Are you that business owner who is doubting about having a website for a business with thoughts like — “I have enough customers”, “I am satisfied with my local & offline presence”, “Why to pay…when I can get the website for free”. Long story short, yes you do need a website no matter what size, intensity, or product/service-based business you own. You do need a website, but a really good one! With professional design & UX, rich attributes that could trigger your leads & sales, tempt people to come over and over again and create a brand story totally different & a lot better than contemporary websites.
To make a “really good website for business”, you need to let go of these uncanny of questions/assumptions first:
- Is it very costly to have a website?
- How can the website be secured, and the payment will be received from a website?
- Which one to hire, a website designing company, or a freelance developer?
- Why pay? I have a cousin, who can make the website on free web builder tools.
- Our customers are not active on PCs, and they like the personal touch.
- I own my product’s catalog list on else’s websites. Why should I own my personal website additionally?
- I don’t have a product selling business. I have a cold-calling based accommodation booking business. Why will I need a website?
Don’t worry! You will get answers to these questions once you are into the process of having your website for a business built with a professional website designing company. But before starting the process, here are 3 most important pillars that you need to understand and get answers to first – to understand why you are in need of a website.
3 important pillars of having a website
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1. Do Small Businesses too need to own a website?
Small scale businesses are often at the conundrum of – Is it necessary to get introduced to the online business via a website? The answer is, it’s not a necessity, it is a matter of choice & is dependent on the scope of opportunities. Here are the few factors, based on which you can decide whether your small business is in need of a website or not:
Google your line of work or business:
Search engines like Google are the go-to place where people look up for your business. From florists to Veterinary doctors, people search for everything on Google.
Search your business type over google and closely introspect the first two pages of the result, if you see a lot of review sites, that means you don’t have much business operating in this field of work online, here you can take the first-mover advantage and decide to put yourself first and if you see a lot of competitive websites related to your business, you still can decide to go for the big run and fight those competitors for more business.
Is your area of business competitive enough to fight for:
There are two metrics in the SEO world called PA (Page authority) & DA (Domain Authority) which are scored between 0-100 – which will help you identify whether your website is prone to easily rank or not. There is a free SEO plugin called Mozbar Chrome Extension that will help you figure out that DA & PA scores.
On the first page of Google, if you see websites PA and DA scoring above 50, it means you might have difficulty in beating them. But if the score is below 50, it means you can easily establish & rank yourself.
Interact with your current audience:
Take time to interact with your current audience over social media or any communication channel, ask them what additional things they would want your business to pursue, if most of them vouch for having a website, then here is your green signal.
2. What goals do you want to extract from your online website?
It is the most important to identify what end-goals you need to extract from your online website.
You should set quantitative & measurable objectives that are as crisp, doable, and motivating.
John Doerr says that Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) are complementary to each other. The objectives are the end-goals one wants to achieve, while key results are the widely defined quantifiable actions one outlines to achieve the end-goals.
If you are a baker, your objective and Key results may seem like:
| Objective | To make the best cakeries and present them over the website so well that customers get tempted to call & order it. |
|---|---|
| Key Results |
|
You can be in any business and decide some realistic & custom OKRs based on the end-goals you wish to achieve. Setting up doable OKRs can help you justify the need for a website.
3. How much do you require to spend over the website?
It is best to establish a website designing budget first – a realistic budget that you can afford to bear.
- The best part about hiring website designing services is that you get a packaged deal, where you will have a combination of services, where you can add and subtract the services based on your budget goals.
- If you need a website designed along with well-timed website maintenance, you can have that, if you think you don’t need maintenance services, you can replace it with marketing campaigns and SEO & SMO services. Or you can have a combination of website designing + maintenance + marketing services. You can decide the type of website based on your budget.
If you think website designing is a costly endeavor and has a definite amount, no it isn’t like that, it is customized and purely dependent on your budget & the level of features you are aiming to target.
The key takeaways from the 3 pillars of website building:
- Search is there any competitive market for your type of business over Google.
- Create a realistic budget for having the website built.
- Set easy to achieve and gauge website objectives & Key results.
7 undeniable reasons why a small scale business need a website
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1. You are offline and your customers are waiting online
- By having a website for your small business, you can target & convert that 97% of customers looking for your business with ease.
- There are 3.5 billion Google searches every day. A lot of small scale or local businesses are nowadays investing in websites & SEO to let their website be a leading part of those 3.5 Billion Google searches.
- If you are making none to slim efforts for having a website, you are losing a great number of customers.
2. Customers don’t buy from a business who doesn’t have a website
- Websites today are the strongest digital asset that is immense for businesses to invite leads and turn them into engaging & loyal customers.
- Customers today expect every business to have a digital identity in the form of a website.
- If you don’t own a website in time like today, you will have a greater list of customers abandoning your business.
3. Customers prefer to search for the business online they are considering to interact with
- It states very clearly, if you don’t own a website, you will clearly strike off a lot of potential business from 63% of potential customers.
- Having a professional-looking, creatively designed and functional website is important to let that 63% of customers find proof of your existence and get enough reasons to collaborate with your business.
4. Owning a space in just social media won’t help
- Do you have a Facebook page, but not a website? Do you know in 2018, people spent 50 million fewer hours on the platform than in 2017.
- Social media do help with accelerating your online presence but alone it won’t guarantee the footfall of potential customers.
- You do need a website integrated with social media channels to help your business grow and bank some profitable returns.
5. You need a platform to answer the basic query of customers
- Customers need a website where they can distill your business identity like who you are, what do you offer, the details to contact you, and a lot more.
- 46% of B2B buyers claim that they will leave a website if it fails to answer their inquisitiveness.
- Customers have a variety of questions to which they need answers via an intriguing and eye-catching interface. When you collaborate with web designers, you get to identify those questions and shape their answers in the website form with ease.
6. Customers judge the credibility of a business based on its professional website
- Owning a website today validates your credibility out in the competition.
- If your competitors own a website with a catchy and appealing UI, while you on the other hand have no website to showcase your offerings – who do you think customers would fall for? Of course, your competitors.
- If you don’t have a website, chances are you will never hit in their credible businesses list. With a website, you have greater chances of being called a credible business.
7. Websites induce positive buying decisions
- 72% of customers have affirmed that the website’s digital content is a greater catalyst behind their buying decisions. While 62% of customers have shown that digital content over websites helps them to finalize the purchases.
- A website with strong & creatively placed digital content and CTAs play an important role in persuading the visitors to convert into lifelong customers. In short, a website acts as a medium to narrate your visions & quality services to your customers.
- If you don’t own a website, how would you write that catchy web copy to influence the buying decision of that 72% or 62% of potential customers?
Key takeaways from why your business is in need of a website
- 97% of modern-day customers love to interact with businesses online.
- 75% of end customers require a website as proof of credibility.
- It is the website’s digital content & other components that really triggers the people to finalize their purchases.
To summarize… having a website for a small business is important & easier than ever to get!
Everyone is in need of a website for business, from an individual to a small scale to a large scale business – anyone who has a value to offer & customer-related transactions to pull, they need a website. Owning a website is easier than ever – the website has a non-costly barrier to entry and is a great tool to market businesses of every scope & size.
56% of small scale businesses are ahead of you by owning a professional website for business. But don’t worry. You still have 44% of businesses to drag down from the race by planning for a website today!
It’s important to let go of the above-discussed questions/assumptions, get answers to the 3 pillars of website designing, and contact a professional Website Designing company with complete Digital Transformation solutions now.
This article is written by William Hills. William is a prolific technical content writer at JanBask Digital Design, simplifying modern technology solutions with creative, insightful & value-read content.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
