01/07/2016
Why Your Business Should Have a Website
1. IT'S NOT 1950 ANYMORE
Back in the day, marketing a small business was an exhausting, time-consuming task. You had to do a lot of legwork and sink funds into advertising to let people know you were in the community but today, online marketing makes it so much easier! Why not let a website do some of the work for you?
2. IT WILL DEFINITELY BOOST YOUR BUSINESS
This goes without saying, but we will say it anyway: There's absolutely no way that a website will cause a drop in sales. If you want to go out and find a business owner whose business dropped off right after a website debut, go ahead, but we think it's a solid bet that a website will expand your business.
3. IT'LL HELP YOU REACH A BIGGER AUDIENCE
This is another no-brainer. If you're running an old-school company, your audience is limited to the people who happen to know where your store is. Maybe they drive by it every day, maybe they've heard of you through your cold calls, advertisements, Yellow Pages listings or taped-up street signs. But that's a narrow customer base that comprises people who are probably in a fairly limited geographic area. If your business doesn't have a storefront, you have an even smaller audience. Once you unveil your website, your audience immediately expands to everyone on the Internet. That's billions of people.
4. IT'S ALWAYS OPEN
Unless you're operating a convenience store, your business probably isn't going to be open around the clock — but your website will be! A totally offline business misses out on all those potential customers who can't shop during store hours. If you're online, you reach them 24/7.
5. YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL APPRECIATE IT
Your website doesn't have to be fancy to be effective. At the very least, listing your address, store hours and directions will instantly simplify the lives of your potential customers. Without a website, they'd have to call you to learn these things.
6. IT'LL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE
You can run your website on any number of levels. The ground floor is the bare-bones contact info-and-FAQ version. You can kick it up a notch from there and start selling your products online, and maybe that's where you'd want to stop. You'd probably expand your business quite a bit just by doing that. But your website can also grow your business in indirect ways. If you go a step further, it can turn into a treasure trove of market and customer information.
You can find out a lot about your online audience just by doing the smallest amount of research. Depending on your traffic, this project could be free — signing up for Google Analytics is a good starting point. You can see what percentage of your viewers buy something, how long they stay on the site and who signs up for email lists and newsletters. If you're willing to spend money on analytics, subscribe to or hire a service and really get down to the nitty-gritty. Fine-tune your site based on customer analysis, and you'll really take your business to the next level.
