Do I need a website for my business? Yes! Your website is the heart of your online presence and all your digital marketing efforts. If you want to drive traffic and earn valuable leads, you must build a website that reflects your business and focuses on delivering an excellent experience for your audience. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with building your website, let take that weight off your shoulders. We’ve won dozens of web design awards and have a team of over 450 experts that will help you build your dream website. If your business has gotten this far without a website, you might be wondering: do I need a website for my business? What’s the point if my business is already successful without one? The short answer is that there has never been a better or more important time to invest in a website for your business. A website offers a wide variety of benefits for small businesses, and most of these benefits increase in value exponentially year over year, just like the Internet itself.
Does your small #business need a #website? 10 reasons the answer is a resounding yes 🙌 CLICK TO TWEET Not convinced? We’ve collected ten of the biggest benefits your small business can receive from even a simple website. Ten reasons why you need a website for your small business A website makes you look professional 84% of today’s consumers think a website makes your business more credible than companies who only have social media profiles. Your website is also the perfect place to show off any professional certifications or awards your business has.
Beyond that, having your own website lets you create a branded email address (e.g. dianna@yoursite.com) which adds a level of professionalism to all of your correspondence, especially if you’ve used a personal email address to conduct business up until now. In addition, some email marketing tools no longer allow users to send emails from personal addresses. This means that if you want to take advantage of the power of email marketing, you’ll need a business email account. Your website can attract new customers through Google You may be happy with the current size of your business, but every company experiences customer turnover. To encourage continued success, you need to attract new customers, and one of the best ways to do it is by making yourself more visible on Google. Social media networks are indexed on Google, and social media posts can be found with the search engine, but a website gives you access to many more tools and strategies for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And SEO is the key to making your business appear on the front page of Google.
The phrase “search engine optimization” might be intimidating, but in practice, it’s fairly simple. You enter words and phrases related to your business into a keyword research tool, figure out which ones are getting the most traffic on Google, then build your content around those phrases. As a rule, each piece of content should be focused on a different keyword, so that as your list of content grows, your site is able to rank for more keywords. There are some excellent SEO plugins for WordPress that make it easy to do this, no previous training required. You can clearly showcase your products and services You can show potential customers what they’ll get when they work with you by displaying high-quality photography on your website. Take a look at how the UK restaurant Blackhouse has accomplished this on their website: The Blockhouse business needs a website to show pictures of its food You can also use your website design, along with the featured images, to give people a sense of what it feels like to enter your physical location. This works particularly well if your brand is closely tied to the “feel” of your location, like the Canadian restaurant Stormcrow Manor.
The Stormcrown Manner need a website to give a feel for its decor Another thing you can do is publish important information about your products and services on your website to make sure you’re attracting the right customers. For example, if you run a restaurant, you might want to mark any items on your menu that are gluten-free so people with Celiac or other conditions that make gluten dangerous know they can eat in your establishment. You can display your best reviews and testimonials prominently on your website Displaying your best reviews and/or testimonials prominently on your website is a great way to establish social proof. This might come in the form of personal customer testimonials, like this review on the website of the non-profit organization STEAMLabs: Testimonials at the Steamlabs website If your business has appeared in articles from newspapers or popular local blogs, you can also feature those, as Stormcrow Manor has done below: Storm Crow manner publication list Publishing your best reviews on your website also serves the secondary purpose of creating a permanent archive. This means that even if third-party review sites close at some point in the future, you’ll still have access to your best reviews. A website can encourage customers to contact you
A website is a great place to make your contact information easily available to potential customers. You can even publish your contact information in a header or footer so it appears on every single page. Snakes and Lattes, a small chain of board game cafes, has placed phone numbers for all four of their locations in their website footer: Snakes and Lattes displaying its various locations Modern website builders (more on those in a bit) also make it easy to create a contact form, which can protect your business email from spam. You can integrate your website with Google Maps so people can find you more easily A website lets you embed maps directly into your content. Some businesses, like STEAMLabs, have a map embedded directly onto their home page: Steamlabs embeds a Google Maps map An embedded map makes it easy for people who don’t spend a lot of time in your area to find your business. This is particularly great if you host events, as they might attract people who wouldn’t otherwise spend time in the neighborhood your business is in.
Your website establishes your place in your industry As of 2021, 71% of small businesses have websites and 81% of customers research things online before they buy them. In other words, if your competitors are online and you’re not, those competitors get the first interactions with customers. Creating a website gives you a space to share what your business is about, establish your role in the industry, and connect with the customers who need you. A website is no longer intimidating to create and manage Modern website builders like Squarespace and Wix make it easy for you to build an attractive, mobile-friendly site without any knowledge of code. Even WordPress, the most popular way to make a website, has transitioned to a block editor: The WordPress block editor makes it easy to create a website for your small business In other words, it has never been simpler to create a functional, aesthetically pleasing website.
