Why should my small business have a website?

Often times small business owners see a website as a huge hassle and wonder if it is even worth the time, effort, or expense to set one up. You might ask around with other business owners and find out that their website cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars, and they don’t even use it.  This then leads you to ask yourself whether your small business needs a website.  Well I’m here to tell you, no matter how much you think otherwise, your business NEEDS a website.  Even if all you are doing is putting up a contact page, your business needs a website.  I’m not saying that you should spend hours and hours, or thousands of dollars setting one up. If you have any technical skills (which you must since you are actually online reading this) then you can (and need to) create a website.  Here is why:

Branding and simplify word of mouth

• You have a simple “name” you can give people that helps them remember where they can find you (myawesomebusiness.com)
• You can put your website on advertisements, signs, business cards, and your receipts which helps people to remember to talk about you and look you up

Open ALL the time

• Your website is open 24/7 (even when you are sleeping)
• If you sell stuff this means people can buy things from you when you would normally be closed (and you ship tomorrow)
• If you don’t sell things people can research you when they aren’t busy and decide to stop by on their way to or form work
• Your website is a sales person FOR YOU

Nobody uses a phone book anymore

• If your business still advertises in the phone book and you don’t have a website, you are probably better off moving the advertising dollars to pay for a website
• People use their phones to find things – this means you need to be online, not in a phone book (although that is kind of a funny sentence if you think about it…)

It is easy to change and keep up to date

• If you move locations, you can easily update your site
• If you have a sale (or one ends) just quickly jump on and change your website
• Want to run a special but don’t want to pay for advertising, put it on your website and tell everyone to tell everyone

It’s not actually that expensive

• You can buy hosting and set it up yourself for less than $100 (start here)
• You can pay someone as little as $250 and have them set it up for you