If you’re the owner of small business you might wonder whether or not you need a website. Yes, in short, you need a website a professional website can generate leads, and it makes your business look more established.
One thing to understand is that consumers’ behaviors change over time and they adapt to modern technology. When smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home came out there were naysayers at first and now its a multi-billion dollar industry. Potential customers use these speakers to lookup business recommendations order groceries, Ubers and much more.
A little more than 97% of consumers go online to find a local business if you want them to choose your company you need a web presence and the biggest component of that is your own website.
How We Built Our Website
Our website was built on WordPress, from the ground up to be simple to users with a design that allowed them to find the information they needed easily. The best part is we can update any part of the design with relative ease using the backend block editor in WordPress. While this was challenging to implement and it’s not as easy as drag and drop it’s incredibly efficient and flexible.
We also needed an easy way to add additional content whenever we wanted and not worry about it breaking. If we wanted to update our theme, WordPress Core or remove a plugin we wanted to retain functionality.
But, You Need More Than A Website
Building an online presence involves more than just having a website and leaving it there. It will be a bit of an uphill climb in terms of content creation, updating, and managing social media.
Social Media is another important facet in your small business means of generating sales and following. You will need to create pages on the largest platforms as they relate to your industry. For instance, if you’re an HVAC service you might not need a Pinterest Page. But you should always have a Facebook Page as it’s the largest platform.
Another important note is that social media’s reach overall is diminishing. People are spending less time on any one social media and instead are spreading it around among many platforms. This is in part due to the sheer number of choices here are just a few.
- Snapchat
- YouTube
- Mix
There are considerably more but you get the point managing a web presence goes beyond any one social media channel. It’s also anything but easy to manage.
What Does Your Business Really Need?
Every business is a little bit different but if I had to pin the bare essential channels this is what I would suggest.
- Your own website. You need your own website to act as the central hub of your web presence.
- Facebook is the largest social network you should have your own business Facebook page.
- Twitter even if this isn’t updated as frequently Twitter is still a powerful tool.
- Instagram or Pinterest. Most businesses would be fine with either or if you’re a photographer you might need both. I personally recommend Pinterest if you’re trying to drive traffic over Instagram. But for building a following Instagram is going to be an easier and better choice.
Closing Thoughts
Being a small business requires partners who can help you manage aspects of your business that you don’t want or need to learn. We can help by offering your business a suite of virtual receptionist services to help answer your phones, schedule appointments and more.
If you have any questions or thoughts feel free to comment below!
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