To be a part of your hometown community and show them that you are interested in serving them, you need to be on the web for them. You need to be an active participant in the latest technologies and the latest social marketing to help your community reach out to bring customers to your town.

2. To Network

Passing out a business card has always been part of doing business.  Nowadays, having your website available in an inexpensive and simple way to reach the world 24/7.

3. To Make Business Information Available

A full-size color yellow pages ad will cost you thousands a year and only reaches your local area.  Imagine your information available to the entire world from any computer, notebook or cell phone.

4. To Serve Your Customers

Many people, like me, spend our evenings on the internet rather than watching TV.  We research, we apply for loans, and make facial appointments…..all on the web, while the businesses we are contacting have already gone home for the day.

5. To Heighten Public Interest

Add interesting information to your website that will get potential customers coming to it.  Anybody anywhere who goes to your website is a potential customer! Creating content that educates your customers about your products is the new standard.

6. To Sell Things

This is probably the number one reason anyone gets on the internet….to buy, buy, buy.  If your products are available on your website, you can make sales while you are sleeping. 

7. To make pictures, sound, and video available

A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t have space for a thousand words? The WWW allows you to add sound, pictures, and video to your company’s information. No brochure will do that.

8. To Answer Frequently Asked Questions

Tired of getting phone calls at work, answering the same questions over and over?  An F.A.Q.s page (frequently asked questions) is a brilliant way to answer those questions in detail once for the convenience of all of your customers.

9. To reach the masses

The “web user” is the highest mass-market demographic available today. College students, blue and white-collar workers, parents, and retirees get on the internet from 2 to 40 hours a week or more.

10. Open International Markets

With a website, you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. Websites can be easily translated by the user, and pricing changed to any currency.

11. To Create a 24 Hour Service Business is worldwide but your office hours aren’t. Web pages serve the client, customer, and partner 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

12. To Make Changes Easily
Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printers’ bill.

13. To Get Customer Feedback
You pass out the brochure, the catalog, the booklet. But then get no sales, no calls, no leads. Marketing 101 says to keep testing the market, but that gets very expensive. With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost.

14. To Test Market New Services and Products
Website customers are the least expensive market for you to reach. They will let you know what they think of your product faster, easier, and much less expensive than any other market.

15. To Reach The Media
On the web, your business reaches the media without any extra effort from you. The media is the most wired profession today since their main product is information and they can get it more quickly, cheaply, and easily on-line.

16. To Reach The Youth Market
If your market is kids and young adults, consider that the majority of schools, from Preschool to Universities offer Internet access for educational purposes. Your market is being trained to go online for their needs. Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion, etc. need to be on the Web. There will be nothing but growth in the percentage of the under 25 markets that will be on-line.

17. To Reach Special Markets
Selling left-handed scissors? Camouflage toilet paper? The Internet is the perfect place to be. With the 70 million and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers.

18. To Serve Your Local Market
Having your products, services, restaurant menus, etc. online, keeps your local community shopping local. They buy online for convenience, but then pick it up to save on shipping. It’s a win-win!

19. Millions are going online!
The number of people shopping online has snowballed in past few years and is expected to grow at a much faster pace in the future. The reason? The web offers the ultimate variety and convenience. Where else can someone go shopping in their bathrobe at 3 in the morning? Do you have the potential of 70 million people walking into your store? The Web gives potential to have unlimited customers coming to you.

20. Know your market….who is surfing?
a. It’s 2 in the morning….you’re having sleepless night, browsing through the internet. You click on a website and you spend a half an hour browsing and buying.
b. Like most professionals and students, you use websites to keep up with the latest fashion trends.
c. You search for unusual gifts for friends, which you rarely find in stores because you don’t know what you are looking for.
d. You want to get the awesome deal of a lifetime and compare prices easily.

Thank you Stormy S. Knight

The post 20 Reasons to have a Business Website appeared first on Websites by Robyn.

Here’s what I came up with:

• You’re a spy agency and don’t want to be found
• You have too many customers
• You’re making too much money
• Your primary customers are The Flintstones

All kidding aside, the most common reason we hear from small businesses for not having a website is: “we don’t need one.”

That’s unlikely due to the many uses for a business website including customer support, lead generation, educating your customers, contact information and location mapping, and most importantly ordering products and services.  But when it comes down to it, your website isn’t for you, it’s for your customers.

If a customer has ever asked for directions, about your products, what time you close, about your return policies, etc. then a website can help your business.  This kind of information could all be on your website.

If you don’t have a website, imagine how many prospective customers have searched online for your contact info, hours, location, products, etc.  If prospective customers can’t find this information about your business, then your business doesn’t exist and they’ll go elsewhere.  Wouldn’t you?

Some older business owners still believe a Yellow Pages listing is enough.  While Yellow pages are still used by older audiences, there are many younger people who’ve never even used the Yellow Pages.  Times are a ‘changin.

The best reason to have a website is that there’s no reason not to because these days getting a website is easier than ever.

As of this month, December 2016, 3,274,982,000 people worldwide have access to the Internet. No matter what your business is, you can’t ignore over 3 billion people.

Sooner or later, someone will type your name or business into a search engine.  What do you want them to find?  Nothing, or worse yet, your competition?  A Website will allow your business or organization to be “open” 24/7.

Every business should have a website.  BUT, here’s the exception to my rule: It’s actually better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad.

Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says, “Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers!” or it screams, “Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything!”

Whatever you’re advertising, whether it be services, products, or yourself, a website is an easy and inexpensive way to promote yourself.  Every other kind of advertising will cost a premium.

Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a Website.

At a minimum, you should have a website that gives the basic information — phone number, address, a list of your products or services, pricing, an “about us” page, and a contact page.  You should also make sure that people can actually find it in the search engines and directories, so a little professional help to get that done would be imperative. 

Your website is one of the most important parts of your business. Make sure you treat it as such.

Thank you entrepreneur.com and justaddcontent.com for information and statistics.

The post Does Your Business Need a Website? appeared first on Websites by Robyn.