It has always been important to have a website for your brand, but with the changes that the COVID pandemic and the accompanying lockdown has brought, a website is even more vital now than ever before.
The pandemic has resulted in many retrenchments, but in doing so it has also created a spike in entrepreneurial spirit throughout South Africa as more people are forced to sell their skills. With so many startups and small businesses emerging, many are skipping website creation as they find it too intimidating or too costly. If your business doesn’t have a website yet, or if you are still on the fence about investing in one, here are the top 5 reasons why you definitely need to have a website for 2021.
1. It creates a professional appearance for your brand
Most consumers find a business with a website more trustworthy and won’t even considering shopping with a business that doesn’t have one. When people need goods and services, they tend to first go online to do research and find a local supplier. This means that every customer journey starts with a search engine and some keywords, which is why your website is your most important marketing asset in the digital age. Having a web address on your business card also looks more professional and allows recipients to easily find more information about your brand. Be sure to create a user-friendly website that embodies the “look and feel” of your business or physical store, as it could be the first impression that visitors get, and first impressions are the most important.
2. It’s more affordable than renting a store
Having a storefront is great if your business needs a lot of foot traffic, but if you just started a new business or need to downsize your budget, rental spaces and the accompanying overheads can be the biggest expense to cut. Nowadays many businesses run remotely, opting to rather deliver their products to customer instead of selling them from a physical location. A webstore is the ideal solution to save money while still creating a professional place for your customers to shop. As you would shift products around in your physical store to draw attention to them, you can instead promote your best products and upcoming special offers right on your homepage with eye-catching banners. As you would advertise your store’s location via traditional media, you can instead advertise your website address and delivery service via Google Ads.
3. Less foot traffic in stores & diminishing social media reach
With nationwide lockdowns and the fear of the pandemic, more people are choosing to shop online and have their goods and services delivered instead of visiting the supplier. If you only depend on foot traffic, then this is a problem. Creating a website with proper search engine optimisation (SEO), blogs, tagged images, relevant videos, and other useful content, will put your brand on the digital map where you can easily be found from related Google Searches made by potential customers. Most small business owners that think having a Facebook or Instagram page is enough will find that their reach is dwindling, a result of the ever-changing rules and guidelines of each social media platform as well as the increase in competitor brands. A website should be your primary digital platform, and social media should be used to drive customers to your website.
4. Supplying business and product information quickly is vital
We live in a fast-paced world, which means that people have little time to dedicate to your lengthy advert or cold call. Having your business profile, product descriptions, terms and conditions, and other important information at the ready on your website will save you loads of time when marketing yourself to prospective clients and business partners. As mentioned, people tend to do online research before committing to any dealings with a new brand, and if they cannot easily and quickly find information about your business, they will be less likely to invest in you.
5. You can track metrics and drop what doesn’t work
The best thing about listing your products and services online and advertising them via blogs, videos, galleries, soundbites, infographics and other content formats, is that you can track a variety of analytics. You can see which pages received the most visits, which products were most popular, when did visitors leave, you can even see a click map to get a visual representation of what areas and buttons received the most engagement on each webpage. This information allows you to make the correct changes and optimise your site to offer exactly what your visitors are looking for. A better optimised site will get a better Google ranking and can land you even more visitors. You should constantly be working on improving your website and online customer experience.
Creating a Simple and Affordable Website
Back in the day, you needed quite a bit of coding experience to put a beautifully branded and user-friendly website together. Luckily, today, there are many online website builders with easy-to-follow tutorials that make creating a stunning website super easy, options like Squarespace, Wix and WordPress to name the most popular ones.
While setting up your website you may want to procure a landline number to increase your professional image even further. If you don’t have a landline or VoIP number and you’d like one, give us a call and one of our ARC Technology Solution Architects will happily evaluate your current setup and advise on the best and most affordable solutions.
Recent Comments