Why You Need A Website: Top Reasons

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;

From SMBs to large enterprises need to be aware of the latest trends in the Internet world, as its continuous evolution shapes businesses. Online presence with website development is a hallmark of how businesses stay current with the latest trends and technologies.

Presently, 71% of businesses are embracing the shift with website development, and 43% of small businesses are spending to improve their website performance. Increasingly, businesses are making the most of online opportunities to grow their business by leaps and bounds. However, there’s a good share of businesses that understand the importance of a website but are unsure about the difference it brings to their business.

As a successful business owner, if you are also figuring out why website development is a wise decision, the blog will help you check whether your business really needs a website and walk you through the benefits of website development.

Does Your Business Need a Website?

We often receive this question from leading business CEOs worldwide: “Does my business need a website?” Especially when the company is already 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 explained a few things:

• Social media marketing fails to meet online presence needs.
• Most of your competitors already have a website.
• The tech-savvy target audience is looking for offerings online.
• Gain the undistracted attention of the customers.
• Your business get valuable insights into customer behavior.
• Build credibility and trust.
• Want to step in with evolving market trends and technologies?

Why Does Your Business Need a Website?

A website for business is a virtual storefront to showcase products, services, and more. Keeping those aside there are plenty of benefits as well.

Let’s explore these benefits in detail to understand why you need a website for your business;

Easy access to information

A well-designed website has every piece of information that users need. With explicit product information, users get to know everything in detail. For example, an E-Commerce website’s product information page provides details about the product with a brief description, measurements, color, weight, and other dimensions that enable users to make informed decisions.

An email form, contact information, business location, and operating hours help them with many things for which they repetitively contact customer service. AI chatbot integration replaces the human customer support system and provides prompt and accurate answers 24/7.

Open a virtual showroom

Small businesses often fail to display all their products in their physical stores due to limited floor space. Their website becomes a virtual showroom for such small businesses and lets them showcase a variety of products limitlessly. Businesses can list their products and provide detailed information about them alongside high-resolution images from manufacturers that allow users to easily understand the product.

The unique thing about virtual showrooms is that they remain open 24/7, enabling businesses to sell products and earn even when sleeping. With VR technology implemented, your store can allow users to try on products virtually before buying and using them.

Always Available

Opening a 24/7 store is quite expensive for any business. It requires extra resources, such as hiring sales personnel, keeping the checkout counter open, ensuring customer support is up to par, and paying high utility bills. This can be avoided with website development that keeps the business store up and running outside operational hours.

Round-the-clock availability allows users to access detailed information about products and services, buy the product, and resolve queries with customer support from the comfort of their couch. 24*7 availability helps prevent customers from being lost to the competition that is already available online.

Tell your unique story

Brand humanization is the latest trend that helps users connect with a business and probably increases sales. Companies, be it start-ups or enterprises, can humanize the brand with a unique story. This can include a business presence for decades in different parts of the world, a family business started by ancestors that is quite popular in a particular area, or a unique idea with a touch of creativity to resolve real-world problems.

Such business stories make users interested in and trust the brand. Displaying the brand personality through the website informs a large audience about innovative approaches and the incredible thinking users have.

Market Brick-and-Mortar Locations like no other

The website is a virtual showroom for small physical stores that displays store locations on maps, addresses, operational hours, and contact numbers to help users easily reach out to the store. The basic brick-and-mortar store location information enhances local SERP. It helps increase foot traffic to the store widely, which is implausible with traditional marketing.

The improved local SERP increases the chances of the store appearing at the top when someone searches for the services/products that your business sells. When a website is optimized for mobile devices, offline store visits increase.

Referrals become available quickly

Online presence with website development enables businesses to gain referrals faster. For example, when existing customers connect with family members or close friends and communicate the products/services they receive from the business, other people definitely look for the offerings online.

When businesses have active websites, others can easily find your business and navigate the offerings quickly. Hence, getting referrals becomes easier.

