5 Reasons Why You Need a Website

MarketingWebsite

Oct 17

Are you a business owner or freelancer? Then you need a website.

I get it, websites are a lot to design and can be costly to hire out. But a website is your ultimate marketing tool that is waaaay more effective than social media alone. Here are five reasons why you need a website:

Reason #1: You’ll look more professional. (And build trust and credibility with potential customers.)

When a business has a website, they exude professionalism way more than if they only had a Facebook page. Not only that, 8 out of 10 customers are likely to engage with your business if it has a website and 38% of people will stop browsing a site if they think it has an unappealing design.

Furthermore, a website can be fully customized to your brand, allowing your potential customers to relate to you more so than through a Facebook page alone.

If that’s not enough, the average number of engagement with posts made by Facebook pages (brands) has decreased by more than 20% since January 2017.

Reason #2: You’ll attract customers for free with SEO.

Search engine optimization allows your website to appear in applicable searches (such as on Google), and as 75% of users never click past the first page of search results, you want your website to appear as close to the top as possible.

Strong SEO is gained through use of keywords, frequent updates to your website, back linking, and more. And all of this is free to do!

SEO is so effective, that when I decided to offer weddings in 2016, I ended up booking 12- mostly from people who found me through Google. No advertising required!

In fact, 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search, and search engines drive 300% more traffic to websites than social media.

Still confused by SEO? Click here.

Reason #3: It promotes your business all day, every day.

Potential customers can learn about your business even when you’re out of the office. Your website is meant to be an online version of you where customers can learn everything they need to know about your product/service.

With a website, you can make sales even while you sleep.

Reason #4: Websites save you and your customers time.

As an online version of you, your website also saves you and your customers time. Your website is meant to answer frequently asked questions so you don’t have to, so that by the time a potential customer reaches out, they’re much farther along on their sales journey- and more likely to buy.

And if a customer is shopping around, they’ll save time having to call or meet with numerous business owners by checking out their websites first, thus weeding out businesses that are definitely not a good fit for them.

To top it all off, if you sell a product, an e-commerce site doesn’t require much continued activity from you to sell.

Reason #5: Social media platforms could vanish.

It’s hard to imagine a world without Facebook, but if the social media giant ever disappears, so would your followers.

You have complete ownership of your website, and while it is possible for a website platform to go out of business, you can at least back-up your site and go elsewhere. And if you have an email newsletter list, you’ll still keep all of your contacts.

Not only that, it’s easy to click on another competitor’s page or be distracted by incoming messages and notifications on social media. When someone is on your website, there are no distractions.

—

Ready to design or refine your website? Check out Self-Employed School! There’s an entire module dedicated to website design that takes the confusion out of what you need to include on your website, how to attract visitors *for free* through SEO, as well as how to make it an effective 24/7 sales machine.