Does Your Small Business Need A Website in 2022? (Part 1 of a 3 part series)

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According to Statista, there are 1.88 billion live websites today, many of which are owned by businesses. In fact, many business coaches now recommend setting up a website as a prerequisite to starting and marketing a business.

But a quick surf through the pages of popular online business directories like Manta and Google My Business would also produce hundreds of companies, both big and small, that don’t own active websites. This is common on social media where many businesses with compelling profiles don’t have a website. What’s more interesting? A good number of these businesses are successful.

So it begs the question – are websites really a must-have? Or are they a fad that’s being pushed on unsuspecting entrepreneurs by greedy web designers? To address these questions, it’s best to assess the major reasons why small businesses flaunt basic marketing advice like “Get a website.”

This blog is divided into a series of 3 posts to enable us to cover this issue in depth. You’ll find links to the other blogs at the end of this post.

TOP 3 REASONS WHY SMALL BUSINESSES DON’T OWN WEBSITES

1. They prefer social media and web directories.
2. They don’t have the funds, skills or time to build one.
3. Websites aren’t common in their industry.

In this blog, we’ll dig deep into the first issue to see if there’s merit to it. And we’ll examine the other reasons in the follow-up posts.

1. Small Businesses prefer Social Media

Social media or websites – which is better?

This question would draw scorn from marketing pros who’ll argue, and rightly so, that businesses shouldn’t choose between both. They’ll say that any serious entrepreneur must have a website and also be on social media.

I agree. But many small businesses treat both as if they have to choose one. 

Of course, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn boasting over 2.89 billion active users, 192 million daily active users, and 740 million members respectively, you can’t fault businesses that are active on social media. Especially businesses like social media influencing that appear to be social media-specific.

But many small businesses stop at opening a social media account. They don’t invest in designing a website next.

Why Small Businesses Choose Social Media over Websites

1. Unlike websites, social media is mostly free.
2. Social media offers access to a wide pool of potential clients and audiences.
3. Social media accounts are very easy to set up and easier than websites to manage.
4. On social, small businesses can network with prospects, run inexpensive ads, get leads and sales, and improve their PR.

So if you have a corporate social media account, do you still need a website?

Yes. And here’s why.

1. Increased competitiveness:

You must compete with others for the attention of your prospects, but you’ll limit your chances of success if you only use social media

Every day, your prospects are bamboozled with tons of marketing content.

So when they hear about your company and visit your page to discover how you can help them, they’re impatient and hoping to get the complete marketing information that’ll help them decide quickly.

But social media business content isn’t easy to customize for this goal. For example, it’s difficult to categorize FAQs, product and service pages, and high converting educational materials on a Twitter profile. Even sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, with sections for some of these features, force businesses into a navigational structure that may hide the best parts of their sales content from impatient visitors.

Fortunately, a website makes it possible to create and design content in the most digestible way. You can use an effective navigation design in your menu, and call-to-action buttons (placed within the content) that guides visitors to become buyers faster. This benefit shines the most when you want to build different web pages for acquiring sales, getting email list subscribers, asking visitors to download an ebook or to subscribe for a course, etc. With a website, you have complete freedom over the page’s design, a factor that can triple your marketing success.

As famed digital marketer Bob Bly writes, “… yes, you do need a website, whether you are an industrial distributor or a neighborhood thrift shop. In the internet age, your organization’s digital presence is paramount to success: according to a survey from Enterprise Innovation, 86 percent of respondents look to the internet first when searching for information or recommendations.”

But let’s say that your business is thriving on social media despite all the aforementioned limitations. Let’s say you’ve built a healthy client base and exceeded sales targets year over year. Is a website still useful then?

Yes.

2. It’s safer and more profitable in the long-term:

With a website, you can do more than growing sales – you can also protect your client base and you can achieve customer service goals with lesser costs and lesser efforts.

By “protecting your client base”, I mean that you can make your business less dependent on social media. This advantage is highly undervalued among entrepreneurs and freelancers. Let me explain.

When a business gets all its sales and PR from social media, there’s a high probability that the business owner doesn’t have the contact details of his followers. To him, they’re just a group of faceless followers. This makes the business reliant on social media, and unfortunately, social media platforms have a history of making algorithm changes that can sometimes have negative effects.

For example, the reach of Facebook’s organic content (unpaid content) has constantly reduced in recent years, affecting the marketing of many small businesses.

As Adespresso notes, “… while Facebook usage is consistently growing, brands are noticing organic reach in a rapid decline… The average reach of an organic post from a Facebook page is only 5.2%. This is partly due to changes made to the Facebook algorithm that prioritize posts by people over the content made by pages.”

Also, Falcon states, “… organic reach on Facebook is at an all-time low. Algorithm changes can explain some of the declines, but a large part is also due simply to increased competition on the platform. The overall trend we’re seeing is an accelerating shift in social media marketing from organic to paid social campaigns.”

But with a website, you could get in the driver’s seat and change this. You can start an email marketing newsletter and create a website page that encourages followers to provide their contact details to join the newsletter list.

You can also enhance your customer service efforts with a website. How? For one, you can create pages that educate customers on how to use your products and services if you sell complex products and services. That’ll help you retain customers and increase your reputation. You can also set up a website chatbot that reduces the time spent answering queries from prospects and customers.

Also, influencers who are serious about complementing business income can set up a website to sell merchandise, courses and provide more details about themselves and their craft. By arranging their content logically on their website, they can keep followers stuck, and emotionally invested in the brand.

Websites also make it possible to speak to multiple members of your target audience or target prospects logically. For example, influencers can create a special webpage for companies that want to buy adverts on their channel and another webpage just for their followers. It’s harder to pull this off on social media.

And finally, having a good website adds more credibility to a small business than a social media profile could.

Key Tip:

If you need a good website designed for free, consider visiting the Free Website Guys. Also, you can consider hiring inexpensive freelance web designers at sites like iWorker and Fiverr. On these sites, you’ll gain access to a pool of vetted freelancers who will deliver outstanding work at an affordable price.