Why every Business needs a Website !
The core of every business is the customer. Every business, to build a loyal customer base needs to reach out to a larger set of people – the audience.
Every business needs customers. And every business needs to sell its products and services to its customers. Without sales the business no longer becomes sustainable. And without customers, you do not have a sale.
There are the traditional business marketing methods that have withstood the test of time. Businesses used to do local marketing through signage and hoardings, door-to-door marketing using fliers and brochures, marketing through corporate events, workshops, and seminars, and marketing using the means of radio, television, and films. A couple of decades back we had seen the rise of Email marketing and affiliate marketing too.
But the times are changing. What we are seeing now and all around us is the rise of a new model of marketing. Latest technology and a set of new tools have been changing the marketing scenario towards being technology and internet-driven. The rise of the internet and the reach that it provides across millions is also one of the main reasons for this very noticeable change of approach.
How a website benefits every business?
We are now in the Digital Age. And in this digital age, every business needs a website, use an online persona, giving a face to their brands in the digital ecosphere. With the help of technology, one can build a marketing model which is internet-driven. This is digital marketing and it is wider in reach and cost-effective.
Here we will review why the digital marketing approach of today needs a business website as one of its core elements around which the whole marketing plan should revolve. This includes small and medium businesses. Small and medium businesses (SMEs) and Startups need it more and may have far more to gain than their larger competitors. And there have been many David & Goliath stories out there in this digital world.
The internet has provided a vast neutral playing field, and the stepping stone for pushing your business in this digital world is to start by building your business website.
So let’s begin.
Top 7 reasons Why every Business needs a Website
The internet is fast-changing, the world is going digital, and having a website is the first important step of stepping into this digital world. And the prime benefit of having a business website is that your business stays open all day every day.
ONLINE STOREFRONT WHICH WORKS FOR YOU 24*7*365
Now wouldn’t you like to have more customers walk up to your pet supplies store? Wouldn’t you like to have a larger reach than your neighborhood or neighborhood high street customers? How do you bring your business to the eyes of a million more prospective customers? How can you be visible to that larger audience?
Let us consider that you have been running a pet accessory supplies store business successfully for the last few years. It gives you a decent profit and generates income for you and your small set of employees. And you have a set of loyal customers who visit your establishment regularly.
Great. That speaks to the fact that you have a valuable service that your customers love.
Let’s say you operate your business from the local mall. How long can you keep your business open? We all know you are regulated by the Shopping Mall timings. Sad but true. In our physical world, we all operate our businesses within fixed hours and a predefined schedule and a significantly low reach because of geographical reach and access.
The answer to the above is to turn digital. This is only possible with the help of the internet and by having your online store out there. A store that does not have limitations of geography, reach or work timings. A store that can bring you people from everywhere and anywhere, literally.
A website is your Brand Ambassador.
Yes, A website is your biggest brand ambassador which continuously speaks about your business. You literally can allow anyone to have a look at your products, check the offers, and read through customer reviews ( hey that isn’t something which was so readily available to showcase before, right!) Y So once you have your website out there, it keeps working as your business website. You are now on a level playing ground with all your competitors. Your brand builds an online identity that speaks continuously about you, your products, and your business. It helps spread your business story to your potential audience
You can create rich engaging fresh content for your audience. Your website doubles as yow your storefront – sharing your business content, contacts, location, services, images, videos, audios, and your USPs to anyone interested to check you out. And if there is a change in your business product or your services, you can refresh your content easily. In the long run, you are creating your online brand. You are marketing digitally. For the millions who are out there searching for the right product or service, you need to provide them with an address. That address is your online store, your business website, or your Blog.
Your business website becomes your digital residence where you can display and demonstrate your products and services. And this is a residence that is global in its reach. This plays a central role in driving your business and marketing your products to the online community. With a website, you have full ownership to decorate and beautify it. You build your content around your business products and services. It is the fresh content that enriches your website, and in turn, creates engagement with your audience.
CREATES ENGAGEMENT and BUILDS AUDIENCE
Once any business has its website, it becomes easier to build your audience around it. You build an audience who returns to your website not only for browsing the catalog of your products or services but also to engage with the content and knowledge which you can share to help your audience grow along.
