Importance of Having a Website
If you think a lot of dust accumulates in your home after your last housekeeping sweep, imagine all the dust – literal and figurative – that has probably settled on your website since you launched it. Whether that was five, 10, 15 or 20 years ago, you're wise to undertake a website "audit" to find out whether the importance of having a website still holds up and if it's still delivering the value it should.
In all likelihood, it probably is, starting with giving your small business a level of visibility that defies borders, but this doesn't mean it couldn't benefit from some tweaks and updates that make new and future customers sit up and take notice.
Pillars of Importance of a Website
It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time when web developers considered small-business owners a hard sell. They were dubious (to say the least) about what was then a strange, new – and untested – marketing tool that supposedly could "put them on the map," "open new doors of opportunity," and "level the playing field" with their bigger, richer competitors.
Today, with more than 1.5 billion websites accessible in the online universe, it's fair to say that websites have largely lived up to the early hype and promises of differentiation. Today, most small-business owners spend little time debating whether they should build a website but rather how long the development will take. They do their best to time the opening of their business with the website launch for a seamless introduction.
The terminology of yesteryear may sound a bit dated today, but early websites were touted as "digital brochures," GoDaddy says. Instead of pressing a brochure into someone's hands during business hours, a website could elevate a business in three crucial ways at any time of the day or night:
- By giving products or services enormous visibility to capture the attention of current and potential customers
- By imbuing the business with instant credibility, especially if it is chock-full of helpful information that customers want and need
- By breeding confidence in skeptical consumers or those who prefer to comparison-shop
Validate the Website's Importance
From any standpoint, you can make a strong case for all three of these pillars of importance today. If your small business is strictly local, the fourth pillar may be of lesser urgency, but this could change as your business grows. Websites were conceived to level the playing field in business, making it difficult to tell if a well-designed, easy-to-navigate site was the product of an up-and-coming entrepreneur working out of his basement office or a multimillionaire in a downtown high-rise.
Ironically, as search engines have grown up, they've adopted a strong preference for local business. The engines often rank search results by location – a criterion that is easy enough for you and your team to test and, if necessary, tweak to your advantage.
At this point, you may view this audit exercise as website validation. This makes sense as long as you realize that if your website falls short in one regard, it shouldn't take long to bring it up to full functionality. For example, adding a blog can do wonders to drive traffic, provided that the right content resides there.
Most Websites Need a Tweak
Tequity BV suggests a review of other potentially untapped features on your website, such as its ability to:
- Make sales, an obvious and expected outcome of all that exposure. It may not happen immediately, but market research consistently shows that about 80 percent of consumers do online research before making a purchase, AvivTech says. The upshot here is that once you know someone has visited your site, you should follow up and make it easy for them to make a purchase.
- Generate leads, especially if you have landing pages that gather names and email addresses.
- Update important information about your business in real time, as your customers need it. In this way, your "digital brochure" spares you the time and expense it takes to print paper brochures.
- Automate repetitive tasks, such as sharing pertinent information about your business over the phone and gathering basic information about your customers.
There are many ways to enhance the value of your website, and an SEO expert can lead the way. In addition to creating a blog (if you don't already have one), you can update and energize your business website with:
- A fresh, dynamic layout
- Logos of businesses you've worked with or customers you've served, both of which convey credibility
- Links to your social media profiles
- Testimonials
With any luck, you'll brush off this outdated word and replace it with a meaningful one of your own. It's grown so tired (and dusty) over the last 20 years that your website, by extension, may appear tired, too. By the time you're done with your audit, your website should be anything but.
References
Writer Bio
Mary Wroblewski earned a master's degree with high honors in communications and has worked as a reporter and editor in two Chicago newsrooms. Then she launched her own small business, which specialized in assisting small business owners with “all things marketing” – from drafting a marketing plan and writing website copy to crafting media plans and developing email campaigns. Mary writes extensively about small business issues and especially “all things marketing.”