Investing in a Business Website

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In 2009 about 45% of small businesses had a website. That number jumped to 53% just five short years later in 2014. With an additional 13% of small business owners planning to create a website in the near future, your competition is either working on getting a website put together, or already online.

Five Reasons To Have a Business Website

There are many different reasons small businesses choose to create a website. Some want to sell products and services to a broader audience, others want to shift some customer service functions to a self-service model. While these sorts of reasons will apply to some businesses and not to other, we can think of five reasons that every small business should think about getting online.

First, a professional website creates a good first impression. Most of your potential customers are researching many of their purchases online before they make them. If you don’t have a website, you’re missing a golden opportunity to shape the opinion they form of your business.

With the growth of business rating websites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor, as well as review systems within Google and Facebook, it’s likely potential customers are already getting some sort of impression of your business online. Unless you get online as well, you won’t be able to balance negative reviews and ratings with your own website and content.

Second, if you don’t have a website you’re missing customers who don’t know you exist. Customers routinely look up store hours, location addresses, and phone numbers online. If they can’t find that information about your business, it’s likely they’ll move on to the next competitor who does provide the information they’re looking for online. Creating a website is an easy way to get critical information in front of potential customers.

Third, if customers can’t find your website, it goes without saying that not having a website is costing you business. Failing to have a website doesn’t just leave a bad impression, or a minor inconvenience that can be overcome. Failing to have a website means potential customers skip by your business, and head straight to the nearest competitor who has a website, and is active online.

Fourth, creating a website opens the door to new opportunities and markets. In years past, doing business across the country, or on the other side of the world, meant establishing a physical presence in that market. That is no longer the case. Many business have established worldwide operations from a single office location – or in the case of distributed companies – from no office location whatsoever. Today, with the right website, your company will be open for business 24 hours a day, with the potential to reach a global customer base.

Fifth, the rise of ecommerce has created a way for businesses to establish a much stronger relationship with their customers. Some brands, such as Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks, command so much loyalty that they have transformed many of their customers into apostles who have a near-religious affinity for the brand. According to Fortune, one of the steps needed to develop that sort of loyalty is to develop a strong virtual relationship with customers.

The Purpose of a Business Website

Now that you’re sold on the reasons why your business needs a website, it’s time to start planning. Publishing the wrong type of website, or one that does not reflect positively on your business, is an expensive mistake, that may actually cause more harm than doing nothing at all. So before you start looking for a website designer, make sure you have defined the purpose of your website.

The vast majority of effective business websites are designed with one of three purposes in mind:

• To let customers know you exist: a site that establishes your credentials.
• To produce new leads you can convert into customers: a marketing site.
• To sell products or services: an ecommerce site.

These three purposes also build on each other. An ecommerce site has to establish a company’s credentials and create leads before it can convert those leads into customers and process ecommerce transactions.

However, that hierarchy of website purposes only works one way. If you’ve created a site that simply establishes your credentials, and you try to sell products on it, it’s unlikely to be successful. In order to create an effective ecommerce site you need to design the site with that purpose in mind.

How to Get Online

With the purpose of your website clearly established in your own mind, it’s time to plan the process of getting your website online. While getting a website published has never been easier, there are a lot of options to consider:

• Do you want to design and publish the website yourself?
• Should you hire a designer or developer to do the work for you?
• How do you decide what content to put on your website?

All of these questions, and many more, are answered in our guide to publishing online. Take your time, do your research, and you’ll have a professional website online faster than you thought possible, at a price you can handle.

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