Does A Website Makes Sense For Your Business

The past few years have seen a remarkable surge in companies and businesses jumping on the internet and building an online presence for themselves. Where several years ago the internet was mostly used for computer geeks and budding online romances, now it is typical for businesses to have their own website in addition to their brick and mortar office. In fact, it is increasingly unusual for a business not to have their own website.

It just makes sense in this digital age where so many people either shop directly online or do the bulk of their research on a person, product, service or company online before they take any action. If you don’t have a website for your business, you are falling behind.

Here are some top reasons why a website makes sense for your business:

1. You can sell anything and everything over the internet.

People buy all sorts of things online these days, from cars to computers, books, games, pets, furniture, houses, and everything else you can possibly think of. If your business does not have a website, your business can’t sell its service or product to all these active online shoppers. You are missing out on good business and a lot of sales if you are not putting it online with a website.

2. Connection with your customers and community building

Having a website makes it so much easier to connect yourself and your business to your customers. Gone are the days where you can hand out a business card and expect people to stop by to learn more about what you do or what you sell. The first thing people want to do now is sit down in front of their computer and learn more about a business they have just heard about. They want to see what the business is about, who is running it, what they sell, what they offer, what their money back guarantee is, what other customers have to say about the business, and so on. Increasingly, customers and potential customers even want to know what a business is blogging about or what they are doing at that very moment through services like Twitter. If they like a business, they want to be able to “Like” their page on Facebook and stay up to date on new deals and promotions. In short, they want to be connected and as a business owner, you want to be connected to them. The first and most important step for this is to have a website for your business.

3. Promotion

If you have a website, it is easy for other companies, blogs, customers, services, agents, and so on to promote your business with links to your website. The more links you get pointing back to you the more traffic will be driven to your site and ultimately to your business. With the right moves, this traffic and these new eyeballs seeing your site will convert to customers and equate to more money for you. If you don’t have a website, you are relegated to the old fashioned forms of promotion like ads in newspapers, commercials on tv, junk mail, etc. People are starting to pay less and less attention to these as they become more accustomed to targeted ads that focus on things they are explicitly interested in.

This means that if people are not paying attention to your primary means of advertising and promotion – or worse, your only means of advertising and promotion – you are going to struggle a lot more in getting new business to your company. On the other hand, if you have a website, tons of other people and websites can be constantly spreading the word, giving out the link to your website specifically to people who can use and benefit from your company. And because this sort of promotion is done passively and constantly, your name is always getting passed around and viewed by more and more people, and it doesn’t cost you an additional thing.

Guest Post By Bryan Cochand

Bryan Cochand is a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe products, such Fireworks which allows prototyping and design on virtually any device, and software, like web designer software, revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information; anytime, anywhere, and through any medium.