Did you know that, according to The Balance Small Business, 46% of US small businesses don’t have a website? This is despite the fact that, in the US, 88.5% of people are users of the Internet.
Considering how many people are online and how much research they do about businesses, the importance of websites for businesses is huge.
If you’re a founder, CEO, CMO, or head of marketing at a business, then you might be thinking of designing a website for your business.
However, you might not be sure yet about buying a domain name or paying a developer to create your business website. After all, with so many other business costs to pay, is it worth making this investment?
In this article, we’ll explain why it’s so important for your business to have a website, going through the many benefits you can get out of it.
This way, you can design the best website for your business, putting your business on the map and making more money. Read on to learn more.
The Importance of Websites for Customer Support
One of the most important reasons why your business needs a website is that it makes it easier for you to provide your customers with customer support. If you’re only providing customer support now via email or over the phone, you know how challenging it can be.
When you do this, your support team is inundated by queries.
Additionally, customers feel frustrated because they have to wait to call while your business is actually open—or, they have to wait around for someone to get back to them via email.
With a website, you can more easily address customer issues, making your customers happier and your team feel less overwhelmed.
Chatbots
One of the benefits of a website is that you can put chatbots on it. Don’t worry, you won’t have to invest in a fully AI version to do this. You can actually pre-program chatbots to provide customers with template answers.
Additionally, they can provide customers with information about products and services, sign-up procedures, and more.
FAQ Section
You can also include an FAQ section on your website. Whether customers want to learn more about your refund policy or the details of the different tiers of service you provide, they can find all that information there.
As a result, they won’t inundate your team with the most frequent queries. Additionally, they’ll feel like your business is going out of its way to being helpful and transparent, which will make your customers more likely to become loyal to your brand.
More Visibility for Your Business
When you run a brick-and-mortar store, one of the most important ways to draw in customers is by putting your store in a popular location and making it an exciting, aesthetically pleasing place to shop. This increases your business exposure and traffic.
When you have a website, you’re doing the online version of this, creating more visibility for your business online.
Even if you already have a brick-and-mortar store, you can attract more customers if you also have an online storefront.
In fact, over 250 million Americans shopped online in 2020. So if you want customers who prefer online shopping to buy from you, in addition to those who go into your store, you need an online storefront.
Website importance is even greater if you run your company entirely online. This way, your customers will feel that they’re interacting with your business, metaphorically “stepping foot” into it, when they visit your site.
Browsing through the different options available to them, they’ll feel like they’re having a shopping experience.
If you don’t have a website, then you’ll miss out on connecting with a great number of potential customers.
People Do Online Research Before Making a Purchase
These days, people do online research before they decide on a product or service they want to buy. In fact, according to Retail Dive, 87% of shoppers start out their product searches on the Internet. If you don’t have a website, how will they know about what you have to offer?
When you have a website where you optimize SEO and make it user-friendly, one of the website benefits is that potential customers will find you when they’re doing their research of what they’re looking to buy.
Additionally, when you provide lengthy product or service descriptions and user reviews and ratings on your website, your customers will come away with research telling them that what you have to offer is the best.
As a result, they’ll choose to buy from you instead of from a competitor.
Low-Cost Advertising
More than any other form of advertising, having an online presence can get you the greatest amount of reach. And even though it takes some time and effort to build up the traffic on your website so that you’re making a lot of money, it’s not too expensive.
Setting up the website itself can be incredibly cheap, with so many free website builders available that are easy to use. When it comes to how to design a website, it’s simpler and far less costly than it used to be.
Then, once you’ve set up your website, all you have to do is start adding content and using SEO strategies to implement a free, organic search-based marketing strategy.
There will be a few costs, such as paying for social media advertising and PPC, but overall, this is far cheaper than spending a ton of money on other types of advertising such as TV and in the press.
Constant Online Presence
One of the best things about having your own business website is that you’re constantly online and available. If a customer wants to learn about what services and products you’re offering, all they have to do is visit your website.
This gives your business a competitive advantage against other businesses that aren’t online. Any customers who prefer to shop online or who have different hours to the usual 9-5 will be able to access your store.
Even customers who are more traditional shoppers might want to visit your website before coming into your store to learn about deals, hours, and more. The easier you make this for them, the more likely they’ll be to visit your shop.
You Can Share Your Business’s Brand
When customers decide what company they want to buy products and services from, it’s important for them to feel that they connect to the brand. When they do, this makes them loyal customers. This is why you have so many people who only buy one type of smartphone.
One of the best ways you can introduce your customers to your brand is by making it a large part of your website.
By choosing the right color palette for your design, fonts, and a specific “voice” for the content you share, they’ll feel like they’re getting to know your brand.
If they connect with the brand, they’ll be more likely to buy products from you and come back for more.
Note that, when you brand your business, it should also match the brand of your social media accounts (and an app if you have one).
Additionally, it should be visible in other ways you engage with your customers, such as email newsletters.
You Can Share Your Business’s Story and Mission
In addition to being able to share your brand on your website, you can give additional information about why you started your company and who you are. This is your story and your mission. For example, let’s say you run an e-commerce fashion store.
You can use your website as an opportunity to talk about your creative decisions behind your fashion designs. You can also provide your customers with information about how your products are manufactured.
If workers’ rights or using eco-friendly materials are important to you, this is a great place to show it off. All you need is an About Page where you can expand on the “who” of your business.
Customers will feel truly connected to your business when you give them a chance to know your story, making them more likely to buy from you and become loyal customers.
Your Business Will Look Professional
If you want your business to be taken seriously by your customers, then you need a website. It makes your business look more professional. If all you’re doing is selling services and products without a website to back it up, customers might be untrusting.
There are so many fake businesses online, as well as hackers and identification thieves.
When you don’t have a website, customers might think that you’re simply trying to get something out of them instead of offering real services and products!
In addition to having a strong online presence with your website, you should bolster it with a social media presence.
Run a brick-and-mortar store? It doesn’t hurt to put your information into Google Maps, either. With all these elements together, customers will think you run a professional, legitimate website they can trust.
Additionally, if it’s a well-designed website, they’ll assume that you create high-quality products or services and will be more likely to buy from you.
Sales 24/7
When you have a website, your customers can shop from you at any time, from anywhere. No longer do you have to rely on your opening hours of your store on your phone sales team to make sales. Suddenly, the amount of money you make will grow exponentially.
Information Exchange
If customers are happy with your products or services, they’ll want to learn more about them. The best way to make this process easier for your customers is by having an online website. There, they can learn about additional potential purchases to make.
They can also find out about any new products or services you’ll have out soon, as well as any deals.
Customers might also be interested in signing up for an e-newsletter so they can get this information (as well as special offers just for subscribers!) before anyone else.
You can make it easier for them to sign up for e-newsletters on your website.
More Customer Information
When you have a website, you can learn more about your customers through your website traffic. You can learn about what other websites led them to your website, what pages attracted their attention, and when they decided to abandon a shopping cart.
With this information, you can go on to improve your marketing efforts as well as decisions on what products to make or which services to offer.
Over time, with the analytics you can easily get with many website formats, you’ll build a stronger strategy that will get you more customers and more money.
If you provide them with free information or products in exchange for their email, you can also stay in touch with them over time and get them to become a loyal customer.
Need More Information?
Now that you’ve learned about the importance of websites for businesses, you might need additional information. Maybe you want to learn about how to design a website specifically for your business. Or maybe you want to learn more about SEO strategy.
Whatever information you need, we can help. At Riserr, we’re experts when it comes to web design and digital marketing strategies. We also offer national and local SEO services.
To learn more about how we can help you, contact us now.
