[Entrepreneurship Notes] 8 Reasons Why Every Business Needs a Powerful Website

For any business, big or small, local or online, and in almost every industry, business ownership is an essential marketing tool. However, simply having any website is not enough. To ensure that your website does everything it can and should do to support your business, you need a website that is strong, effective, and engaging.

1. Your website is your online card

Remember the days when salespeople and business owners always carried around a stack of business cards and handed them to everyone they met? Probably not – but trust us, this used to be a critical sales and marketing tool. Today, websites play the role of online business cards: they introduce your business to potential customers and other contacts, and tell everyone how to get in touch with you and hopefully buy your products.

In fact, your website can be more than just a business card if you use it the right way. It can be your brochure, your portfolio, your catalog, etc. This is why having a strong website is imperative. If you choose to have a very basic website with little information, if you skimp on design, or if you choose to continue using an old website because it's past its use-by date, your business will be harmed and many opportunities will be missed. valuable opportunity.

By a “powerful” website we mean:

• Visually appealing, impactful and engaging
• User friendly and encourages visitors to spend time browsing your website
• Contains important information about your business, products and/or services
• Represent your brand
• (Perhaps most importantly) Convert visitors into customers
• The layout, format, the information you include and the amount of information you should have on your website will vary depending on your business. However, your website should at least contain an overview of the products you sell or services you provide, a basic introduction to you as a business, and information on how customers can contact you.
  
  2. Your website can expand your customer base
  

The vast majority of consumers turn to search engines when looking for a new business, product or service. This represents a ready pool of potential customers, waiting for you to tap into them and expand your customer base. Furthermore, online marketing represents the opportunity to reach new and diverse target groups that were previously out of reach for many types of businesses. This could be a new geographic location or reaching customers in a new industry or age demographic.

Again, this only works if you have the right kind of website. You need a website that can not only bring web traffic through SEO and organic methods, but convert those visitors into customers once they get there. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes into play.

Like SEO, CRO is a very broad and complex topic, but broadly speaking, it's about convincing your website visitors to take that crucial next step when they land on your site that will get them on the path to Become your customer's path instead of clicking away and leaving your life forever. This step might be purchasing the product outright, but depending on your business and your website, it could be submitting a quote, booking a discovery call, or signing up for your newsletter. This step will be different for every business, and you should clearly define it as part of your marketing strategy before building your website.

Generally speaking, websites that support high CRO rates are:

• User friendly and has good website speed
• Tailored to your target customers
• clear, simple
• Have strong, compelling calls-to-action (including animated buttons and the like), and lots of them
• Have all the key details your visitors are looking for, no redundant information
  

3. A strong website has a high ROI

Building a website is inexpensive compared to many other expenses in your marketing budget, as well as business expenses in general. However, a strong website will have a lot to offer in terms of leads, sales and profits, meaning this represents an amazing ROI. The cost of building a website will vary greatly depending on your designer and the size and type of website you want, but in all cases is quite reasonable considering the return it generates.

If you decide to build your website yourself, these costs will be more reasonable. The best website builders allow you to build a professional website that drives traffic to your website and converts them into customers, even if you are not an experienced web developer. There are a large number of website builders available today, which means it can be difficult to know which one to use.

Here’s a brief overview of the most popular website builders out there:

Wix – Arguably the best all-around website builder, great for beginners, lots of templates but customizable options, great value for money
WordPress – by volumemost popularThe website builder, which can be a bit tricky to use, has a lot of customizable options and plugins.
Squarespace – Very stylish and sophisticated design, great for creatives, more challenging to use and more expensive.
Weebly – Very user-friendly and great for beginners, does not allow a lot of creative freedom.

Of course, this only works if you have a good website. If you have a basic or bland website that does nothing for your business, this will mean that it provides zero return, even on a very small investment, which means zero ROI.

4. Consumers live and breathe online

We really live in an Internet age. According to a 2019 report by Hootsuite and We Are Social, globally, people spend an average of 6 hours and 49 minutes online every day. In some countries, the numbers are much higher: Indians spend 7 hours and 47 minutes online every day, Brazilians spend 9 hours and 29 minutes, and Filipinos spend a staggering 10 hours.

