Today we will be answering the important question of any business “Do I need a website for my business?” If you are a business owner on the fence about designing a website for your company, let me save some time for you. —you need one. A good one. A professional designed, lead generating, sales-boosting, competitive website.
Here’s why:
Customer behaviour changes from time to time. These days customers adapt to modern technology and customers have adapted to the digital age. For example, telephones became disruptive and it changed the way how customers did business. More and more customers started using telephone directories to find local products and services. While that time business owners realized advertising in Yellow Pages is a smart idea. By the 1930s, marketing in the Yellow Pages was the usual running procedure for most businesses.
Then came the digital transformation, the World Wide Web (WWW) and it became the new disruption to the commercial status. While this time the consumers realized using the Internet, they will be able to find products and services faster than using the phone book. This created the transformation from Phone Books to the Internet. By 2011, 70% of all word wide populated rarely or never used printed phone directory. Also, by 2011, more than 59% of the consumers were already going online to find the local businesses and their products and services.
Quick Forward to 2019 and 97% of the customers nowadays uses online to find local businesses. If you want them to choose your company, you will need to have a presence online. Meaning you need a website.
WHY YOU NEED A WEBSITE IN 2020—IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT INDUSTRY YOU ARE IN
In 2020, you need a website. You need a website from the day you start the business. It is healthier to be late than never. So, you need a website for your website.
At Tectera, small & medium business success is our middle name. So, in this article I will cover the following;
- 8 reasons why you must have a website for your website
- Common objections from SMEs
- How much a website cost?
If you are willing to unlock your company’s victory and begin with a lead-driving website, you can contact us here.
Why You Need a Website? No Matter What is your Industry. 8 Non-Negotiable Reasons.
In “Connected Small Businesses” by Deloitte’s found that small business which is digitally advanced are:
- Made two times as much income per employee
- Witnessed revenue growth over the prior year that was closed four times as high
- Were almost three times as likely to be offering jobs opportunities over the prior year
- While comparing the average employment growth rate with last year, it was six times as high.
This applies to all businesses, even industrial and manufacturing. Digital innovation begins with a website. If that is not enough to satisfy you, here are 8 non-negotiable explanations you need not just a website, but an improved, comprehensible one.
REASON #1: 30% OF SHOPPERS WON’T CONSIDER A BUSINESS WITHOUT A WEBSITE
We are living in a digital age, there for your website is your number one marketing tool. On average individual spend, 23.6 hours, online per week and they spend more than 5 hours on mobile devices per day. Due to this the customer expects the business to be online including a professionally done website. The customers consider the companies without a website less professional.
With this consumer expect the businesses to have an online presence including website and will consider the companies which do not have websites are less professional.
REASON #2: YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU ONLINE
One of the advantages of having a website for your SME businesses is to be where your customers are. There is a motive so many businesses invest in a website with search engine optimization (SEO): 97% of people browse the internet to find a local business, and 93% of online experiences start with a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing. Believe it or not, every day on Google there are more than 3.5 billion searches. It might one of your potential customer in your area online might be searching for the same service you are selling. Guess who is going to get their business? Not you. Those who got an online presence is going to get the business.
REASON #3: THE MAJORITY OF CUSTOMERS USE WEBSITES TO DISCOVER AND ENGAGE WITH BUSINESSES
Yes. 63% of customers mainly use a business’s website to find and bond with businesses. That’s a pretty vast number of customers. 93% of those who decides the company based on their website starts searching for the products or services they need using Search Engines.
REASON #4: IN ALL THE INDUSTRIES SUCH AS B2B, INDUSTRIAL AND MANUFACTURING THE BUSINESSES ARE INFLUENCED BY DIGITAL WEBSITE CONTENT. THE COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION IS THERE IN EACH AND EVERY INDUSTRY.
Most of the companies that do not have a website usually say they are not online just because their industry is not an online industry. We usually hear it from the business owners who are into B2B, industrial, and manufacturing industries.
If you are one of the people who think in this manner, we should speak.
A full 75% of B2B purchasers say digital website content considerably influences their purchasing decision, and 62% say they can decide their buying choice criteria based on a website’s digital content alone.
The average B2B consumer now makes a middling of 12 online searches before cooperating with a vendor’s website, and they are already 57% of the way through the purchasing procedure before they want to communicate with a sales agent. Even for industrial and manufacturing businesses, —67%of consumptions are influenced by digital. Not only that but half of all B2B patrons today also expect a supplier’s website to be a supportive channel and more than a third presume the site to be their most useful channel.
REASON #5: 75% OF CUSTOMERS ADMIT TO MAKING DECISIONS ON A COMPANY’S TRUSTWORTHINESS BASED ON THE FIRM’S WEBSITE DESIGN
Not having a website makes customers trust you minus. In fact, in 2018, 75% of individuals declare to making judgments on a business’s integrity based on website design. Individuals are more likely to do trade with a business they trust, and a website is the first place they go to check for credentials, reviews, and awards.
