3 Reasons a Small Business Should Have a Professional Website from a Design Perspective
— By Jillian Stone
Home Cooked Meal vs. Fast Food
The difference between using Facebook for marketing versus a professionally designed website is like eating fast food versus eating a 5 course, home cooked meal.
When you have your own website, you have no limitations on how colorful, how interesting, how festive, how spicy, how many courses (pages) you want to have, etc. Having your own website allows you to express who YOU are; with social media, there are restrictions. However, social media platforms are great as a website companion. The two work together wonderfully!
Taking Advantage of e-Commerce
According to Statista, “In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide. This figure is forecast to grow by 56 percent over the next years, reaching about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026.”
Taking advantage of e-commerce gives you the opportunity to continue bringing in revenue even when your physical store or business is closed. Even service businesses with no products can take advantage of e-commerce.
Taking Control!
Why let social media dictate the terms and conditions the control over when your content is seen and who sees it?
Your credibility is super important. Without control over your content, anybody can create a page on social media with fake data. This is a concern for any business whose only marketing asset is social media. As a companion, social media is great! But every business needs their own platform to present themselves as they want to be perceived and to be able to control the content that is shown.
3 Reasons a Small Business Should Have a Professional Website from a Technical Perspective
— By Charles H. Castano, Web and Cloud Services
Website Layout
Your website gives you the opportunity to control every aspect of its layout, making it a reflection of who you are, and how you want to be perceived by your visitors. Making the website simple to navigate and having visitors find what they need quickly makes them stay longer and want to return.
e-Commerce Benefits
- Lower overhead costs than a brick and mortar option
- Reach a much larger customer base than a store
- Develop a client contact list to stay in touch
- Easier to manage inventory
Managing Content
Visitors come to your site for answers and solutions. The content you provide will determine whether you convert the visitor to a customer or a client. Content does not mean selling a visitor what you want; it mean giving them what they are looking for. Search engines emphasize ranking on content that answers questions or addressed visitor’s needs, rather than information about what you want them to get from you.