A good website plays an important role in every type of business, especially moving into 2019. When used correctly, it is THE single most powerful tool you have at your disposal. If you have an established business, you most likely have a website or at least a landing page set up already; but if you don’t, you’ll definitely reconsider it after reading this post.

1: Websites size is unlimited!

Once you get a website up and running, it is yours to do with what you want! You can add as many pictures, videos, posts, or pages as you want, with no restrictions!  There might be some other services that allow you to get close, but most website alternatives either have limits or charge money for extras.

2: Websites have powerful analytics!

Analytics, or data gathered from your website about it’s users and their actions during the time on your site, can be extremely useful if you know what to do with the data.  You can easily gather trends on your site and make adjustments as necessary.  For instance, you can very easily see the most visited pages within a given time period.  You can also easily see which age group most of your visitors fall into so you can tailor your content toward them.  There are many other more advanced queries you can do as well.  It’s your data.  Use it!

3: Websites create good brand perception

When a customer visits your website, regardless of what type of industry you’re in, they immediately get a feeling for your company; and by immediately, we mean you have less than a second.  How a client feels after this impression highly effects whether the customer continues to use, returns to, interacts, or converts into a paying customer of your’s.  It’s important to have a professional website design, that way you give the impression that you truly care about your company and it’s image, which almost always corresponds to the work that they do.  Just because you do construction, plumbing, or other “dirty” work does not mean that it’s okay to overlook this crucial part of your business.

4: Create different business funnels

This may be something you’ve never heard of before, but you’ve probably experienced it before.  Website funnels generally consist of several pages, beginning with a landing page (the most important page), that are tailored to a specific interest.  Once a customer lands on that page, they interact with your website and then get sent to the next step.  You can think of it almost like holding your customer’s hand, leading them through their visit on your website.  Business funnels are important for things like email list building, re-marketing, providing true value to your visitors, and much more.

5: Minimal Advertising Restrictions

One thing that may be of concern to different businesses is the type of restrictions in their advertising.  Let’s use Facebook for example.  When you advertise on Facebook, they will review your ad to make sure it abides by their terms & conditions.  So if you want more than 20% of text on your image or want other things that facebook doesn’t allow, a good alternative is using your own website where you set your own terms!  You can set your own titles, add your own images, documents, links, etc…  Whatever you want on your website can be uploaded to it.  When depending on other services in place of your website, it has the potential to go south real quick!

6: Minimal and Expected Expenses

Once a website is online, it typically doesn’t cost much at all to keep it online.  For instance, our managed hosting base package is only $20/mo.  There are other plans available as well that website owners choose to add that help with optimization and/or maintenance, but the average customer spends anywhere between $50-$250 per month on their website.  With expenses such as these, you’re easily able to budget out the required amount to keep your website services running and there are absolutely no surprises.  When using ad platforms like Google and Facebook, what you pay for getting your message in front of potential customers is not regular at all, and can easily exceed $250/mo!

7: Sell whatever you want

It’s your product and your website!  If you have something you sell and you need a place to sell it, using your own website as the selling platform is a no-brainer.  There’s a ton of sites that allow you to sell products online, but many of them come with restrictions on what you can sell, for example some don’t allow food, lithium batteries, offensive language, etc…  These same websites that tell you what you can and can’t sell on their platform often take a commission of your sales or charge listing fees or other fees.  Sure they may be a little quicker for inexperienced users to get off the ground, but if your business is in it for the long term, it would be wise to invest your money the right way first, so you don’t have to pay for a costly conversion when you start running into product limits or other problems as your business grows!

8: Live chat and other tools

Sure you know what live chat tool is, but do you know how beneficial it can be for converting sales?  Chat tools, chat bots, and other sales tools that can be integrated your website continue to be extremely useful when interacting with website visitors.  It’s becoming more and more common to see people using chat tools more than contact forms on web pages; heck, I even prefer it myself!  Most chat bots even let you see what page or product the customer is looking at, which allows you to reach out to help with any doubts a customer may have about your product or service in real-time.  Keep in mind, this is just a chat tool and only one way that you can use it!

9: Organic Traffic (not paid)

Have you ever heard of SEO before?  If not, it is basically a way to optimize websites and the content on them for search engines so that when people are looking for things relevant to your website, they’re able to find your site!  It’s a wonderful thing, eh?  The best part is that all search engines crawl and list your content for you entirely free!  Once search engines get around to listing your content, you’ll start seeing traffic come to your website without spending a dime on listing it.  You even have the option of modifying how most search engines display your data too, so if you need any help with that I suggest speaking to a search engine specialist.

10: Fully Automated Sales

Yes, in many cases, your whole sales process can be fully automated on your website!  Websites can be designed in such a way that they handle everything from marketing/attracting visitors all the way through collecting payment and handling the shipping or delivery of the product, leaving you with a truly hands-off experience.  With a website that does all this for you, you can spend your time doing more valuable things while still making money!  If you’re interested in anything like this, we can help you find the right solution for your specific needs.

As you can see, it’s hard to argue the importance of having a website and using it as a sales tool.  The sad truth is that portfolio websites or brochure websites just don’t cut it anymore, and you should consider looking into updating it going into 2019.  It was very hard to stop at 10 reasons, but there’s just too many reasons to list!

Want a sales audit of your current website?  Have a project in mind for 2019?  Our professionals are ready to help!

Posted in Online Strategy, Web Design