1. Credibility
Having a website with your own domain name legitimizes your business. Not having a website or at least a page on your own domain that you control may say to your potential customer that you aren’t committed enough. It doesn’t even have to be elaborate, just informative and well designed. Luckily, it is easy to create a website with a content management system, such as WordPress, and a theme to make it look decent. Having a website says that you are serious, you are confident in your abilities, and you have invested in the success of your business.
2. Accessibility
Your site is available online 24 x 7. While you are unavailable, sleeping, or on vacation, your website is open for business. It will still be there answering questions, collecting leads and making sales. Anyone searching online for a solution that you provide can find the solution with your business at any time of the day.
3. Global Reach
Your website can reach anyone with an internet connection. You can easily reach people in other towns, other states, and other countries. No other platform has ever offered this. When I started my first business, I had very limited reach with traditional choices such as flyers, mailers and Yellow Pages advertising. For those who are still only using those old methods, it’s time to get current. The internet has opened up the potential reach to the entire internet connected world.
4. Efficiency
Your site should include all information that is repeatedly asked of you so you are not answering the same questions. This should be a time saver for you and visitors to your site. You should explain enough about your business that the reader knows what you are about and what you offer. When clients reach out to you, you are spending time cultivating a solution and a sale.
5. Competition
Your competition has a website. When customers search online and don’t find your business but find your competitor, who gets the sale? Not you. It’s that simple. If I am looking to buy something, I always look at the company’s website first. If I can’t find one, I go elsewhere.
6. Attract New Leads
All of your online marketing activity should drive traffic back to your website. You control the look, feel, content and rules on your site. You are not one of a dozen other points of interest on the page like you would be on social media. This is where you can direct the reader to what you’d like for them to do next: join your email list, purchase a program you are offering, read your blog, listen to your podcast. People may get to know you on social media, or find you mentioned in a blog post, or hear you on someone’s podcast, but once you have their interest make sure they are going to your website.
7. Product Development
You can tailor your products to what your clients and readers are asking for. Using the metrics on your website, direct client contact, and post comments, you can gather the information that shows what problems people need solutions for. Having this information from your readers allows you to create products that will actually serve them as opposed to your assumptions about what they may need.
8. Sales
Selling your products on your website, digital or physical, allows sales to occur without your constant attention. Sales funnels can guide clients to the correct solution for them and they can purchase at any time. You can automate that which you’ve had to do manually, one on one, before. Digital sales can be fully automated.