Why You Need A Website
Quick Summary: Are you wondering why you need a website? A website is the backbone of any business, no matter whether you sell products and services online or offline. We have answered so many crucial questions in this article and reading them will help you decide if you really need a website for your business or if it’s ok to go with an offline storefront. Let’s explore;
Are you running a successful business? or Are you a startup with a small team? In both cases, you have one common dilemma: does my business need a website?
Of course, if you’re a startup or want to expand your business beyond regions having a website would benefit you in many ways.
But this may be a tricky question if you are running a reasonably successful business. You may have strong evidence to support why a website is irrelevant.
When you look at the other side of having a website for your business, there’s a 90% chance you’d build a website. So, the question remains —why do you need a website? Is it worth having a website for your business?
We shall discuss why having a website is a wise investment and when you should have it. But before we take this discussion forward, let us help you resolve some of the fundamental confusion that is your business needs a website or not.
Does Your Business Need a Website?
We often receive this question from readers around the world, “does my business need a website?” Especially when the company is already plenty profitable.
Based on our research, we can say a big ‘Yes.’
However, we took an expert’s opinion on this. At TopDevelopers.co, our Business Consultant told us, “A business, regardless of industry, must have a website. A website is essential for any business. It helps them establish their online presence, showcase products/services, engage with customers, expand reach, enhance credibility, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior. It’s a must-have tool in today’s digital age that can help them create a brand name out of business.”
Top 11 Reasons Why Does Your Business Needs a Website?
We have a lot to talk about, and we have answered so many questions that we often receive from business owners around the world. We responded to most of their questions, which you will find at the end of this article. Let us come to the core points of why a business needs a website.
A website for business is a virtual storefront to showcase your products and services. But, if you keep your products and services aside for a moment, you have plenty of benefits. For example;
- Establish Online Presence
- Expand Reach
- Enhance Credibility
- Improve Brand Identity
- Grab More Leads
- Increase Organic Traffic
- Increase Customer Engagement
- Gain Insight Into Customer Behavior
- Get Lasting Value
- Creating A Website is Easier and Cheaper
- Free Digital Marketing
Let’s explore these benefits in detail to understand why you need a website for your business;
1: Establish an Online Presence
Did you know 5.6 billion, roughly the world’s 64.4% of the population, use the internet? Of this total, 4.76 billion people, 59.4% of the world’s population, use social media, according to Statista.
Connecting with those populations becomes easy when you have a website. A website provides a strong online presence to your business which helps to generate more revenue. Using scalable and effective websites, you can make your products and services available to your customers around the clock, beyond boundaries.
2: Expand Reach
Website for your business enables you to expand your reach beyond traditional geographical boundaries. You can reach your global audience with just a click of a button and increase brand awareness, customer base, and revenue.
3: Enhance Credibility
A well-designed and well-functional website showcases professionalism and attention to detail. It gives you an opportunity to stand out from your competitors by offering your customers the quality information and services that they are looking for. A website with all relevant information enhances the credibility and legitimacy of a business in the eyes of potential customers. Having such a website builds trust between customers and business which leads to good relationships.
4: Improve Brand Identity
Showcasing who you are, what you represent, and what you stand for is the most important thing you can do. A well-designed website is a crucial aspect of a brand’s identity. It serves as a platform for a business to showcase its brand values, and message through design, content, and user experience. A website that aligns with a brand’s identity can enhance brand recognition, build trust, and create a unique online presence that sets a business apart from competitors.
5: Grab More Leads
Whether you are a service-based or product-based company, getting leads is always a top priority. When you have an online presence such as a website, people know about you and how to contact you. If they become interested in your products and services, they get in touch with you by filling out forms, contact information, or the call to action button from your website.
In short, a website is a powerful tool, enabling a business to capture leads, create a sales funnel, and nurture leads until they are ready to convert. Apart from this, with a robust website and stringent marketing strategies, you can increase sales, grow your customer base, and generate revenue.
6: Increase Organic Traffic
If you have a website built by a top web development company with experienced developers, you get an SEO-friendly and optimized website. With a little marketing effort, the website will appear in Google search results. For example, if you are offering online food delivery, grocery delivery, ride, or booking facilities, an optimized website with good SEO will appear in search results whenever a user searches for these services. It will drastically increase traffic, apart from customer engagement.
Overall, a website is essential for generating organic traffic through search engines, albeit it must be optimized with relevant keywords and built using web development best practices. An improved ranking on Google and other search engines will drive more organic traffic to a website, increase visibility, and help attract potential customers.
7: Increase Customer Engagement
When you have a website, you have multiple options to increase customer engagement. First, with a website, you get multichannel to connect with your customers. Such as social media, blogs, email marketing, and more will help initiate various customer engagement activities. For example;
- You can keep your customers informed with relevant content
- Ask for customer feedback through blogs or social media channels
- Share engaging social media posts
- Attract customers with various marketing activities on your website
This enables a business to keep customers informed about products and services. With a website, you have an opportunity to provide a personalized experience that encourages customer loyalty and retention.
