The purpose of a website varies depending on the needs of the website owner. It could have multi-faceted purposes with many different website goals and objectives in mind, or it could have one singular purpose and one singular purpose only. From increasing visibility for your local shop or creating an online presence to document your ideas, blogging and travel writing. This article will explore reasons you may need a website.
Your website’s purpose might depend on your goals
Your website’s purpose might depend on your goals If your website is to be a marketing tool to grow your local business or advertise a product or service to your target audience, then you need a website that your local customers are going to understand, and be able to navigate well. You can also blog your way to cash with your website and sell online advertising space on the home page.
The purpose of your website is also a reflection of your personality. If your local business is aiming to raise awareness, then it might not be a website that you require, perhaps maybe you should start small with social media sites, these are more than often free to create and only require little pockets of time to build and influence. You could use your social media journey as a trial run before deciding whether or not a website is the way forward, as often on social media you may be able to gage the amount of engagements (likes, shares, tweets) that you’re getting and leave that to decide whether your online presence is large enough to pay for a website. Remembering that social media requires basic content such as pictures and short descriptions that are easily sharable, whereas a website requires more interactive content, and the ability to combine content with calls to action, sales approaches, blog posts and more. Basically, it’s important to make sure that your website is going to bring you a return on investment, you don’t want to buy a website that nobody will use, do some research on whether or not you need a website for your business, checking what competitors are doing and how other online businesses are working in your field of work.
Increasing visibility for your business
As mentioned before, one of the main purposes for getting a website when you’re a small business is to increase your visibility, perhaps you’ve been performing well in your local area and believe your product or service may do well nationally, or perhaps you want to be able to reach all of your local customers in one place.
A great thing to remember is that no matter how great your business is and no matter how amazing you are, a poor website can cost you customers. Having a mediocre website can destroy your business’ value, decreasing your reputation in the eyes of potential customers and existing customers. To give an example, you could get a new website for your local business , divert all your local customers there, and they are met with a mass amount of problems, in that moment, the customers are already waiting to start their online sales process, purchase a product or book a service, this is then a potential moment where they could leave your local business for a business with a better performing website. When customers are browsing or shopping online, they’d ideally like the website to have a simple online sale process, showing an easy way for communication with customers and customer support.
Having a new website that is produced correctly can help your company continue to grow, gaining more potential leads, repeat customers and loyal brand users as 79% of entrepreneurs with a business website said they expect to grow at least 25% in the next three to five years, compared to 64% of those without a site.
Creating an online presence for Blogging
Creating an online presence may be one of the simplest and most effective reasons for having a website. Many business owners and entrepreneurs blog regularly to get an audience, follow leads, and generate leads for their e-commerce site. For some businesses, a blog is a marketing tool, others see it as an opportunity to grow the brand or showcase the services or products offered, either way having a well managed blog can help your website appear on search engines for many more keywords, and helping you rank higher online, which is arguably one of the most common website goals.
If you’re a small local business with a blog, you may find that this is the easiest way to stay connected to your customers, this can be from updating them on the latest changes to your company/ newest products/ events or to offering quality content through informational guides to using your latest products or requesting your latest service, having a website in order to run a local blog can massively increase your influence with consumers, as a consumer will likely trust a company more after continuously visiting their site. Informational websites such as those with ‘how to’ blogs and guides are often more trusted in the eyes of customers, as they are gaining quality information for free. Content like this is also much more ‘shareable’ to social network services and therefore likely to get you even more visibility, although this takes time and is considered ‘a slow process’ rather than an ‘overnight gain’, especially for new websites.
On the blog you may blog about anything you want, but the main objective is to establish yourself online and develop a reputation as an expert in your niche. In doing this you will establish trust and a human-like relationship with your readers. Blogging can be a very powerful tool for people new to the business industry. Many businesses go online and immediately set up a blog to gain an audience. Whilst it doesn’t strike as one of the sole purposes of websites, it is easily one of the most common website objectives ‘to conduct a successful blog with client retention.
To Sell & Increase Profit
it’s no lie that one of the biggest reasons that local businesses look to being building a new website is to increase their sales and in turn increase their profit and E-commerce websites are the way to do this, if you’ve been successful as a physical store, one of the most obvious next steps is to enter the world of online sales.
If you own a training or education service, a website would be a vital marketing tool. It could sell your company, target potential clients, build an online audience and provide you valuable data about customers, this can then all be tracked through google analytics, monitored and improved upon to understand your customers and internet users, to further improve your dynamic content, contextual advertising and overall increase your monthly sales.
Depending on the size and scope of the website you may be able to sell anything online, or you may in fact not want to sell anything, but advertise your selling products, this way more local people can become familiar with your company, search for you online and then visit your store to complete the purchase, this is known as increasing your in-store foot traffic, which is also a common purpose for developing a website.
To Sum It Up…
Hopefully this article has helped you discover some of the main purposes that local businesses may see fit to get a website, from increasing your foot traffic, sales and profit margin, to getting a wider reach for your audience and delivering quality content online to help you become a more well known brand in your local area, or simply to reach further outwards a website can serve multiple different purposes, and there’s no harm in choosing a few purposes that fits for your local business, you can set goals to reach and follow, but if you’re still struggling on deciding what website to produce, why not take a read of our website ideas blog which could help you narrow down your website choices even further.
It’s also important to note that some website purposes are purely for entertainment purposes, informational purposes and to form an online community, without any other motives of sales or raising awareness, and that in some cases websites are simply built due to a gap in the market and a need for providing a solution to a problem.
