You certainly don’t want to be one of the 24% of small business owners who don’t have a website. No matter the size of your business, a website will have a tremendous impact on it. But impact works both ways; a great website can have a positive impact, while a poor website can have a negative impact. It’s never enough to just have a website running to help your business. That website needs to have the ability to create the effect you want.
Why Is It Important?
Your website represents more about you and your business than many other factors. To say the least, a good website establishes credibility, engages visitors, shows professionalism, generates leads, supports your customers, and closes sales. Having a proper website means you can reap the same benefits a large enterprise would. Even an established mega-business sustains and grows its operations, keeps customers satisfied, attracts new customers, and does much more for its brand and reputation through its website.
Your website isn’t something to take lightly; it’s the first thing people will look for to find your business. Seeing that over 80% of shoppers conduct online searches before any purchase, that should already tell you that not just any site will do.
As a businessperson, you shouldn’t fall into that trap of thinking any site will do the job. So, to help you out, we want to cover some reasons why you’ll be depending on your website—more than you realize—to get your business up and running, and to ensure its growth.
Creates visibility
It’s simple, really; if people can’t see you, then you simply don’t exist to them. Before anything, people have to know that your business is alive and kicking. If you’re not online, then you’re not really in business. Even if a potential client or customer hears about you from elsewhere, such as word of mouth or via an ad, the first thing they will do is check you up online, and if you’re not there, you’re not anywhere. A high-quality website can help you rank with heavy players in your industry, especially in terms of visibility, as it becomes your gateway to an audience.
Enlarges customer base
Back in the day, small businesses were destined to remain small. All that has changed now and your small business can have the same opportunities to reach a larger audience as any big business. It’s estimated that 1.79 billion people shopped online in 2018, and global e-commerce sales are expected to reach $4.8 trillion by 2021. Australia, alone, spent A$28.6 billion (US$20.3 billion) on online shopping.
This is an enormous indication telling you that if you run a small business in Australia, you can definitely expand it by using the right strategies. You can find some amazing website agencies online, and the SEO team at https://mediafortress.com.au/seo/melbourne/ can put your business on the local and international map of e-commerce. Let’s give an example to put things in perspective for you: the different marketing strategies you can adapt through your website would be like moving a physical store in a quiet area to a robust commercial area, like right in the middle of downtown, where everyone can see you. Automatically, this increases your chances of more sales.
Optimization
This word gets tossed around a lot, but what does it mean? It usually starts with search engine optimization (SEO), which is a set of strategies used to help you rank high on search engines. That’s just a very basic definition as it involves a variety of techniques, such as the length of your URL, the headline, the meta description, among many others.
But optimization doesn’t end there. Being an internet user yourself, you know that you won’t wait around too long for a page to load, nor will you enjoy getting lost on a site that is difficult to navigate through, or a site that isn’t mobile-friendly. There are many other problems on many websites that will simply make you click on “back.” Finding your website is something, but what a person does after they reach your site is a whole other story. Do they take action or do they leave? This is where user experience optimization comes in.
Making the best and most efficient use of your platform helps you increase conversions. In fact, the average conversion rate for a website is about 2.35%, which gives you a clear idea of how much traffic you really need to send to your website to get conversions.
A responsive website design, including the aspect of mobile-friendliness, is one of the most important things Google takes into account. This means that people should be able to use different devices to reach your site and still receive the same high quality. There is a lot that goes into optimization that isn’t always understood by the person running a business, which is why professional help to optimize website pages would be considered a good investment.
Content
It was back in 1996 when Bill Gates first coined the phrase “content is king” to describe the future of the internet. Fast-forward to 2019, and content is still king.
Content is what your visitors will read and view. It is what gets visitors engaged and keeps them hanging around long enough on your site. Any great content needs to be directed at the audience. Additionally, certain types of content work better for different audiences, based upon where they are in the buyer’s journey.
It’s not really you or the content creators who define what great content is. It’s defined by the people for whom it is intended; customers, potential customers, and influencers. It’s defined by those you’re attempting to attract, engage and influence. The content and everything else related to your site need to have user experience as part of its DNA.
You should never ask yourself why you should have a quality website. Instead, ask yourself, why not. With 78% of adults online worldwide, it’s clear that you need a platform to reach the right people for your business, and that platform is your website. Through your quality website, you will open up all the other options, such as digital marketing and SEO to tell the world you are here and ready for business.