You want your customers to be engaged with you and to provide you with future business and consequently repeat business right? Engagement with your audience helps better businesses. The best way is to get them to click over to your website. And once they reach you have the awareness and possibility to keep them engaged
So let us say that you have a hair salon for women. Women would love to know any latest techniques or any new haircare and skincare products launched in the market. So if you can provide such content to your users, they are bound to subscribe with you and stick with you. You now have got a regular base of an audience who have subscribed and who would love to listen to you or check out your products.
A higher engagement with your audience is one of the key benefits of your business. Once you have brought them over to your website, you engage them and satisfy their curiosity. The greater the engagement, the greater the possibility of creating leads for your business. This in turn increases your chance of success.
Customers prefer to know :
Who owns this business?
How long is the business running?
How do I reach the business?
Is there anyone I can contact?
Will anyone respond to my customer service requirement?
Consider newsletters and email marketing as a part of your brand engagement strategy. A pop-up allows your audience to enter their email address and then you can share an update with them once in a while. What your subscription does is that it builds a list of not only subscribers but a very potential list of future customers. They consume your monthly newsletter content, and you keep them connected to your website and business. Your business newsletters through emails drive all the audience back to your site and increase the potentiality of a sale.
Your customers, followers and audience enjoys your knowledge, tips, stories, updates, and discount offers and needs no marketing budget. They are your tribe. You have built your devoted audience.
BUILDS CREDIBILITY, TRANSPARENCY, AUTHENTICITY, AND TRUST
Customers prefer to know :
Who owns this business?
How long is the business running?
How do I reach the business?
Is there anyone I can contact?
Will anyone respond to my customer service requirement?
In this age, customers do a lot of online research before they engage with a brand and follow up with a business transaction or a sale. Potential customers before dealing with you will always like to find out more about you and your business. The majority of users like to check out the business before really making a transaction.
Your small and medium business with a website builds this trust for you in the online world. It engages your audience to become the customers of tomorrow. It engages them with your brand, reviews, and your business story. It engages them with fresh ideas.
With your website, you answer these questions by sharing information. It provides a physical location, an email address, or a contact phone or messaging number. The website can also allow the prospective customer to check out your content from your website – the business manuals, images, slides, videos, and articles and these you can showcase through your website. This helps to bring legitimacy to your business and brand.
The more you share, the more you drive awareness and create engagement for your business.
Your business credibility can depend on several factors.
A positive browsing experience with easy-to-use links and content drives this earned credibility. It is earned while your customers browse your content. And reviews by other satisfied customers build assumed credibility.
With credibility comes authenticity. Your authentic approach, authentic product, or service quality can now be easily demonstrated to your online flock. They consume the content through your website.
And now with a flourishing website that acts as your address out in the land of ether, you drive your marketing and social media activities around it.
GENERATES LEADS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Our online behavior has changed and so have our spending habits.
The way we seek information and content in any form has completely revolutionized.
Let’s go back in time for fifteen years. Suppose you wanted to inform your friends about this restaurant which serves great food. What would you have done? Shared the location/ address or phone number with them, right?
But how many people would you have called and informed? Maximum 5, OR 10 , , right?
But now we are in 2022. And now if we want to inform our friends about the same upcoming restaurant we share the business website or their social media page. We can easily share with 50 known people who in turn may share with 500. A simple review or recommendation can influence hundreds now with its compounding effect.
Once we receive the same suggestion, how do we react? We check out the website, check the local forums and groups for reviews, and have a look at the online brochures, images, videos, or tips. We look at how others, whom we have never met, have reviewed your business.
You see, we have changed and our ways of consuming information have changed.
CREATES EDGE OVER COMPETITORS
Once your business has its website, you have an edge over your competitors. You have gone global in your outreach. Your business is no more restricted to that select set of local customers that you used to serve. You have opened up your business to anyone in the virtual world.
Previously your business had to depend upon a physical connection with your customers to have a business transaction – either a physical meeting, an in-store visit, a telephonic call, or connecting with you at the local event.
But that’s not the case anymore. You are no longer restricted by those factors anymore. You have now provided your customer’s innovative digital ways of reaching you. You have opened your doors to email connects, messenger connects, chat services, online appointments, digital promotions, social media activities, webinars and so many more. These constitute your inbound marketing activities too – activities created to drive customers back into your website and generate business. You have just leaped into the virtual world.
Once you have got them interested and into your website, you can have a better engagement with them. You can understand their needs and requirements better now. You can ask them to let you know what they are looking for. You can ask them to tell you how you can serve them.
