Why Do I Need a Website?

With the advent of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, a lot of small business owners wonder, “do I need a website?”

The reality is that while these channels are useful tools to promote your business, building a website comes with a different set of benefits. Here are a few of them:

You can own your online presence

If you only use social media platforms to build your online presence, you are essentially relying on them to be the faces of your business. If something ever changes, or there’s some kind of outage, your online presence suffers. Not only that, but any content that you post is owned by the platform you share it on.

Finally, if you want to make use of local business listings to advertise your business, you need a website to link to, or your fans will never find it.

You can connect directly with your visitors

Not only do you need a website to build your own online presence, but having one will help you connect with the people who use your services or buy your products.

Owning your own website means that you can set up communication channels that are more private and direct than the ones you’d find on social media, from live chat add-ons to direct to email contact forms.

You can even configure your phone number to appear as a clickable button so visitors using mobile devices can call directly from your site.

You can improve your social media

Social media does have its place. Ideally, you should be using social media to draw visitors to your website.

Regularly posting site updates through blog posts, adding new products and services to your site, or sharing specials and competitions are great ways to fill your social media channels with new content while also directing followers to your website. This will create even more customer interactions in the long term.

You can enable ecommerce

If you sell a product or service, then you definitely need a business website. With the growth of online sales projected to increase worldwide, setting up an ecommerce website is a surefire way to reach potential shoppers, according to Business Insider.

So, don’t ask, “why do I need a website?” What you should really be asking is, “how difficult is it to get a website?” You may find that the answer is that it’s easier than you expected.