The Importance Of A Website For Your Business In 2022

In this internet era, any business’s success is highly dependent on its online presence. Your customers are getting smarter with time and they are looking you up online before making their purchase decisions. The importance of a website for your business is increasing with each day, whether your business is online or offline. A report published by the Ecommerce Foundation says that up to 88 percent of consumers research products online even before buying it from a brick-and-mortar store. Majority of your customers visit your website and only if they can connect with your brand’s online personality, they make a purchase decision.

That being said, there are still businesses out there which are reluctant to get their own websites and start creating an online presence. Then there are others who just go for a cheap, unprofessional website which they think will save them money, but eventually it does more harm than good to their brands. It’s hard to believe that so many business owners fail to understand the importance of a website for their businesses, and how it can be make or break for their growth and revenue.

The reason why businesses may be reluctant to go online can vary. Many offline business owners think that they need to be too tech-savvy in order to have their own websites. Others don’t get their website out of shear thrift and they are not sure whether the investment would be worth it. There are yet others who don’t really understand how fast the world is changing and how the importance of a website for their businesses is increasing day by day.

It's important to understand that just because your business took off or is surviving without a website, doesn’t mean it will continue doing so in the coming years. With your competitors pouring more and more money into improving their online presence, and your customers’ trust being increasingly dependent on your brand’s online presence, you may soon be pushed out of business if you don’t realize the importance of a website for your business and start investing on building your online presence.

In this article, we analyze various aspects and go in depths to explain how your website plays such an important role in each of those aspects.

Market Yourself

When it comes to marketing, your website is the backbone of all your digital marketing efforts. Whether you are putting out any content, any communication or even advertisements, ultimately you need a platform where you will drive your target audience to. And once your target audience is on your website, it’s equally important to give them a good experience, a good impression of your brand, a clear idea of your brand personality and an easy navigation to purchase your products/services. Thus, it’s not just about having a website but is equally important that it is a well-designed and a professional one.

You can make your website appear on search engines when your target audiences search specific keywords, a process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The other approach is Search Engine Marketing (SEM), also referred to a Pay Per Click (PPC), where you run paid ads on search engines to make your website appear in search results.

Besides, you can also use Social Media Marketing to drive targeted traffic to your website. You can either organically grow your brand’s followership over time, or your can run ads to target specific demographics like age, gender, profession, geography etc.

Irrespective of your marketing efforts, having a good, professional, well-designed website is a must. Once your target customer is on your website, you’ve only won half the battle. If your website is poorly designed, the copywriting is not proper or it confuses the user-journey, your website visitors will quickly leave and you will lose business. A professionally designed website with good copywriting and ease of navigation guides your traffic through your website and maximizes the chances of sale.

Build Your Brand

As a business owner, it is important to build your brand and showcase your brand to your target audience. Having a clearly established brand values, brand personality and what your brand stands for, differentiates you from your competitors. This again sums up the incredible importance of a website, because it can make it easier for people to find reliable information about your brand.

Having a professional website also makes your brand more credible in the eyes of your audience. If your consumers can see your brand story, what is your brand’s vision and what kind of work you do, it’s easier for them to trust you. By having a well laid out website, you are making it easier for your consumers to know you and trust you. Trust is the first step towards building a long-term relationship and a business that does not have a website loses that trust in the first impression. If your competitors have a website and you don’t, you’re naturally left behind in the initial stages of the race.

Today’s customers expect you to have a website and not having one makes you look weird and untrustworthy. On the contrary if your website is well-designed and premium looking, it quickly builds the impression that your product or service is premium as well.

Create 24/7 presence

Having a website gives you unlimited access to your target customers round the clock. Many of us wonder where our productivity would be if we could work 24/7, without having the need to sleep or take breaks. Well, the good news is, your website is like an employee who works for you even when you’re sleeping, on weekends or when you’re under the weather. With your website up and running for you, it is constantly communicating with your customers, conveying your brand story and answering their queries. You can even choose to make online transactions available, which means your website can be selling your products and/or services for you 24/7. It is like a sales-person who works day and night, doesn’t fall sick and doesn’t throw tantrums, unlike some of your real employees!

Further, the importance of your website for your customer service can not be underestimated. Your prospective or actual customers may have many questions in their minds, like your prices, mode of payment, features of your product/service, your location, hours of operations, to name a few. In traditional customer service, your customers had to call you, and you needed to give extra time answering their queries and concerns or to hire a full-time employee for it. With a website, you can either have an FAQ section or a chatbot which can easily take care of most of these queries.

FAQs are used most commonly to address your customers’ queries or concerns. You make a list of most frequent customer queries and provide their suitable answers. It provides pointed answers to your customers’ questions as well as saves you time and resources. Chatbot is another option which can provide a lot of valuable and relevant answers to your clients. Chatbots either work on template answers or can also utilize natural language processing.

The importance of a website further goes on to enhance the customer friendliness of your business. In other words, most customers today would prefer a brand which makes their job of ‘being a customer’ easier. Imagine if you had to buy a piece of furniture, would you prefer driving from store to store to do your research before deciding which one to buy, or would you rather be sitting in your living room and do your research on your smartphone. I am sure majority of you would prefer the latter. Having a website which provides all relevant information about your brand and your products and services makes it easier for your customers to choose you.

Showcase your work

You can use your website to showcase how good you are at what you do. Whether it’s a gallery of your past work, or testimonials from your happy customers, or showing what impact you’re creating on the community, having a portfolio of your work on your website adds to the trust and reputation that your brand commands. For instance, if you are a real estate broker, you should have a video portfolio of how a young couple was able to find their dream house and start a new life, and how convenient you made it for them to buy the property. Or if you’re a dentist, you should show how you helped this middle aged gentleman get that confident smile, thanks to your orthodontic treatment.

When your prospective customers are in that trust building phase, these subtle emotional cues will subconsciously turn them in your favor. It also shows that you are at the ethical high ground, since you are open about your past work and that you have nothing to hide. So next time, you must capture pictures and reviews from your past customers. You should also request them to share a video testimonial if they are happy with your product or service.

Save some cost

While a professional website may seem like an upfront cost to many, it is in fact one of the most valuable investments for your business which always gives multi-fold returns, if you do it right. If it was not for your website, you might have needed additional employees, who would cost multiple times more over the years. If instead of an online store, you choose to go for a brick-and-mortar store, you need to hire a commercial space, furnish the space, hire trained staff and then could only operate it for limited hours. On the other hand, going for an E-commerce website will only have an upfront cost and a nominal maintenance cost, but it will save the other costs for at least a few years, until it gets outdated and you need to update it.

The money spent by your business on getting a professional website and a well-rounded online presence is always worth it. Hiring a professional agency who knows its job and can design a website that offers the right user experience and conversion is always advisable if you are serious about your business growth. A professional web designer knows how to make the navigation easy for your target customer and give them the right guidance across your website which gently but naturally drives them to convert into a paying customer. They also further create optimized content that is suitable for your search engine rankings.

Thus, websites are an essential tool to do business in today’s digital marketplace. They offer limitless opportunities for your business to grow and prosper. They are easy to create and simple to maintain and can become the most powerful driver for your brand.

We are the best website design company Gurgaon and we can help you built a personalized website most suited for your business.