You now know your customers better. You can run an online survey for your customers to find out their needs. This helps you to place the right products and services for them. With your business website and modern digital tools, you have started to drive your business digitally.
You have started to grow and soon you can grow exponentially. With more business-driven to your doorstep through the benefits of technology, you can build better products, provide better services and draw your customers closer.
Thus any business which has its website now has a very clear edge over its competitors. It reaps the benefits of a modern-era digital presence. All your Digital Branding, Content Management, Marketing or Advertising activities would now be built around your core – your Business website.
And, in the meantime, you have left your competitors far behind.
ALLOWS CUSTOMER UPDATES
Consider that you are going for a renovation of your holistic yoga clinic. This can take about a month and thus leaves your customers in limbo. Reaching out to your regular members or customers ahead of the renovation is an absolute necessity. Isn’t it?
And in this context, what better way than to use the Digital medium, your business website. The advantage of having a website is that you can quickly create a landing page that informs the customers of the renovation going on, informing them of how long it might take and requesting them to bear with you. You would tell them when you expect to be back with the new user experience. You can share stories and images of the work going on.
With your business website, you have reached your customers well and ahead of time.
Don’t you think it would delight your customers? I bet you do.
They stay engaged, they stay loyal and they anxiously wait to find the new customer experience of your clinic.
Having your website also enables you to provide regular updates for your customer as a business. Let us examine the below scenario of how a business benefits from having its website.
Imagine that you have a clothing store where you have brought in a new range of silk outfits. Wouldn’t you like to reach out to your existing and prospective customers and inform them? With your website, it happens in a flash. You can follow up with a Newsletter with more details and images.
The best thing about having a digital asset is the ease with which you can make changes to it. The ability to scale up or down. And the change can be delivered fast.
Suppose your business is moving to a new address. What do you need to do? I will leave this with you to figure out yourselves. 🙂
PARTNERS SOCIAL MEDIA
Every business needs its website to partner with its social media activities. A business website, when it partners with your social media activities, creates a larger impact. Your customers are probably already there on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. Keeping the users engaged and customers’ attention only through social media is a challenge and needs constant efforts
At the end of the day, it is not your platform, but someone else’s. It is owned by a large business multinational. And you are only one of its multi-million subscribers contributing to the growth of the platform, making your influence negligible. You can be at the mercy of the platform.
The Future Proof Method
The future-proof method of benefitting from social media networking and connection is to drive your social media followers back to your business website. And in the process, you can ask them to subscribe to your newsletters and updates while collecting their contact details.
You now have a direct connection to your customers. You have their names, addresses, email addresses, and also their phone numbers. You can run a campaign on your own since you have their contact touchpoints. In such a case, you are no longer dependent upon the social media platform. You now have your tribe, and can build a platform around that too.
The future-proof way to benefit from social media networking and connection is to drive your social media followers back to your business website. And in the process, you can ask them to subscribe to your newsletters and updates while collecting their contact details.
You now have a direct connection to your customers. You have their names, addresses, email addresses, and also their phone numbers. You can run a campaign on your own since you have their contact touchpoints. In such a case, you are no longer dependent upon the social media platform. You now have your tribe, and can build a platform around that too.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF YOUR BUSINESS
A business that has its business website is just a stepping stone. But this digital age expects more. It expects you and your business to undergo a Digital Transformation.
The customers of today are very different from the customers of a decade ago? I believe you do.
A quick look at the rise of online platforms, e-commerce sites, our dependency on our mobile phones for almost every facet of life, the number of apps we use in our daily life, and the rising hours of online usage for most convinced that the world revolves around digital more.
As a part of this digital transformation, every small business now needs to consider its online presence and branding and connecting with its customers and its loyal followers. So it is time to seriously consider having your business store in the virtual world
DELOITTE on SMALL BUSINESSES :
Deloitte’s study on small businesses in 2018 has proved that it pays to go digital. That is vital information I guess. Read it here.
Thus every business has its business website is the first stepping step toward a digital transformation of your business.
The customers of today are very different from the customers of a decade ago? I believe you do.
A quick look at the rise of online platforms, e-commerce sites, our dependency on our mobile phones for almost every facet of life, the number of apps we use in our daily life, and the rising hours of online usage for most convinced that the world revolves around digital more.
As a part of this digital transformation, every small business now needs to consider its online presence and branding and connecting with its customers and its loyal followers. So it is time to seriously consider having your business store in the virtual world
