REASON #2:

PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR YOU ONLINE

One of the benefits of having a website for small businesses is to be where your consumers are. There’s a reason so many companies invest in a website with search engine optimization (SEO): 97 percent of people go online to find a local business, and 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine. Believe it or not, there are 3.5 billion searches on Google per day, and at this very moment, there is someone in your area online and searching for your exact service. Guess who’s getting their business? Not you.

REASON #3:

THE MAJORITY OF OF CONSUMERS USE WEBSITES TO FIND AND ENGAGE WITH BUSINESSES

According to LSA’s (Local Search Association) April 2017 report, “The Digital Consumer Study,” 63 percent of consumers primarily use a company’s website to find and engage with businesses. That’s a pretty big chunk of consumers. Combine that with the fact that 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine—you do the math. Another compelling reason your business needs a website? Research by YellowPages and LSA found that, on average, consumers use approximately three sources before making an individual purchase decision, and 30 percent automatically strike a business from consideration if they don’t have a website.

REASON #4:

COMMERCIAL TRANSACTIONS IN EVERY INDUSTRY—INCLUDING B2B, INDUSTRIAL, AND MANUFACTURING—ARE INFLUENCED BY DIGITAL WEBSITE CONTENT

The majority of companies that don’t have a website say it’s because their industry isn’t online. I hear this mostly from business owners in the B2B, industrial, and manufacturing industries.

If that’s you, I’m gonna have to call you out on that.

REASON #5:

75 PERCENT OF CONSUMERS ADMIT TO MAKING JUDGMENTS ON A COMPANY’S CREDIBILITY BASED ON THE COMPANY’S WEBSITE DESIGN

Not having a website makes consumers trust you less. In fact, in 2018, 75 percent of people admit to making judgments on a company’s credibility based on website design. People are more likely to do business with a company they trust, and a website is the first place they go to check for credentials, reviews, and awards.

Beware, though—if you have a bad website design, it won’t help you at all. You have 10 seconds to leave an impression on website visitors and tell them what they’ll get out of your website and company. After this time (and oftentimes before), they’ll leave.

REASON #6:

YOU NEED TO ANSWER BASIC QUESTIONS QUICKLY

This is especially true for B2B companies. People visit your website when they want to know something or do something. They also expect immediate gratification, which means visitors should be able to answer three questions within three seconds of landing on your website:

Who are you?
What do you do/offer?
How do I contact you?

We live in an age of NOW, where consumers want the information they seek immediately—meaning your company’s website should answer each of the questions above without the user needing to scroll down the page at all.

REASON #7:

IT WILL HELP YOU BEAT THE GOLIATHS IN YOUR INDUSTRY

Did you know that having a website can help you beat the Goliaths in your industry? It can if it’s optimized for search. Take Villa Lagoon Tile. They compete heavily with big-box tile stores but have no trouble holding their own thanks to their website and their prominent position on the search results page.

REASON #8:

SOCIAL MEDIA REACH IS DIMINISHING

So, you think you don’t need a website because you’re on Facebook.

Great, so is every other business in America. You need a website even if you have a Facebook page.

And guess what? It’s getting harder for businesses to connect with users on the platform. Within a week of the last Facebook algorithm update, organic reach plummeted lower than it was already.
While social media can help your business grow, don’t bank on using it as your sole marketing channel, especially in the future.

Common Objections Business Owners Make Against Having a Website

OBJECTION #1:

“MY BUSINESS IS TOO SMALL, AND I DON’T HAVE THE BUDGET FOR A WEBSITE.”

This is the most common objection we hear from small business owners.

Look—your website is your number one marketing asset. Saying you don’t have the budget for it is like saying you don’t have the budget for an LLC license—you’re going to get in big trouble later if you don’t fork over that initial investment.

Get a website—it doesn’t have to be fancy and expensive, but it needs to exist, and it needs to be able to be found by search engines.

OBJECTION #2:

“I ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH BUSINESS. I DON’T NEED A WEBSITE.”

Even if you have more business than you can handle, you need a website, no ifs ands or buts. I recently read an article on website ownership that argued against this.

OBJECTION #3:

“I HAVE A GUY THAT SAID HE COULD MAKE ME A WEBSITE FOR FREE.”

This is a bad idea unless that guy’s career is in web design for your industry. Having a friend or family member make your website is like trusting a handyman to lay the foundation of a skyscraper. A LOT goes into having an optimized website—SEO optimization, file compression, responsive design, schema markup, etc.—and if it isn’t built on the right foundation, it will likely topple over.

Even if you DO have a professional web designer as a friend, be careful—different industries have different website design standards. For example, a website for health services will have completely different components and markup than a website for the HVAC industry.

OBJECTION #4:

“OUR CUSTOMERS AREN’T BIG COMPUTER USERS.”

Your customers aren’t “computer users”? That’s baloney. What this business owner is forgetting is that “computer users” aren’t just people using desktop computers. It also includes people browsing websites, social media, and apps on mobile devices.

Not only do 89 percent of US adults use the internet, but 77 percent of them own a smartphone, and in 2016, mobile web traffic outpaced desktop web traffic for the first time.

Smartphone = computer user.

OBJECTION #5:

I DON’T NEED A WEBSITE BECAUSE MY INDUSTRY DOESN’T NEED ONE / I’M NOT AN E-COMMERCE OR AN ONLINE BUSINESS.

This is a HUGE misconception a lot of people have. Just because you’re not ecommerce does not mean you don’t need a website. Consumers—even B2B buyers—still need to find you, learn about you, and trust you because they buy from you. The large majority of our clients aren’t ecommerce, and each one of them has seen considerable revenue growth from having a website.