above is enough for you to start considering building a website for your business or employ the services of a professional to do it for you. But your website must be responsive across all devices to benefit from the true value of having a website and you will see results.