Collect customer data

The sales associate at your brick-and-mortar store can handle and analyze the needs of one or two customers in a day, but remembering the customers’ behavior and interests is impossible. With the development of websites, businesses can increase their reach to a broader audience and gain rich insights into customers’ preferences and behavior.

Customers’ data is also collected through short surveys or online polls. When utilized strategically, such as personalized recommendations, notifications, or emails, the data can attract users’ attention and make them purchase again.

Save on traditional printing

Conventionally, marketing business products/services with paper brochures and pamphlets is a good idea, but it doesn’t allow businesses to reuse them in the long run. For example, when businesses need to make changes in products or related offers, traditional printing becomes expensive.

Websites allow businesses to make changes to products quickly with simple editing at little to no cost. This way, digital brochures can be easily distributed and modified for future use whenever needed.

Attract Investment

Raising funds from Angel investors, VCs, or leading entrepreneurs by approaching them with your business idea or expansion plans explained in paper-based files is not appealing. Websites allow businesses to demonstrate their ideas effectively to potential investors. It enable fundraisers to learn about the business, its achievements, and future plans anytime, anywhere.

Competitive advantage

Looking around the competition, you will find that close rivals promote and sell online. If you are available online, you gain opportunities and customers. Building a quality website allows businesses to compete with big fish in the pond.

A well-developed website helps increase search engine ranking and generate organic leads in fierce competition. It enables businesses to edge out the competition.

Facilitating e-commerce and online transactions

Businesses selling products/services online through marketplace platforms often need to pay registration fees, transaction fees, and more. This is an additional cost that must be paid regularly. Having your website eliminates the price of a virtual storefront and allows businesses to sell with complete control over the site.

Websites help businesses attract customers digitally and sell online with no transaction or platform fees, which adds to the business’s profit.

Establish an Online Presence

According to Statista, 5.44 billion, roughly the world’s 67.1% of the population, use the internet.

Connecting with those populations becomes easy when you have a website as it 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 search engine results. For example, if you are offering services such as online food delivery, grocery delivery, ride, rent, 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.

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.

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.

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
• For regular updates and engagement

By prioritizing a well-designed, well-equipped, and customer-oriented website, you can secure lasting benefits and build strong customer relationships for the future.

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 requirements and the type of business you do. If custom development is your choice, outsourcing your web development project can save significant costs. However, you must take expert opinion on how, where, and when to outsource.

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 digital marketing strategies, 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 top reasons why businesses from start-ups to enterprises 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 subjects 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 them 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 at any time. In comparison, your website provides a more reliable, permanent, and robust platform with the freedom to use it however you want.

Which are the Best Social Media Marketing Platforms?

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 a web development company that knows your business and understands 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 right agency to hire with good hands-on experience in creating websites and web applications for a wide range of industries.

Your business needs a website- it’s impossible to ignore.

Building a website is no longer a choice for SMBs when we look at the long list of benefits it brings to the businesses. Website development is the need of the hour, irrespective of your business type, industry, sector, or others. After looking at the business advantages, the decision to build a website and complement your social presence is yours. If your business aims to make business credibility, authority, reliability, and visibility, connect with a website development company to stay at the forefront of users’ minds and stand high in the competition.

FAQs Related to Development of Website for Your Business Needs

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 whom do you want to make your website? The average cost for a standard website would be approximately between $10,000 to $300,000. You need to contact web development companies to know the final cost estimation or explore resources to learn the average cost to develop a website.

Should I Outsource Web Development Or Hire An In-House Team To Build A Website?

Honestly, it depends on your budget and web developers’ availability.

Hiring in-house is a good option, though it will be a costly affair as you not just have to hire a web development team but also have to spend a fortune providing them with tools, resources, infrastructure, and training. So instead, you may consider web development outsourcing as it will come with a couple of benefits. For example, it will be cost-effective, to hire talented web developers from around the globe, and you will get the projects delivered by the deadline.

FAQs About Why You Need A Website?