Be careful, though—if you have a bad website design, it will not benefit you at all. You have 10 secs to leave an impression on web visitors and explain to them what they will get out of your business. After this time (and oftentimes before), they will bounce.
REASON #6: BASIC QUESTIONS NEEDS TO BE ANSWERED QUICKLY
This is particularly accurate for B2B companies. People check your website when they want to do something or to know something. Visitors also anticipate instant satisfaction, which means web page visitors should be able to answer 3 questions within 3 seconds once they visit your website.
- Who are you?
- What do you offer/do?
- How do I reach you?
We live in an age of NOW, where customers want the info, they seek instantly meaning your company’s website should have answers for each of the queries above without the user demanding to scroll down the page at all.
REASON #7: IT WILL HELP YOU BEAT THE GIANTS IN YOUR INDUSTRY
Did you know that having a professional website can benefit you beat the Giants in your industry? It can if it’s enhanced for search. Take Villa Lagoon Tile. They compete deeply with big-box tile supplies but do not worry about holding their thanks to their website and their noticeable position in the search results page.
REASON #8: SOCIAL MEDIA REACH IS WEAKENING
So, you decide you do not need a website just because you’re on Facebook.
Great, so is every other business in Sri Lanka. Though you have a Facebook Page you still need to have a website.
And guess what? It’s becoming crueller for companies to link with users on the platform. Within a week of the last Facebook algorithm update, organic reach has fallen worse than it was already. Another disappointment? In 2018, persons did 50 million fewer hours on the platform than they used in 2017.
Though social media helps you to grow your business, don’t purely depend on social media as your marketing channel. Especially for the future.
Usual Objections Business Owners Make Against Developing a Website
We work with SME businesses almost every day, and when it comes to not developing a website for them, we have heard just about all justification on the planet—and they are all extremely injudicious. I’ve mentioned the most usual objections below, and our typical responses.
OBJECTION #1: “MY BUSINESS IS SMALL, AND I DON NOT HAVE THE BUDGET TO DEVELOP A WEBSITE”
This is the most usual objection we hear from small businesses.
Look—your website is your #1 marketing strength. Telling you do not have the financial plan for it is like telling you do not have the financial plan for your business registration—you are going to get in big suffering late if you do not fork over that early funding.
Get a website—it does not have to be elegant and luxurious, but it requires to exist, and it needs to be able to be discovered by search engines.
OBJECTION #2: “I DON’T NEED A WEBSITE BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY MAKING GOOD BUSINESS”
Even if you have a supplementary business than you can handle, you still need a website, no ifs and or buts.
OBJECTION #3: “ONE OF MY FRIENDS SAID HE CAN MAKE A WEBSITE FOR FREE”
This is an unscrupulous idea unless he is a professional web developer. Having a family member or friend create your business website is like assuming a handyman to lay the foundation of a skyscraper. You need a professional website developer to work on your website which should have the files optimised, content optimised along with responsive design and schema markup, etc which will help with the SEO Optimisation. If it is not built on the right foundation, it will possibly topple over.
Even if you DO have an expert web designer as a friend, be careful—because dissimilar industries have dissimilar website design benchmarks. For example, a website for manufacturing will have completely different components and mark-up than a website for the tech industry.
OBJECTION #4: “OUR CLIENTS ARE NOT COMPUTER USERS.”
Your clienteles are not “computer users”? That’s baloney. What you are forgetting is that “computer users” are not just persons using desktop or laptop computers. It also comprises persons surfing websites, apps and social media, on mobile devices.
Smartphone = computer user
OBJECTION #5: I DO NOT NEED A WEBSITE BECAUSE MY TRADE DOES NOT NEED ONE/I’M NOT AN E-COMMERCE OR AN ONLINE BUSINESS.
This is a HUGE misapprehension a lot of people have. Since you are not eCommerce does not mean you don’t essential a website. Customers—even B2B buyers—still need to discover you, study about you, and reliance you because they buy from you. Most of our customers are not into eCommerce business, and each one of them has seen substantial income growth from having a website.
How Much Does a Website Cost?
A professionally developed website may cost from $350 to $3,000 depending on your requirements. Do not let a price tag discourage you from designing a website for your business.
If you are a one-man operation with no budget for marketing, at least get a very basic website that you can gear up in future when you got better cash flow.
The cost of the website includes the following;
- Hosting – This is the establishment affording area on the internet for your website.
- Domain name – This is indicated as www.yourcompany.com and is typically an annual payment.
- Design – You will have to get a nicer design done for your website. Often your web developers itself will design the website for you as well.
- The complexity of design – The more tailored your website is, the pricier it is.
We believe this post of “DO I NEED A WEBSITE FOR MY BUSINESS?” answered the questions you had about building a website for your business. If so, please share this with your contacts who also has the same concern. We have spent years in helping business owners like you to develop their business website and also helping them to run successful digital marketing campaigns by performing SEO and Social Media Marketing.
We at Tectera, the leading web design Sri Lanka, wish you all the best to create your successful online presence. If you are looking for a web developer to get your business website done and if you are looking for Digital Marketing in Sri Lanka to increase your website’s traffic, do not hesitate to contact us
