Benefits of Having a Website For Your Business
The world that we live in is mostly digital. A lot of our shopping is done online, we look for service providers on the internet, and turn to blogs and social media for advice and product information.
10 Benefits of Having a Website
1. Build Brand Awareness
The top and most basic benefit of having a website is that it can help you build brand awareness. Without brand awareness, you will not be able to have a successful business, especially if you’re a newer company.
Brand awareness means that people recognize your brand, which in turn helps you grow your audience base and income.
It’s also essential when it comes to funnels to sell your services or products.
If someone doesn’t know about your brand, they most likely won’t trust you and aren’t going to find your sales funnels or learn more about your products and what you have to offer.
Another facet of brand awareness that is often overlooked is that the more people have heard of your business, the more likely they are to purchase from you.
Don’t you usually buy from the same brands because you know and trust them? The same goes for people purchasing from you.
With having a website, you can also create your own domain email address which instantly makes you look a lot more professional and helps your brand start to build credibility — hello@yourcompanyname.com looks a lot more credible than hello@hotmail.com.
2. Gain Insights into Your Audience
Gaining more insight into your audience is easily one of the advantages of having a website for your business.
There are tons of analytics that can come from your website, and if you don’t have one, then you are missing out on free information to help your business grow.
By using a tool like Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track lots of things about the people visiting your site.
You can find the demographic you’re reaching, see the pages that visitors are landing on, the search queries that people are searching for on Google that leads to them finding your website, and you can even find your most popular pages.
These insights can be invaluable when it comes to your business.
For instance, maybe you find that your most popular search query is something that could lead to a new product or service since people are finding your website by searching for it anyway.
Analytics can help you finetune your offerings and products, and if you aren’t using analytics, then you are seriously missing out on some very useful (free) information about your customers.
3. Find New Customers through SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is easily one of the main benefits of having a website for your business. By ranking higher on Google, you can find new customers and increase your monthly profit immensely.
If you don’t know what SEO is, it’s best to ask your web designer or purchase a course of your own to learn how to utilize it in your business.
Some popular courses out there include Make Traffic Happen, Stupid Simple SEO, and Goats On The Road’s course, Advanced SEO Made Simple.
Essentially, by finding keywords (using platforms like Keysearch) that you can rank for based on your Domain Authority, your articles and information can begin to show higher on specific Google search results.
As you may know from your own experience, the higher you rank in search results, the more likely your website will be clicked.
How often do you ever go to page two in search results when looking for something online? You probably don’t even go past the first three, or four search results before finding exactly what you are looking for.
One of the easiest ways to begin working on SEO for your site is to create a blog within your website. This way, you can discuss topics in your industry and show that your website is consistently updated.
4. Position Your Brand as an Expert in the Industry
If you don’t have a presence online, then you aren’t going to be seen as a professional business. Appearing professional is one of the benefits of having a business website that you might not have even considered.
With professionalism comes positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Your website is your own little corner of the internet that belongs to you and your business, so take advantage of that.
On your website, educate people about your industry in ways that could help you sell your products.
For instance, as a graphic design business, maybe you’ll have a few posts on your website about the benefits of hiring a professional designer instead of having work done in-house.
If you start to present yourself as an expert in your industry, you’ll begin to get referrals and find more customers or clients in general because you’ll start to become known for what you do. This can help increase your profitability tenfold!
5. Showcase Your Portfolio of Work
No matter what industry you’re in, being able to showcase your past work is one of the best uses of a website.
People aren’t going to want to buy from you or sign a contract for your services if you don’t have any social proof showcasing what you are capable of.
While you may think that this is something that can help freelancers more, it’s important for any type of business.
If you are a landscape company, you can showcase before and afters of what you’ve done for other customers. If you’re in a profitable niche such as health and fitness, showing weight loss results and before and afters will really boost your credibility.
This is one of the benefits of having a business website that many companies don’t utilize.
The best way to do this is to have an entire portfolio page, specifically on your website. This could simply be called “portfolio”, “past work” or “testimonials”. Either way, it will show that you are actually credible and aren’t just offering these services without any past experience.
Within your portfolio page, keep in mind that it is also essential to include many client testimonials. Reviews are essential when it comes to finding new clients.
6. Grow Your Brand
With an online presence, you can have extended business hours, especially if you are offering products. Maybe you have a brick-and-mortar store, which means that people can only purchase by visiting your store. With a website, anyone can buy your products at any time of day.
You can also begin to grow your brand by getting your audience more involved in your business.
Websites have the ability to have a comment section, so you can pose questions to your customers and get them more intrigued in what you have to offer by involving them in your posts.
You can also take customer feedback from the comments as well.
Having a website also allows you to stay on-trend and up to date with your competition. If your competitors don’t have websites, then congrats, you’ll be ahead of the competition, which can only help your business or brand in the long run.
7. Save Money
One of the advantages of having a website for your business is that you can save money.
Brick and mortar stores can be costly, and you can reach a wider audience while cutting costs by having a website and running your business online.
By cutting down on rent, employee costs, electricity, and more, you can begin to put more money into your business in other ways.
You could grow your product base, invest in email marketing, or even online advertising. There are endless possibilities.
If you often use print materials for advertising your business, then switching to online advertising can save you money. Print costs can add up quickly, and then you also have to pay to send your postcards or brochures to people, which is costly.
Finally, with online advertising, you can specifically target people who would be interested in your business through Facebook Ads or Google Ads.
8. Increase Customer Service
With an in-person business, your customer service can only be available during the hours you’re open. People can make phone calls, email your business, or drop in to ask any questions they might have.
However, with a website, you can increase your customer service and answer inquiries in a timely manner. One of the top benefits of having a website is that you can invest in customer service to be available 24/7.
You could easily hire customer service representatives on the other side of the world to cover the night shift while you’re asleep. All you have to do is take the time to train them, and then you’ll have someone who can answer any questions for you when you aren’t available.
Another way to stay on top of customer service is to invest in chatbots. A.I. is getting smarter every day, and you could at least have some sort of chatbot answer basic questions your customers may have.
Having a website means that you could also consider hosting a knowledge base on your products or services. This could include tutorials and guides that hold answers to frequently asked questions to cut down on the number of inquiries you get regularly.
9. Tell Your Brand’s Story
People are more likely to purchase from brands that they can easily align with. So, take the time to have an in-depth “About Page” on your website and make sure that your values are clearly located front and centre.
Another important thing to include when telling your story is your background. Let people visiting your website know exactly how your business was started and where you come from. This is another opportunity for people to connect with you.
Your business is a lot more than just a company, because, at the end of the day, it was started by someone — you. Make your business one that people can relate to, and you’ll see that reflected in repeat business.
Without an online presence, it will be a lot harder to tell your brand’s story. It’s genuinely one of the best uses of a website.
10. Grow Your Team
Being able to grow your team is one of the other advantages of having a website for your business. These days, not many people turn to newspapers or other print materials to look for jobs.
Most jobs are posted online, so using your website to grow your team creates an excellent opportunity.
Not only will people visit your website to learn more about your services, but once they get interested enough, they might want to work for you.
Posting jobs on your website can also help with your website traffic, especially if the positions you are looking to fill are ones that are often searched for online.
Some examples of this might be customer service representatives, graphic designers, content creators, or even marketing directors.
While there are different types of job portals you can integrate into your website, many smaller businesses will just create their own landing page and list the job opportunities there.