Businesses often rely on their loyal customers who are impressed by their services. This means that a client will often come back to purchase a product or service depending on how he or she was treated on the first purchase. It’s the reason most businesses hire the most competent staff to keep this customer relationship going. This constantly makes the customer more interested in buying from one business as opposed to another. This model works well if one’s business is already established and has very many loyal customers and can rely on recommendations from them.

However, if there is anything that a business requires to expand, then this model may not be reliable in the long run and it is even more challenging for new businesses. This process is slow and relies on the goodwill of satisfied customers. For any business to exist, it must have an address, contact information and any other form of documentation to show that it is legitimate and that people can deal with it or interact with its products. In this fast-paced world, the business will not just need a physical address but always an online presence, a virtual address.

If you are not sure your business needs a website, then here are the top 5 reasons you need to acquire one. At this moment you could be worried about the cost of maintaining a website and the other extra responsibility of managing it, the most important thing is to first start somewhere.

It’s Important for Your Business

A website offers you the opportunity to build a long-lasting relationship with your clients whilst offering more credibility and professionality for your business. This is the most important reason for any small business that is looking to open its doors to more clients within a given community. According to Safari Digital, 62% of consumers will disregard a business if they can’t find them online and 70% of consumers will visit a store because of information found online.

A website can help small businesses increase flexibility, control, branding and credibility. You may be wondering why a website is important and yet you already have a social media page. Whereas a social media page is important for your business, you are limited to the design, process and technology of the platform you are using. This means that you cannot be creative with your ideas and worst of all, you have no control over a social media page because the terms and conditions of these platforms change over time.

It Saves Your Time and Provides Customer Service

Most often when a client wants to find out about what products or services you offer, they will call and ask you. This may be ideal if you have so many people who are employed primarily to offer customer service. However, this may not be ideal for small businesses that are often understaffed and one person takes on multiple tasks at a time. This is where a website of your own can help mitigate this challenge. Having a website will enable you to publish all the necessary information about your product or service online. This means that clients will be able to easily find the information they are looking for without the need to call you since your website has all the information about the services you offer and most importantly, your location. This will enable you and your staff to focus on the most fundamental task of growing your business while letting the website handle those most commonly asked questions about your business.

It’s an Important Stage in Your Customer’s Journey

There are over 4.6 billion internet users worldwide and that is where most of your customers are. In an online customer journey, there are steps through which a customer will go before actually purchasing your product or service. Based on the number of internet users, if a business does not have a website, it is likely to miss out on the first step of a customer journey which is awareness. If a person is looking for a given product or service online, they most likely won’t go to social media to search for them. They will go to Google. This explains why you may not appear on the returned search results and virtually no one out of your social media circle will get to know about your business.

It offers Your Business Social Proof

Whereas social media will allow you to interact with your customers, your website remains the best place for people to get more information about your business. A website will allow you to display your best testimonials from previous clients to act as proof to establish trust with potential clients.

With your website, you choose which reviews to publish so that third-party review sites don’t minimize the good things people say about your business.

A Website Puts You Ahead of Your Competitors

With a well-designed and developed website, it is possible to outrank your industry’s “big boys” and get quality leads from search engines organically. Organic search is anyone’s game and the size of a business does not matter if you play your cards right and properly optimize your website. Having an effective website allows you to compete against bigger websites without breaking the bank.

Conclusion

Having complete control over your online presence is one of the most fundamental attributes of having your website. You choose the design of your website, the alignment of the content of your site, you choose to create your terms and conditions regarding how you interact with your clients and better yet, you appear on all search engines whenever someone searches about the products and services you deal in without even mentioning your name through a well-managed Search Engine Optimization procedure.