5 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

As the average small business is set to spend around $75,000 a year on digital marketing, that’s just one piece of the digital puzzle to put together. If you’re not prepared to also put some time into building a website, then you’re going to lose out on building an audience. If you don’t know why your small business needs a website, then you might not understand the power of what one can do. 

Here are five reasons your business needs a website.

1. Control Your Story

One of the most important reasons for your small business to have a website is to build your presence and tell your story. Every brand has a story and it’s vital to be able to share yours with your customers, clients, and prospective audience. If anyone is going to find out about your company, you want to control the conversation rather than have anyone else do so.

As more than 80% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and loved ones, your online presence matters. If you want to get ahead of Yelp and Google reviews, even if they’re good, you need to have a useful website.

Make sure that it’s mobile-optimized so that anyone on any device can find you. Make sure you use a tool like JaguarPC so that it’s fast as well.

Websites don’t have the same purpose as they once did. They’re not the centralized repository for everything about your brand that they used to be. These days, a website is a place for people to dig deeper about who you are.

Use your website to control the story about your brand before someone else does.

2. Build Your E-Commerce Presence

Given that just about every American is now buying something from some website every year, we’ve all grown accustomed to e-commerce. So long as the source is reputable, the site is secure, and the payment processing is easy, we feel find forking over digital dollars for products.

If you’re selling products or services, you can get people to commit online with the help of your website. This is especially important for any business that relies on customers and clients to schedule appointments for service.

When people have to call up or fill out an online form for the services they’re looking for, they’re going to feel far less committed than if they’ve paid for it. When they’ve ponied up the money for a service, they’re going to show up and they’re coming for what they paid for. 

You can ensure that you attract more reliable customers when you use an e-commerce program to make sales.

While it can be challenging to attract customers and get them to follow through in a sale, when you give them the chance to impulse buy online, you get more clients. This is because a virtual appointment can be skipped out on but when you don’t offer refunds, you won’t see them backing out.

3. Start a Blog

Search engines are the number one way that people learn about new products and services. Search engine optimization has made it so that we need to be ahead of the algorithms they employ if we want to attract an audience.

When someone uses a search engine, they’re either looking for a specific product or for an answer to a question. When you have a blog, you get to attract both types of searchers with the content that you write. You can use your blog to write answers to these questions while you then introduce your own products and services as the solution they’re looking for.

When you have a blog, you can get a lot of traffic to your site, meaning that your profile will climb on search engines. The more traffic that you attract, the more you’ll look like the most reputable company in your field.

Make sure you drop in lots of information about where you can be found, which regions you serve, and where your products and services are sold. This will help search engines to match you with searches that originate in your area.

4. Get Ahead of the Pack

When you build your own website, you’re immediately ahead of more than one-third of all of the people working in your field. Since less than two-thirds of all businesses have any web presence at all, being online gets you ahead of other businesses from day one.

It’s a challenge to differentiate yourself, no matter what industry you’re in. With the help of a website, you’ll stand out and be able to speak from a position of authority. You can show images of what you’ve done and what you plan to do in the future as well as all of your products and services in action.

Staying ahead of the competition is hard but your website is a flag planted to claim your place in the online ecosystem.

5. Look Legit

When you can’t find a website for a brand, they seem a little bit less legit than they otherwise might. Finding a website for a company allows you to find out how legitimate their services are and to start to track down what they’re about.

It’s hard to figure out which are the best brands to work with in any industry, so finding one with a website empowers consumers to make a decision. When it’s easier to decide on a brand and start to identify with it, it’s easier to become loyal.

There Are More Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs a Website

If you’re wondering just how many reasons there are why your small business needs a website, it turns out that the list is endless. There are so many advantages that you need to stop waiting and start building today.

When you’re struggling to pay for a website, be sure to check out a guide like the one we’ve put together to get a loan.