What are the Benefits of Having a Website? (For Small, Local Businesses) Can You Succeed Without one?

Are you a small business owner and you are trying to decide as to whether you should bother with a website? Perhaps you get by on word of mouth in your local community and haven’t yet needed to establish an online presence. Whatever the case, give this article a quick read; we’re going to talk about the benefits having a website can bring – and whether a business can truly succeed without one.

What are the benefits of having a website for your small business?

1. Build an online awareness: you may be getting by on word of mouth but there are still so many potential customers in your local community who have no idea that you exist.
2. Build trust: today, businesses who don’t have a website struggle to establish trust with their customers.
3. Attract organic traffic: if you don’t have a website, people will never be able to find your business when they are actively searching for the services that you offer. However, with a website that is well optimised, there will be a chance of attracting organic traffic (which means a steady supply of new business).
4. An easy point of contact: how can people find your contact details without a website? Do they look for you in the Yellow Pages? Try to find the business card you gave them and they have now subsequently misplaced? Having a website, if only as a point of contact, is well worth it.
5. Connect with your social platforms: your website can link out to all of the social media platforms that you are present on. Syncing up your online accounts with your website is an effective way to engage with your followers, build trust and credibility, and ultimately convert more customers.
6. Sell products / services: especially if you are a retail store, having an online presence and a bricks and mortar store is an effective way of increasing revenue and making money 24/7 – even when your physical store is closed for business!
7. Blog for authority: adding regular blog posts to your website is the key to demonstrating your authority and providing consistent free value to your audience. It’s also handy for your long-term SEO efforts as well.
8. Inform people of the latest news: do you have a new product launch impending? Are there any significant changes happening that your loyal customers should know about? Being online will make this process significantly easier.
9. It’s convenient: don’t make life any harder for your customers. If you want to maximise your potential to earn, you should do everything you can to make spending money on your products and services as effortless as possible.
10. Learn more about your customers: doing consumer research and optimising for the best keywords are effective ways in which you can learn more about your customer. With this kind of actionable data, you can continue to refine your products / services in order to be the very best that you can be!

Can a business survive without a website?

Absolutely. Many businesses operate on social media alone, or via websites like Etsy, however, the one thing that every successful business has in common is: a well-designed, user-friendly website with compelling sales copy and flawless SEO optimization.

So yes, you can get by without a website if you invest heavily in other forms of marketing. However, the question is: when there are so many benefits to cloud computing for business and having a website, why would you want to go without and rely on dated methods?

Conclusion: There’s no good reason not to have a website

Even if you don’t sell products online, or you don’t want to take bookings through your website, there’s still no good reason not to have a website. An informational website that offers value to your customers can be transformative for your business – while taking every opportunity to attract new customers organically.

Of course, we understand if you have neither the time nor desire to be building websites or worrying about anything too technical, however, the best part is you can leave it all up to the professionals. For example, you can hire a local web developer to build something beautiful and functional for you, and allow them to manage and maintain it for a monthly fee.

Following that, if you want to market it and attract as many new customers to your business as possible, you can find an SEO in the Gold Coast to help you strategize a local SEO campaign and ensure that your business is on everyone’s radar in your community.