Millions of Internet users make online purchases every day. They search for information online, compare competitors’ offers, and study descriptions of products and services. All this would be impossible without the existence of websites.
Small and medium-sized entrepreneurs often underestimate the dozens of web development opportunities or are not aware of them at all. However, it is worth seriously thinking about the issue of a website, because it can bring a lot of benefits to your business, so website development for small business is a very important thing in the strategy of the entire business.
What business problems does the website solve?
A website is not just a business card of a company, but a powerful online sales tool. While office staff may respond to clients at a specific time, the site is available 24/7 and helps ensure that no requests are lost. Using your own platform you can:
- Attract new clients and partners. To expand the sales funnel and find partners, sites are advertised in various ways: through banner advertising, contextual advertising, SEO. You choose which promotion channels to use to bring the target audience to your resource.
- Create a brand image. The site allows you to tell the brand’s story in detail, demonstrate technologies, certificates and awards. Depending on the tasks and specifics of the business, you can present a catalog with a detailed description of goods or services.
- Communicate the value proposition. Talking about the company’s mission, revealing the usefulness of the product and showing a unique selling proposition is difficult to do on social networks, where the interface is adapted for other purposes (photos or short texts, for example). On the site you add the necessary sections and arrange information in any volume and sequence so that it is easy to find.
- Direct clients to an offline location. It is easier for the consumer to make a decision if he finds information in two clicks. Photos of the location, list of services provided, price list, directions – a website with an intuitive structure will not only endear you to the company, but will also attract more customers to the offline location.
- Study user experience. How much did visitors like the site? What made you leave the page? By connecting special analytics, you will find out the duration of visits, the depth of page views, the bounce rate and other data indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the resource.
- Share the team’s successes. In a portfolio, you can show the results with a description of the tasks being solved – supporting examples with photographs, videos or customer reviews. In the news section, you can report on important events and achievements of the team, where the reader will be convinced of the company’s experience.
By integrating your website with CRM, you will systematize customer data and make sales more efficient. Such a system will help automate payment and delivery, set up email newsletters for regular customers. This way, you will free up employees for important tasks and reduce costs for routine operations.
What happens if you promote your business only on social networks?
Search engines remain the main source of information about products and services. Of course, a business can exist without a website, promoting itself through targeted advertising. However, we recommend viewing this method as an auxiliary one: the same advertising on social networks in the long run may cost more than SEO.
Also, without a website:
- Customers won’t be able to get the information they need about you to make a purchasing decision. The web resource will provide a detailed description of the terms of cooperation, an idea of the range and availability of products.
- A potential buyer will not fully understand the level of your expertise. A blog section on the website, containing articles with useful tips, will help you verify the authority of the company and trust the brand.
- The social network account does not literally belong to the owner. The administration can block the profile or change the operating rules, making the platform inconvenient for the audience. By having a web resource, you are free from such risks and have ownership rights to all content.
- The company will not be able to research the target audience and adapt to changes in its demand. Social networks allow you to track the interests of your audience, but brief statistics are not enough. Web analytics gives a more complete picture of the website’s performance and helps to timely adjust the marketing strategy.
- The brand will receive fewer opportunities for promotion. The audience of the Google search engine is much wider than that of social networks. By abandoning the site, you deprive yourself of a share of potential customers and, therefore, possible profits.
A website and social networks are different tools that solve their own problems. They are not interchangeable, but can complement each other. However, if we are talking about a start-up company or an entrepreneur who does not have a large staff of hired employees, then a social network account or landing page is enough.
Setting up advertising yourself will be cheaper than ordering web development from an agency. However, the settings may be incorrect, but the agency will not have such problems. Moreover, specialists have successful cases that will speak about the development potential of your business.
Conclusion
A website is the most reliable platform for promoting goods and services. Its effectiveness does not depend on prohibitions and restrictions from social networks, marketplaces and other advertising tools. Having its own web resource, the company gains access to detailed analytics, improves service, does not overpay to aggregators and third-party directories for placement, and has the opportunity to scale the business.
And always remember: don’t settle for a simple website that won’t benefit you. You need to understand and get an explanation from the developers that the site was created to develop business and increase profits. Otherwise, you will simply waste money, time, and your business will not develop in any way.
Moreover, you will have to spend even more money on refining the site than on creating a new one, because there are nuances that will have to be redone again, and these are additional financial costs. Therefore, it is worth making a website once, with high quality and with confidence that it will work well and make a profit.