It’s hard to go anywhere these days without seeing enthusiastic requests to connect with brands. In the age of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Business, it’s easy to conclude that maybe you don’t need a website anymore. From local businesses to grand, 1500+ employees, companies, businesses everywhere are embracing the social media revolution to build stronger consumer relationships and evolve into the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
But in the race to master new social media trends & tools, brands often leave one critical online presence behind, their websites. Amidst this process, many company websites have become outdated and tired. In some cases, websites are missing altogether as small businesses increasingly prefer the simplicity and cheap price tag of setting up a Facebook page in contrast to building or refurbishing a website. As a business owner, it probably has crossed your mind that your website is a waste of money & time and it makes more sense to focus your efforts exclusively on social media. Yet user statistics show otherwise.
Here are 7 reasons why you need a website or if you already have one why you need to keep it up to date:
- Your potential customers expect it. Even though people are increasingly able to find the information they need and take action directly from search results or through social media, most consumers expect a local business to have a website. More than 63% of consumers use a local business’ website to interact with it.
- It Builds Brand Value & Recognition. From design to content and user experience, your website is the utmost representation of your brand. The website tells your story, displays your products, and provides numerous opportunities to create valuable engagement with your customers during all stages of the buying process. Whilst with social media accounts and pages, you’re at the mercy of their design & branding decisions. In Facebook, for example, your creativity, branding, and user experience will always be limited in some way by the social network. On top of this, all the other sites can always choose to change the look of their site or their policies at any given time.
- You get a huge return on investment. Consider the cost of all other marketing strategies like printed flyers etc. and then compare it with the cost of designing a website, it almost always makes sense to invest in a website.
- Your social media pages aren’t really yours. If you rely exclusively on social media sites, what happens if, or should we say when, that network changes algorithms without warning, creates new rules that may restrict your ability to communicate with your customers, starts losing customers interest or even disappear altogether? Does anyone remember MySpace or Friendster? When you drive customers to your own website, you are and will always be in control of these factors.
- It gives you instant authority. A well-designed, user-friendly website with informative, rich quality content goes a long way towards establishing trust. While social media sites come and go, your website should always be the central focal point of your online presence that brings everything together.
- Your competitors have one. The google search jungle is harsh and using a website, that is fully optimized, will help the SEO of your entire online presence. Websites are important for link building since they link to all your social media accounts and vice-versa. And links are essential for SEO. So, as a result, if you want good search results, you need a solid internet presence.
- Your website is the best source of information for your clients. When it comes to information, the same level of complexity simply cannot be matched on social media profiles. If customers are looking for product or service specifications, need to learn more about your business’ team, or want to see a restaurant’s full menu, they’ll go to the website.
Now you know why you need a website and why it is almost inevitable, and if you need help building a fully SEO-optimized, mobile-responsive website and start ranking higher in local search results on Google, thus boosting sales and brand recognition, contact us here.
