Yes, small businesses do need a website to promote their business. Many argue that the Facebook page they have will suffice to give out the basic information. But, that information may not always enough to convince your customers to choose your business. A complete website is required to improve the web presence of a business. A website will give customers a chance to know more information about your business, services, FAQs, and also about the owners. Even if you are the only provider in the area and the customer has no choice, they will have hard time trusting you. A website can improve the trust with the customer by giving complete information about your established products and services.
Small businesses are leveraging Information Technology to improve their sales. A website is a precious asset which can be used to market your services and products. A website can give detailed description about your processes, vision, mission, goals, social responsibility, and any other information. A website also can improve your business in the search engine crawling as there will be relevant tags such as location, hours, contact information highlighted in the Search Console of the Google while setting up a website.
If your business is a family owned business and is passed down from earlier generations, you can include all the information in the website. If one of your products or services is exclusive in your area, you can highlight that aspect. People who move new to your area, which is quite common, are less likely to know about your business. If they google your business, they might find only sample information from Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and so on. This will give a brief introduction about your business. However, if you own a website, new comers can get a complete picture about your business including your history, goals, and overall services or product information. The social media act as additional resources to know the latest happenings, coupons, promotions, and so on. If you want people to call you, you can make that happen with the website. If you wish more customers could walk in your store, you can make that happen. The opportunities are endless in terms of generating new sales using a website.
A website also can be treated as an asset which you can transfer any time when you sell or transfer your business. A website with proper SEO and content can show you first to the customers who are searching for similar products in the area. Another advantage of a website is that you can include marketing campaigns such as Adwords. A basic contact form can get you sales leads directly to your inbox. Another advantage of a website is that you can include your product/service gallery with images and videos. Small businesses can publish blogs relevant to their business and increase the customer retention. Every day, businesses are encountering unique opportunities and challenges which can be very well captured in the blogs. All this can be accomplished in Facebook or Twitter but those are limited. Moreover, if you have useful content on your blog, you can link this to the Social media accounts that you have. All the social media have widgets which you can showcase on your website as well.
If you decide to have a website, make sure you have a mobile friendly one. Google started penalizing the websites which are not responsive to multiple screen sizes. That means, even if you have a website, if it is not mobile friendly, google will not show your website on the top searches. The cost of owning a website is considerably become cheaper which I think is wonderful. The hosting providers are having mobile templates which you can customize according to your needs. If you do not like the monthly fees, you can buy hosting and develop a website according to your choices.
Contact the website experts at sales[at]kuulstuff[dot]com if you decide to set up a website for your small business. The investment proves to be a great asset for your business. We are experienced with multiple hosting providers and business domains. In addition, a website for small business can be seen as a first step towards integrating Information Technology to improve your business domain and stay ahead of the competition. 🙂