Small businesses need a website to remain viable in a market where internet usage is increasing year after year. Searching for a product or service on the internet is faster, easier, global and private – it’s what customers are doing.
A website is not an advertisement – a website is your most efficient and effective marketing and communication tool that will compliment and empower other, more traditional, advertising efforts. When you purchase an advertisement from a vendor you have it for a predetermined period of time and then it is gone. In comparison, a website is a tool that is not only ongoing, but belongs to you. It should be treated in the same way as other company assets such as a telephone. Would you consider being able to run your business without a phone?
In the words of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft,’If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business’.
The main reasons that small businesses NEED a website:
- Those that are looking for products and services are looking on the internet – will they find you?
- Those that are looking for you are looking on the internet – will they find you or your competitor?
- It is the most effective and efficient use of your marketing budget. In many cases a website will make redundant traditional forms of advertising which will ultimately lower your costs and increase your revenue.
- Traditional search options such as paper Yellow Pages and other print directories are disappearing. Searching on the internet is faster and easier and research shows that customers love product and servic reviews and ratings and use those in their purchase decisions. Even if you don’t actually sell online – this is where the majority of consumer decisions are now made.
- These days if you can’t be found on the internet people will assume you have gone out of business and chosen a competitor with a web presence instead. A website gives your business a ‘stamp’ of credibility.
While the web gives customers worldwide options, the big search engine understand how many people use this resource in order to source local products and services. Google, Yahoo and Bing are now localising searches based on a person’s IP address (like a locator) in order to give search results in the local area and therefore usually more relevant. Using this technology potential customers will be given shortcuts to those businesses in the local area. What happens in a decision making process if your competitor is there but you are not?
