So you run a small business and still wondering whether you need a website or not. Right?
In this blog post, we will share some of the important reasons for having a website for every business, be it small or big, along with some of the essential features that a website must have.
Let’s dive into this.
6 Reasons To Have A Website
#1 Your Competitors Have Websites
This is perhaps the most basic yet important reason for any business to create a website.
If you too have a business, look around and see. Do your competitors or peers also have a website? If your answer is ‘yes’, then you probably know what to do next! Of course, hire a website designer and build a website for your business too.
If you still don’t plan for a website, you may lose a big share of online sales and clientele. Or let us correct this line. If you still don’t plan for a website, you may be giving away, unwillingly & unknowingly a lot of business, revenue & customers to your competitors. Doesn’t sound nice, yeah?
#2 A Website Can Help You Sell More
Let’s accept the fact. A brick & mortar business has a limited reach. Perhaps with this kind of business, you can reach your district, zone, city, or state. But with an online business, you can reach out to the world. As they say “sky is the limit’.
But, in order to run an online business successfully, you must have a sound website. Without a website, you can’t even think to grow your business globally. So, here comes another reason for you to build a website.
With a website, equipped with effective marketing strategies, you can:
- Reach your targeted audience.
- Sell to worldwide customers.
- Build your brand globally.
#3 Round-The-Clock Availability
Your website is available for your customers 24/7/365. Unlike the usual stores where you go down to buy according to their operating hours.
And imagine, you put all the effort to go down in order to buy something from a store and you find that it’s closed for the day. How you would feel?
Now, with a website, this is not the case at all. Being accessible online, your website is open to your customers 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
Your customers can visit your website according to their own convenience, and not yours. Isn’t it convincing enough for them?
So, here’s another reason for your to build a website. You can serve your customers round-the-clock.
#4 Affordable
Website development is no more an expensive affair now. Gone are the days when you had to make a big hole in your pocket to pay off your web developers thousands of dollars to create your website.
But now, with so many options of open source CMS like WordPress, you can get your website in a few hundred only.
What’s more.
If you have a small budget for your website development, you can also hire web developers in India who can help you to design your website at an amazingly low price.
So, if the website design cost was the major hurdle for you to build your website, forget about it. Hire a web designer or website design company in India and remove the jump over this hurdle.
Recommended Post: Need a Low-Cost Web Design Proposal? Here Are 6 Ways To Get It
#5 Credibility
People nowadays tend to trust only those businesses that have their own websites.
Why is it so?
Simply because a website contains all the information or details about their business along with the range of their services & products.
A website can also have the testimonials of existing customers. So, when potential buyers view past customers’ testimonials on any website, they remain no more skeptical and take a step forward to buy the products & services from that website or business.
Therefore, if you want to gain the trust of your potential customers, you must build a website for your business.
#6 Affordable Marketing & Advertising
When we think of marketing & advertising, the first thing that stops us to do it is probably the money involved.
Of course, advertising & market any business in the offline world through mediums like Billboards, Radio, Television & Magazines can be super expensive.
However, when you have a website, you can spend just a fraction of the offline advertising budget and get the same or even better results.
With the best & effective yet affordable solutions like Google Ads, Facebook Ads & SEO, you can reach out to your audience worldwide.
Again, you need to have a website in order to plan for online advertising or marketing.
5 Essential Features Of A Website
Although we have covered this topic several times on our website, we thought it should be relevant to share some of the essential features of a website here, along with the reasons to create a website that we already discussed above.
So, let’s look into these 5 vital features that your website design must have.
#1 Responsive Design
In 2019, it shouldn’t be a fancy thing to discuss responsive website design when most online users browse websites using their handheld devices. But believe it or not, there are still many websites that don’t have a responsive website design.
So, this message is for all of those webmasters who underestimate the importance of having a responsive website.
Here are but major reasons for any website to have a responsive design:
- A responsive design helps to secure better positions on search engines.
- A responsive design helps to enhance the user experience of mobile audiences.
- A responsive design helps websites to load faster on mobiles.
- A responsive design helps to cater to social media traffic because most people access social media websites using their mobile phones, according to several types of research.
#2 Basic SEO
The primary objective to build a website, in most cases, is to get more traffic and generate more revenue. And when it comes to quality traffic, SEO stands first in the row.
We all know that search engines, especially Google, have the potential to send traffic to your website. But these search engines will send you traffic only if your website is SEO-friendly.
How can a website be made SEO-friendly?
Well, there are many things that help a website rank on top positions for relevant keywords, but here we will talk about some of the important on-page SEO activities only.
Here are some of the basic yet important SEO qualities that every website must have:
- SEO-friendly URLs
- Meta tags optimization
- Proper usage of H1, H2 & H3 tags
- Fast loading webpages
- Optimized images
Takeaway: Before hiring a website designer, do ensure that you get all of the above SEO features without any additional cost.
#3 Security
With the growing number of website attacks and cyber attacks every day, it has become more crucial than ever to secure your website.
An insecure website can not only damage your reputation & credibility but can also take away your time and money.
Here are a few reasons for securing your website:
- Hackers can target your customers’ sensitive data.
- The security breach can affect your business reputation & revenue.
- Your website can have a high chance of getting blacklisted.
- You will need to spend more money on web developers to fix the problem.
As they say “prevention is better than cure”. You must ensure in the first place, that your website is fully secure & safe.
Recommended Post: 11 Ways In Which A WordPress Designer In India Can Prevent Website Hacking
#4 CMS
Website development is not a one-time thing. Every now and then, you will be required to change some content or images on your website.
Having said that, it really makes sense for every business owner to take control of their website and do these minor changes themselves.
Hiring a website developer or designer every time you need these modifications can really end up in spending a lot of additional money.
What’s the solution here?
CMS: Content Management System.
Yes, when your web developer uses any CMS like WordPress, you can easily log in to the admin backend and make the required changes in a few minutes.
All you need is a short training or a manual that you can refer to, whenever you are required to make any changes.
Recommended post: The 5 important things to consider before choosing a CMS for your website development
#5 Website Information & Menu
So far, we’ve talked about the external features of a website that aren’t directly related to the users.
But what about the stuff that users see as the first thing when they open any website? Yes, you got it right. We’re talking about content, images, and menu.
Here are a few checklists that every website designer or webmaster must follow:
- A website must have the contact details of the business in a prominent location.
- A website must have a user-intuitive menu or navigation.
- A website must have high-quality yet optimized images that shouldn’t cause the web pages to load slowly.
- A website must have all the information up-to-date.
- A website must be checked for all browsers.
- A website must have all the forms fully-functional.
- A website must not have any broken links.
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