How to make a website with WordPress 👈 A website ensures your success over the long term As of January 2021, almost 66 billion people (55% of the global population) used the Internet. In many countries, that number is much higher. In the US, for example, over 90% of people are online. Without a website, your business is invisible to these people. As we progress further into the digital era, your business will become invisible to everyone unless you invest in a website. So to stay competitive in this increasingly digital world, your business needs to get online. You can get all of these benefits without spending a fortune Building a website isn’t just easier than it used to be; it’s also more affordable. If you’re willing to follow a simple, non-technical DIY approach, you can build a website for under $100/year.
WordPress, which again is the most popular way to build a website, is 100% free for the core software. If you add a free WordPress theme like Neve or Hestia and cheap website hosting, you can be up and running at a very low cost. Learn more about how much a website costs 👈 So, do I need a website for my business? The final verdict Hopefully, by now you’ve realized that the question isn’t “do I need a website for my business”, but “can I afford to not have a website in the digital era”. And the answer, if you want to continue thriving in the long term, is no. More and more, even staying afloat without a business website is impossible. Your customers are online, your competitors are online, and if you’re not there to intervene, your competitors and your customers will connect, leaving you in the lurch. Does your small #business need a #website? 10 reasons the answer is a resounding yes 🙌 CLICK TO TWEET If you’re ready to get started, check out our recommendation of great website builders for small businesses, or our simple, step-by-step tutorial on how to make a website with WordPress. Again, WordPress is the most popular way to build a website – it powers over one-third of all the websites on the Internet. It’s also affordable and accessible to non-technical users, which is a big part of why it’s so popular.
Eigen Website MakenYour small business needs a website. Here's how to build one. Building a small business website is important to inform your audience, explain your value proposition, boost brand recognition and drive sales. To build a business website, you first need to choose a domain name and secure web hosting. Then, optimize your website to improve your search engine rankings and drive traffic. Keep your website up to date and optimized for mobile devices. Also, ensure your site speed is adequate to improve your search engine rankings. This article is for small business owners looking to build a website or improve upon their existing website. It’s no longer feasible to run a business, even a brick-and-mortar one, without a web presence. Consumers turn to the internet for everything from product research to location and operating hours. Even just a simple, well-designed website can give you an edge in your field, and if you have products to sell, your site can open up new markets and expand your business cheaply and easily.
Website design software has evolved to be easy for anyone to use. You don’t need to know coding to develop an attractive and functional site. No matter what program you use, you just need to follow some basic rules and tips to give your website a professional look, make it easy to find, and show your company in the best light. Here’s our step-by-step guide to creating a successful business website. Determine the primary purpose of your website. A business website generally serves as a space to provide general information about your company or a direct platform for e-commerce. Whether you create a simple website that tells a little about your company or a more complex e-commerce site, the most important thing you must do is say what your company does – on the homepage in plain terms. Don’t make customers root around to discover if your company can do what they need, warned Erin Pheil of website design company Followbright.
Editor’s note: Looking for the right website design service for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs. “Think about your specific user experience and the journey the user will go through as they navigate your site,” added Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of website design and digital marketing agency Blue Fountain Media. “Whatever the fundamental goal of your website is or whatever the focus may be, users should be easily able to achieve it, and the goal itself should be reinforced as users navigate throughout your site.” If you don’t plan to accept payments (like Apple Pay) through your website, you won’t have as much work to do in setting it up. If you are a retailer or service provider and want to offer customers the option to pay online, you’ll need to use an external service to receive your payments, which we’ll discuss later in this article.
Decide your domain name. Your domain name is one of the most important features of your website. It’s the URL you’ll share with your current and potential clients and promote on social media. Therefore, you want it to be descriptive and easy to remember and type in. Try to keep it short, and steer clear of abbreviations, acronyms, and numbers, if possible, to avoid customer confusion. You also need to decide your top-level domain, or TLD. This is the suffix at the end of your domain name, such as .com, .net or .biz. However, nontraditional TLD names have grown in recent years. These TLDs can be based on location, such as .nyc, or type of business, like .marketing, .agency or .law. While these can be descriptive, .com is still the main go-to. Read our article on choosing a nontraditional TLD for more information. Once you’ve selected your domain name, you’ll need to confirm its availability and purchase it through a domain registrar. These are some popular domain registrars: Domain.com Wix GoDaddy Squarespace
As you select your new domain name, check copyrights to make sure you’re not infringing on anyone else’s protected name. If your preferred URL is already taken, you can call the company using it and ask to buy it from them or use a domain buying service from a company like GoDaddy, which will reach out to the owners of your desired domain name. This service costs around $70 per domain. TipTip: Your domain name is how users will find your website, so choose one related to your business or services. Choose a web host. Every website needs a host – a server where all its data is stored for the public to access at all times. Hosting your own website is probably too large an expense for your small business, so you’ll need to select an external host. Depending on your budget, you can choose from two different routes. A shared web host, the less-expensive option, means you’ll share a server with other sites. Dedicated hosting costs significantly more, but it means that you get your own private server and won’t have to compete with other sites that could drag down your speed. Some web builder platforms, such as Squarespace and Wix, include web hosting in their monthly packages. These are some options for web hosting services: