A website is like a canvas for every business organization. It’s where you put your ideas, sell your product, make a connection with your customers, build trust, place your content and offers and so on. In today’s competitive business world where people have a small span of attention, a website is a basic requirement to have in order to run your small boutique, your designed t-shirt, your cupcake shop; just like any other multi-million-dollar business. There is no business which can run successfully without a proper framework; hence a website comes into play for online presence of your startup business.
Before diving into the main discussion, I want to share a true story with you in this regard.
In 2015 an entrepreneur named Tomal launched an online flower selling business. His core idea was to provide flowers to people’s door step and initially he decided on a Facebook page as his only selling medium. In his defense, he thought a website will be a waste of money and Facebook will be more than enough to reach his targeted customers. As it turns out, he was very wrong and none of his plans were working properly. Two major issues were receiving orders and an unstructured payment method. As a result, he was losing prospective customers and it was a mess. Then he launched his website “Deshiphool” in December of 2015.
Fast forward today, (1)“deshiphool” is a big success and Tomal’s business has never been more organized.
Now take a look at the list of benefits a website can do for your startup business –
1. Inexpensive
As a startup, your main concern should be making smart choices that allow you to save money. A website falls right into one of those smart choices. Depending on your requirement of page and design sophistication website cost can vary. A simple Google search can give you a rough idea about how much a website would cost.
Also, there is some website design calculator where you can add specification based on your customization. These tools are easy to use and updated over time based on market rate and trend. You can reduce your cost even more by offshoring your web design and maintenance to other countries.
2. Accessibility
Everything is at our fingertips these days. People don’t like the hassle of going to a physical shop. A website is a place where customers can go to make their informed decisions while never leaving the comfort of their homes.
Customers stay connected 24/7 with you through your website, which creates trust and credibility among the client-base about your business. Emerging rate of smart-phone and tablet usage makes your website an even more lucrative way of reaching out to your existing and potential customers. Now they are always one click away from availing your service or buying your product, thanks to your website creating a web presence. Design is one of the most important things when it comes to accessing a website. A bad design can hurt your reputation; it seems very unprofessional as well. Your customers will appreciate a website with a clean and clear design, where they can roam around effortlessly.
3. Creating Relation With Audience
Going through your website, customers can get an idea about what you are offering them or what are the benefits they can acquire from you. An engaging website can commit your customer to your brand; it will help you develop a better customer relationship better with them. In the “FAQ” section, you can discuss the most inquired topics. Your audience can also contact your marketing executive in your website chat. It is a form of real time communication that can help your audience to know about the product or service you are providing. These tools help your customers to make informed decision and create credibility for your business in the long run. You can get useful ideas from the questions the customers often ask; you will understand what problems need to be addressed. Startups are always looking for new ways of serving the market and it will be a smart way to reach out to your customers.
4. Free Advertising
Nowadays advertising does not come cheap. TV ads, radio ads, online sponsored ads all cost a substantial amount of money. But your website holds the most cost effective solution for that. You can put your new offers and news in website which otherwise would have cost you lot more. Not only can you put offerings on your website but also in front of your targeted audience. As a result you can make sure that your potential customers are surely getting your message and not missing out on anything. It also ensures that your return on investment is right on track.
5. Shared Point of View
We’ve all heard about “content marketing”. Why is content marketing so popular these days? Because people want to use a brand who understands them, service providers who share similar ideas like them. Your blogs, videos, info-graphics, case studies, white paper- everything is content marketing. Nothing helps your content marketing strategy more than having a website where you can manage everything under one roof.
Have a look at some of the content marketing stats to understand the significance –
- Content marketing cost 62% less than outbound marketing.
- 88% B2B marketers use content in their marketing strategies.
- Content marketing has six times higher conversion rates than traditional marketing.
- 56% marketers believe that content increase brand recall among customers
One particular information I found intriguing is that about 210 million people are using ad blocking software on a daily basis. Not only that, people are also watching shows that don’t have any ads or they are fast forwarding the TV commercial parts.
What does it mean? It means that people’s perception about advertising is changing. Nowadays people don’t want to see jingled advertisements. The best way to reach these kinds of customers is through content marketing.
6. Keeping Track
A website helps you to keep track of your visited customers. More specifically, the landing page is a very useful way of gathering customer information so you can connect with them on a regular basis and send them your new offers or content. It creates a long-term relationship with customers. The more landing page you have the more leads you are likely to get. You have to keep in mind that call to action is the base of any landing page. A clear call to action appeal can persuade your customers and show them the right way to proceed.
You can gather information on how long they have been on your website, which product or service they are liking most, the things they are not liking, which social media tools are working for you better, from where people have been discovering your site, people from which geographic location are your potential lead so on. There are both free and paid tools for gathering and interpreting those data – Google analytics, Google webmaster tools
7. Easy To Promote
Promoting your business on different platforms has never been as easy as it is with the help of your website.
Through content you can promote your website and attract your customers. You can create your content in video, audio and written form. In written from, blog is the best choice. The popularity of blog and written content is growing and it seems very promising in the coming years.
Blogging drives 3 times the number of leads, because your blog lasts forever and evergreen topics are always in demand. But paid advertising doesn’t give you that flexibility because it will only last as long as you pay for it.
A study conducted on 1000 websites concluded that, after 18 months from starting, even the smallest websites start getting 10,000+ visitors per month. That kind of traffic means revenue in millions if you can provide the value in product or service form.
Video content can also be a great way to attract leads. With some cool statistics you will get an idea –
- 8 million words is equivalent to 1 minute of video.
- According to comScore 100 million internet users watch video each day.
- 90% online shoppers find video helpful for purchase decision.
- An average user watches 16 minute 49 second of online video ads very month.
8. Expanding The Customer Pool
Expanding your current market and reaching out to new target pool is the main benefit of having a website for small business. Making your website SEO optimized is essential to have a good search engine rank. There are many tools through which a website can be optimized. For instance SEMrush and Moz are two major platforms for making your website SEO optimized. But it can be confusing sometimes and don’t forget that preciseness is the key here. So, it will be a good idea to hire professionals for that kind of optimization.
Producing quality content is equally important in order to make your website and your business visible in your respective business arena. If people find your content useful and come back to your website to read more or share it with others in social media it will be useful for site to rank higher. Because search engine will see you as an authoritative figure, therefore in future when people search something that is related to your content search engine will rank you higher. This will lead to customers from outside your geographic reach to discover your website and take your services, which would not have been possible without a website. This will ultimately help you to make profit and grow even bigger.
I hope this was helpful for you. What do you think about your website? Are you satisfied with your business website? Do you want to add anything else to discussion?
