Why Website is Important to Your Business

How would website benefit my small local business? Of what importance is website to my business bottom line? Maybe you’ve asked similar questions before, just as I’ve asked myself sometimes ago when I was planning to setup this website.

Sincerely, you are not alone. These are few of the questions business owners or entrepreneurs ask at the verge of deciding to take their business online.

Indeed, you have to know why and how a website will contribute to the growth of your business. It’s a normal thing. After all, won’t you weigh the pros and cons of an investment opportunity before you launch into it? That is how website should be viewed because really it is a marketing investment whose performance should be measured against ROI (Return on Investment).

So what are the reasons why you should get a good website for your business? Okay, let’s start with the statistics.

Web statistics:

– Last year, the number of internet users has risen to approximately 3 billion. This is nearly half of the entire world population. By implication, it means that half of your current and prospective or potential customers must have used internet to access your business. Guess what could have happened if they can’t get your business online.

– More than 85% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses according to a survey by Search Engine Land. They use popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. The big question now is; can people find your business on search engine by simply typing your business name into the search box?

– 3 out of 4 internet users shop online. It therefore implies that people are becoming more confident in trusting online transactions apart from the convenience and suitability it offers. That’s why brands like Jumia, Amazon, OLX and Konga are making tremendous impact.

From these statistics, let see what website can do for your business.

– A good website will help people connect with your business because it would be found when they search it or search for similar businesses online. For instance, if you type Frandimore on any popular search engine, it will show links to our website and what we do.

– Unlike brick and mortar business, website is not limited by distance and time. It has the capacity of global reach and always available for business.

– Website has brand affinity that aid business development and credibility if the design is well structured and aligned with business perception.

– Your website is a resource center for your clients and would-be customers if it is updated regularly and maintained properly.

– Website can be likened to a machine that does not stop work 24/7 if you’re smart enough to optimize it’s down times. So, if you run an ecommerce website or sell digital products online, you’ve set your business to make money continually even when you’re deep asleep snoring. To buttress this point, my eBook on plantain chips production has been converting round the clock.

So, how do you set your business website to deliver on the above ends?

It is important to note that though there are many websites on the World Wide Web, but you might have noticed that only few are getting good returns on their investment.

The question again is, why?

The reason is not farfetched. Until you give what it takes to run a successful website, the purpose for creating it may be defeated at the long run.

It is not enough to design a website for your business, the maintenance and optimization aspects are far more important than the first design itself if you want the site to catalyze the growth of your business.

Below are my suggestions on things you need to do to run a business website from design to optimization and maintenance.

Design:

– Ensure the site is attractive in terms of look and feel.
– Do not sabotage functionality for attractiveness. A good website must be user friendly as much as it’s expected to be beautiful.
– Navigation should be intuitive and the call-to-action (CTA) should be more prominent and visible using catchy colors for both active and hover.
– Include ‘About Us’, ‘Testimonial’, ‘Portfolio’ and ‘Contact Us’ pages with content that would aid the trust of your targeted audience. If need be and you have the time, run a blog and turn your website to a ‘go-to’ resource center in your industry.

Optimization:

It is ‘useless’ running a website people don’t know it exist. Though connecting your website to prospective customer doesn’t happen over-night. Below are some of the things you can quickly do to get traffic to your website.

– Submit your website URL on popular search engines.
– Optimize your web pages for specific keywords and let that be your focused reference point for content creation. You can also leverage on long tail keywords for quick result on SERP.
– If your website is powered by WordPress, you may get plugins like WP SEO by Yoast, W3 Total Cache, Wysija and Popupally.
– The type of hosting package and the company you use may determine how your website is optimized. If you’re on low budget, you may get share hosting with Bluehost or Hostgator. You can upgrade anytime to suit your resource demand.
– Optimize your site for mobile. This is imperative to the success of your website because of the growing number of people that access internet from mobile phone.
– It is important to work on getting credible backlinks in order to build your site authority and rank higher on SERP (Search Engine Result Page). You may read this blog post by Neil Patel of QuickSprout on ‘how to build credible backlink the white hat way.

Maintenance:

Website maintenance is just about ensuring your site is up and running smoothly and effectively at all times. These involve updating website software and plugins, web page speed control, content update, down time management, inbound and outbound link monitoring, etc.

These entail in-depth work and can be time consuming. We offer web maintenance services should you don’t have the time to do all these things yourself. Outsourcing it to us could be your best option in the long run in the interest of your business and website.

Conclusion: Creating a website for your business is about the best marketing investment you’ll ever make in this technology driven marketing where more and more targeted customer are connecting with products and services via internet.

You’ll risk your business customer retention capacity if your business can not be found online. But, a website is able to connect your business with prospective customer and also make existing clients loyal to your brand. Wouldn’t you rather get a good website for your business today?