8: Gain Insight into Customer Behavior
For some businesses, knowing customers’ behavior is essential. For example, you need to know their buying pattern, preferences, and what keeps them engaged. These are valuable data that you get through a website. It gives you insights into customer behavior and preferences through analytics tools. The information you accumulate through the tools can help a business make informed decisions about marketing strategies, product offerings, and customer engagement.
9: Get Lasting Value
Investing in a business website offers a long-term value that surpasses temporary ad campaigns. While Pay per Click (PPC) ads such as social media require continuous payment for limited visibility, a website provides an ongoing Return on Investment (ROI). With time to refine and optimize, a website becomes a persistent online presence, showcasing your offerings and establishing credibility. It helps you;
- Attracts organic traffic
- Collects valuable data
- Allows for regular updates and engagement
By prioritizing a well-designed and optimized website, you can secure lasting benefits and build strong customer relationships for the future.
10: Creating A Website is Easier and Cheaper
Today you have plenty of options, from online website-building tools to top web development companies worldwide. Select any options you like and get going. The cost to build a website differs when you choose a website builder or custom website development. No doubt, you need expert advice if you should go with website builders to create a website in a moment of time or hire talented web developers to build a highly scalable website. Besides, the selection of resources will also depend on your requirement and the type of business you do. If custom development is your choice, outsourcing your project can save significant costs. However, you must take expert opinion on how, where, and when to outsource.
11: Free Digital Marketing
A website is an essential component of digital marketing. It provides a platform for a business to promote its products or services through various digital channels. For example, write blogs, boost them using social media channels, and pay nothing. Apart from social media, email marketing, and online advertising are freebies with websites. By leveraging these channels, a business can reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, and generate more leads. A website also provides a central hub for digital marketing efforts. That means you market your products and services and track the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns.
These are the 11 top reasons why modern businesses need websites. We shall discuss its other aspects as many business owners remain perplexed over a few things, which we will learn in the following paragraphs.
Why do You Need a Website for Your Business When You have Facebook and LinkedIn Pages?
Undoubtedly, having a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn is crucial for business today. But that does not mean that you should not have a website. On the contrary, there are many reasons you should have a dedicated website, even if you have Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Having a dedicated website for your business offers several distinct advantages:
- A website gives complete control over your online presence, while Facebook and other social media pages are the subject to platform’s rules and algorithms.
- Facebook and LinkedIn pages come with SEO limitations. That means you cannot implement diverse marketing strategies. With websites, you get the flexibility to optimize it for search engines (SEO).
- Stability is always an issue with social media platforms. Social media platforms pose a lot of risks. For example, it can change its policies anytime, and you need to market your products or services depending on their strategies. Most importantly, if you do not comply with their rules and regulations, your accounts can be suspended or deleted anytime. In comparison, your website provides a more reliable, permanent, and robust platform with the freedom to use it how you want.
Do You Need a Website If You Have a Business?
The short answer is “YES.”
We have received this question from many business owners: “Do I need a website if I have a small business?” In many cases, we have seen business owners with a few people/staff as workforce, and they do not even have online customers.
We say a single answer to them is, ‘If you have a business, you should have a website.’ A website is still vital for them to gain visibility, trust, and reliability in this tech-savvy era where customers explore websites before visiting stores. No, the website’s navigation, UI and user experience matter the most when your aim is to keep your users engaged with your website.
Last but not least, before you think of not having a website, do take a moment and think: are you sure you don’t sell anything? We say this because we have found that everything is online, from shopping and communication to information and entertainment.
So, Do You Want to Build A Website?
As we have said, you would love to have a website if you know what perks it brings to your business. So, if you want to get a website for your business, you need planning. More than that, you need to a web development company who knows your business and understand what it takes to build a business website. So, research, explore, and examine until you find the best web development company. Take the help of online directories such as TopDevelopers.co if you want to find a good agency to hire with good hands-on experience in creating websites and web applications for a wide range of industries.
Final Thoughts
I hope we have convincing reasons why we need a website. We explained the top 11 points reasons that compel why you must have a website and there are many more. Besides, we have also explained what differentiates websites from social media platforms. Finally, a website is the need of the hour, irrespective of your business type, industries, sector, or others. We have also suggested that the website is significant for medium and large businesses and for small businesses.
FAQs About Why You Need A Website?
What If I Already Have A Website, But It’s Not Active For So Many Years?
Well, you start doing activities using the same website. However, you need to check if the technology and the platform on which the website is built are outdated and gone absolute. In that case, you can take a cost-effective approach by updating your website.
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Website?
It depends on what you want to build. Where do you want to build? And who do you want to make your website? The average cost for a standard website would be approximately between $10000 to $300,000. You need to contact web development companies to know the final estimation or explore resources to learn the average cost to develop a website.