Not only that, but consumers are increasingly relying on the Internet to purchase products and services: they are shopping online more and, most importantly, they are searching for businesses online. When people want to find a new product, service or business, whether local, long distance or purely digital, they overwhelmingly turn to Google. One study found that 97% consumers reported searching online for a product or service at least once in the past 12 months.

Simply put, customers are looking for businesses online, so if you want them to find you, you better have an online presence. Additionally, you need to have as strong an online presence as possible in order to attract as many of these potential customers as possible. At its core, a strong online presence means having a great website that converts visitors into customers and drives those visitors to your website in the first place.

Well, let’s explore how you can later use your website to convert visitors into sales, so let’s take a quick look at how to drive visitors to your website. The first thing to do to bring more traffic to your website is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Search engine optimization is a complex topic that could fill many articles on its own.

However, at its core, SEO boils down to two key aspects:

1) Relevance – Show Google that your website is relevant to your target market’s searches by using the right keywords (that you have identified through thorough keyword research) and using them repeatedly on your website, especially in the most Important places like title, page title and URL.

2) Authoritative – Prove to Google that your site is reputable and that your information is reliable by focusing on technical aspects like site speed and site security, as well as having a large number of links to reputable sites, preferably quality external links back to your location.

There are many more complex and often expensive strategies to improve SEO, such as link building and content marketing for SEO, but they are all inherently related to these two principles.

5. A good website builds customer relationships

A website is more than just a place for an e-brochure or sales funnel, it converts visitors into customers. Yes, they can and should be all of these things, but they can also be more. Your website provides you with a platform to build strong and lasting relationships with your customers.

Customer relationships are important, and building and strengthening them is one of the best things you can do to ensure the long-term success of your business. Ensuring repeat business makes overwhelming business sense: Obtaining repeat sales from previous customers requires a much lower investment than finding new ones. Therefore, it is crucial to capture your customers and encourage them to continue purchasing your products and services.

Your website can be a very effective way to do this. When used correctly, a website is an excellent tool for building relationships with customers. Having strong customer relationships will make it more likely that these people will continue to be your customers. For example, you can publish a regular blog on your website. If your blog is informative, insightful, and useful to your customers, they will read your posts regularly. Over time, they will come to rely on the information you provide, greatly strengthening your relationship with them.

6. It is the foundation for other marketing strategies

As we've covered, a strong website is a valuable and useful marketing tool. However, it’s not just a marketing strategy in and of itself: it can also serve as a springboard to launch other marketing strategies. You can use your website to link and promote your social media accounts, for example, to help these platforms gain more exposure and get more value from them. Simple ways include linking to social media on your website and displaying a feed of recent social media posts on your website.

Your website is also an important tool to support your email marketing efforts, which will become a key marketing strategy in 2020. Visitors to your website are one of your best resources when it comes to growing your email list, either through a sign-up box or a pop-up on your website. Your website can also host your podcasts, videos, and other powerful content.

7. Your website tells people who you are

This applies not just to your customers, but to anyone in your network: suppliers, competitors, and others in the business community. A good website will represent your brand and showcase it to your customers and other website visitors.

It's important to carefully design your website to reflect your brand, as it's the first impression people will receive of your business after finding you online. If you fail to do this, that may be the last and only impression they get! Before building or commissioning your website, make sure you have a clearly defined marketing strategy that outlines your brand values and attributes. Next, consider how these elements should be reflected on your website and make sure they are implemented in all aspects.

8. It goes everywhere with your customers

Smartphones are essential items these days: we carry them with us wherever we go, and we're always vigilant to make sure they stay charged. What this means is that you have a world of potential customers, and if you have a website that they can visit, they will essentially have your business information in their pocket.

In fact, data shows that nearly half of website traffic in 2019 came from mobile. This means your customers are more likely to view your website on a smartphone rather than a computer screen. Of course, this means your website must be mobile-friendly. By mobile-friendly, we don't just mean that it looks good on smartphones and tablets, but that it's as visually appealing on mobile as it is on a desktop or laptop.

Web Design Experts – Cheery Limited

Cheery Limited is a web design and marketing company located in Hong Kong. No matter where you are, we can provide you with the most suitable web design and corresponding marketing strategy.

Our services include:

• Tailor-made web design
• Online store
• Program development
• SEO
• SEM
• Social networking site marketing