Some small businesses hope to save marketing budget by relying on their Facebook, Yelp, Houzz or other social media presences to represent them on the Internet. Often, these are service-based, local businesses like restaurants, salons, groomers, etc. But there are a few reasons why having your own website is a smart investment for your business, even if you don’t engage in ecommerce.
Reason #1 to Have a Business Website: Make it Easy for Customers to Find Important Information
Your website is your home base, a place for your customers to experience your business as you designed it. Facebook pages are great for interaction, but you’re leaving the design of the experience up to a third party. If customers want to contact you, it may be hard for them to find the phone number, email address or street address on Instagram or Twitter.
Reason #2 to Have a Business Website: Collect Data to Make Better Decisions
You also collect valuable business data by encouraging customers to visit your website. For instance, they can sign up for your email list. Through Google Analytics, you can learn what kinds of content are most popular, or which pages don’t resonate with visitors. Social media analytics do a good job of tracking interactions, but they don’t report details like how long the average user spends looking at your content.
Reason #3 to Have a Business Website: Expand Your Marketing Opportunities
With a business website, you can diversify your marketing approaches and guard against risk. For instance, if all your marketing efforts go towards Facebook, your business might suffer when Facebook changes policies and features (which they constantly do).
Without a website, you can’t target potential customers searching for your products and services on the Internet. Even if 100% of your customers are on Instagram, they still leave the platform at some point to Google things. Often, people who search are ready and eager to make a purchase– and you want to be there for them. Google Ads direct to landing pages on your own website, which help close sales.
