You may as well title this article ‘Why you Should Have a Website Regardless of Your Business Size’ because having a website is the number one way to establish your business’ online presence. When starting a business, it is tempting to consolidate all your contact information, products, and services into an Instagram or Facebook profile. Here are a few reasons you need a custom website for your business:
Digital Real Estate
If you think of the digital realm in terms of physical space, you will notice that successful businesses take a lot of space online. They have ads on Hulu and YouTube, they run banner ads on Google search pages or frequently visited websites, and they pop up randomly on Facebook or Instagram when you only clicked on one of their ads two minutes ago. Just like in the real world, people will only be able to purchase from you if they know you exist. Having an Instagram or Facebook account is not enough digital real estate to get your brand in front of the many customers you want to have. Also, having a website allows you to collect a multitude of information about your customers that social media platforms just can’t provide. Details regarding the specific clicks, discovery origin, and contact information for your customers will be yours, free of charge, simply by having a website.
Websites Lend Legitimacy
For most consumers, looking up a company’s website before purchasing is almost second nature. In fact, if customers cannot find a website, they are less likely to believe that the business is legitimate and will opt out of making a purchase from that company. This is the reality even for small, hometown businesses. This lesson was excessively learned during the pandemic. If your business was not online, it no longer existed in the public space. A website is your home for your customers to visit you, learn more about you, and see what you have been up to. It makes you real to them and that is an invaluable characteristic of a website.
An Information Hub
This is probably the most important characteristic of a website. Your website is where your customers can go to verify the information they have about you. Whether they are trying to understand the founders of your company, the technology behind your products, or just your phone number, it is guaranteed that they will take the information found on your website as absolute fact before any other source of information. This means that your website is your space to talk about who you are and share your story with your customers. Nowhere else would you be able to share your story in such depth with your customers and then weave your favorite parts of that story throughout your product offerings or customer service processes. Also, this is where your customers will automatically go to try and contact you regardless of the other avenues you have created for communication. This can single-handedly increase your business and referral rates.
Passive Income
The goal for any business owner is to be able to walk away from their business at any time to take a vacation or handle personal affairs. It is the flexibility that makes being the boss so wonderful. What this amounts to when you have a website is partial or completely passive income. If your customers can purchase from you when you are not around, you are able to make money without being at the store, so to speak. This works especially well during holidays, when business is typically slow, or when you know that you want to take a break but don’t want to sacrifice sales.
Growth Opportunities
When you have a website, you can quickly transform it into a digital storefront in increasingly diverse ways. You may begin offering candles that you ship to customers and, eventually, expand into digital goods like a seminar on candle creation that is hosted online. There are so many ways you can sell digital goods but without an adequate platform, your dreams may fall flat. If you already have a website that is regularly visited by your customers, when you add digital products, you won’t have to work as hard to get their attention and secure their trust that this item will be just as good as the rest.
Another way that websites introduce growth opportunities is via collaboration interests. When you have a website, other companies who are interested in working with you will know where to find you, read about your company, and follow your growth. Essentially, your website is a waiting room for your next big idea and future partnerships. Creating a website gives them a home until you are ready for the next step.
Client Contact Assets
If you have not heard of this before, allow us to introduce you to an incredibly powerful tool. When Instagram and Facebook went down for a time, many creators were in a quandary because they had campaigns to conduct or business contracts to execute but they had no way to accomplish those things because their main platform was interrupted for an undisclosed period. The only creators who were not in a panic were the ones who had their own website and a bank of previously collected contact information from their followers and customers. This bank of information was created via email sign-ups sourced from their website. Imagine if no one could influence the amount of influence you had with your customers? That is the power of a website. It is your space and your resource from which to launch and nourish your business.
A website is invaluable in this era of business and a good website is priceless. GCN knows that a website shouldn’t take up all your time or resources. Business owners will find that they get what they need, expediently, with GCN. Reach out to us when you are ready to create your website and carve out space for your business online
