Do you really need a website?

It doesn’t matter whether you are an experienced business owner or just became an entrepreneur: you probably asked yourself this question at one point.

Perhaps you own a local brick-and-mortar business, or maybe you are about to open a small consultancy company, either way, you are wondering whether a website can really help you achieve your business goals. It's a common question we get asked, as there are definitely other-ways to engage with a business these days via Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.

In this article, we’ll discuss how a website can help different types of businesses and why a company website is still essential.

Do you really need a website for a brick-and-mortar business?

Let’s say you own a flower shop in the city centre. A few decades ago, your customers would have found you through print advertisement, word of mouth, or in one of the listings of the "good old" Yellow Pages book. This era is definitely gone. Nowadays, people go online for recommendations on local businesses. Not convinced? Just take a look at history data by Google on the number of searches for “flower shop near me” since 2004.

As you can see, the interest over time has increased (the peaks in interest represent a high amount of searches in key times of the year - February and May, which is when people typically buy this type of product). As of February 2020 the interest level is 100. 

"Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular." ~ Google Trends:

Just by looking at the graph, the conclusion is simple: If you don’t have a local business website for your flower shop, you will lose potential customers to your competitors, as people are searching online for your product. 

Reasons why people look for this product online:

• They want to choose which flower shop they will visit based on proximity or product offer, for example. 
• They want to select the BEST shop. For that, they will read customer reviews before making a decision.
• People want to see the address, phone number, website and other information about a specific shop
• Customers want to find out if they can buy the products of their favourite shop online. For this if you do come up in local search results they will go to your website. 

There are multiple other reasons we could include in this list, but we’ll stop here to keep things short. If you thought you don’t need a business website because you have a brick-and-mortar or “just a simple local shop”, you should know that 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles in 2016, according to Wordstream. Yes, we also think this number is probably higher nowadays.

What about a website for a new small business?

Perhaps you just opened a new business and feel like it’s not the right time for a website yet. The thing is, if your company is new, you will probably want to scale it at one point. A website might be one of your best allies to achieve this. Let’s take a look at why is important to have a website in the early stage of a company:

• It will give visibility to your brand - If your company is new and nobody knows about it apart from your family and friends, people will be able to find it through your website. This is where the importance of SEO comes into play. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, in simple words, it’s a set of practices to help your website be discoverable on search engines, such as Google or Bing.

One way of doing this is to make use of keywords, or queries, which people would normally type when looking for your product or service online. In the example of the flower shop, “flower shop in (name of the city/suburb)” is a keyword example. Incorporating these keywords into your website copy is a great start. However...

SEO is much more than keyword optimisation. There are different tactics you can use to bring qualified organic traffic to your homepage.

Take a look at one of our case studies to see the impact of SEO for business.

• Higher website traffic can lead to more sales - in or offline. When more people see and visit your website, your chances of receiving calls from prospects or customer visits to your shop also increase. As you can imagine, it’s impossible to foresee the exact number of customers you will bring through your website. However, one metric you can use to determine whether you can expect to increase sales or not is the position of your website for important product or service-related keywords on Google. People typically click on the results they see in the 1st page for a determined keyword search (it captures 71% of search traffic clicks according to SEO consultants from Moz). A click will not always result in a sale or a closed deal, however the more clicks you have, the higher  the probabilities.  

With higher sales, your business scales - We are sorry for the bad rhyme, but it sums up the idea quite nicely. If you have a good revenue system in place, you will certainly be able to reinvest revenue and grow your business with time. This is why investing in Marketing and a good website (including having a good website design) is always a good idea even when your business is still a “baby”. 

Do B2B companies and consultants need a website?

If you thought that websites are only relevant for B2C companies, it’s time to rethink. Do you offer a service, such as IT consulting, fitness coaching or marketing consultancy? Take a look below at a few reasons why you should have a website for your B2B or consultancy business:

• Having a business website increases trust - A website is an opportunity to prove that you have a “serious” business. A nicely designed homepage and a high-quality website copy will help you showcase the services you offer and the benefits of working with you in a professional way.
• Your competitors have one - There are over 1.5 billion websites on the world wide web today. With so many websites out there, one thing you can be sure of is: your competitors have one. It doesn’t really matter the type of industry or business size. Remember when we talked about SEO? People rely more and more on search engines like Google not only to find products, but also services. In a study from Google, it was discovered that 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process (again, this stat is from 2015, so it’s probably higher by now).
• A website enables people to get to know YOU - In the B2B space, networking is everything. You won’t get customers if you don’t invest a good amount of time into nurturing relationships with key players in your industry. As we mentioned above, a website allows you to tell your story and let the world know what’s your mission. Here at Itag Media, we always ensure our clients have a great “About me/About Us” page because this is essentially where your prospects will be able to “put a face behind the business”. 
• A website allows you to establish a relationship with your audience - Publishing educational and engaging content on your website is the best way for creating a relationship with website visitors which can help them become customers. This can be done through Lead Nurturing, which is a marketing strategy from the Inbound Marketing methodology used for providing useful content across the different stages of the buyer journey. Sounds complicated?

After you touch base with the leads via email, you’ll be literally nurturing them with targeted content until they are ready to make a purchasing decision. Click here if you want to know more about the Inbound Marketing methodology and its benefits for your business. 

The Wrap Up

So while it should now be clear that a website for all business types is essential, it is still important to consider what level of website do you need and what goals will it help you smash. As outlined above, if your website is implemented correctly and is focused on meeting your customers or potential customer needs, then your site is going to deliver a massive ROI for your business.

If you would you like to chat about your current website or are planning to create a brand new website for your business? Let’s talk about your website idea today!

PS. If you have a standard informational website, take a look at this blog post on How a business focused website can boost your business. Here's to your online success!