Businesses looking to spread their presence often resort to a well-designed website's digital option. 76% of consumers check online before visiting a business for local goods and services.
This means your business website design is pivotal in driving its success. Regardless of your industry, small enterprises and organizations require considerable effort in building a website to create awareness. Often, this involves hiring a web design agency that offers business website design.
This post explores some key reasons your businesses need a good website and how you can benefit from it.
Reasons why you need a business website
It is inevitable for businesses to have an online presence. Most buyers would review online resources before trying a new service or product. Therefore, the success of your business depends heavily on your ability to establish a strong presence on the Internet. As a result, having a website is crucial for every small company.
Enhance visibility
Think of the Internet as today's phone book. People use it to connect with others, including businesses (similar to yellow pages) that offer contact details. As of 2022, Ireland has 4.43 million internet users. A website is inevitable if you want your business to be visible to this population. Having a website helps you optimize it for SEO, digital marketing, and social media.
Rank your business ahead of the competitors with powerful SEO that help build your website's online visibility. People can easily find your business if your website is Search Engine-optimized. This increases the likelihood of visitors finding your website in the search results when looking for a product or service.
An online presence can boost visibility (on the internet), get an audience that searches for businesses like yours, reviews your online presence, checks your business history and history with previous customers, and explores products and services.
Help Build Trust
Show your company's history, knowledge, and specialty that help prospective buyers learn and gain confidence before buying. 81% of shoppers research products online before purchasing. This means having a website build trust to connect better with the business. It builds credibility amongst the target audience and provides them with a seamless shopping experience.
Also, it is a great way to attract loyal clients and build positive word of mouth.
Customer convenience
Provide users with the convenience to engage with your business over a website chat, phone call, and email. Offer the convenience of shopping for users — what they want, when they want, and how they want, with few taps and clicks. A website offers convenience to get information, making it much easier for consumers to shop online rather than showing up physically.
Collect customer data
Websites help collect potential customers' personal information to customize offerings. More importantly, you can send them customised content and connect with them in a better way.
Epsilon reports that 90% of customers find customized content intrigues them, and 80% think they are more inclined to engage with a business if it delivers tailored experiences.
For instance, run a promotional email campaign, wish them on birthdays/anniversaries, offer them customized deals, etc. Leverage such data to engage with customers meaningfully and drive a loyal audience base.
Being there 24/7
An offline business will have a team putting in anything between eight and ten hours a day, seven days a week. But, websites keep your business up and running — 24/7, 365 days. This can give a meteoric rise in your company's output as a robust presence ensures that your business remains available to customers whenever they need it. A customer can visit your website anytime (even when your staff is off) and still access your business information, generate a lead, and drive sales.
Display and sell your business offerings
Think of your website as a virtual canvas that shows customers your business offerings. Additionally, target clients more effectively by regularly publishing key information about your goods and services on your website. If you are running a restaurant, display which dishes are gluten-free, the content and calorie for each dish, etc. This helps them simplify choices. Setting up a virtual showcase helps visitors navigate your offerings, compare them with others, explore their pros and cons, and make an informed choice.
Sell your products from your store and online to increase your profit by widening your audience base. Use a website to display your products and services online. This involves providing multiple payment modes, setting up payment gateways, and enabling secure transactions over the web with an SSL certificate.
Market your business
A company’s website boosts online marketing initiatives like blogging and running Google ads. Websites and social media sites offer a substantial base to run digital marketing campaigns. For starters, marketing your business on digital platforms needs a website so that people can access information about your company online 24/7/365, no matter where they happen to be in the world. E-commerce businesses, in particular, benefit from easy access to marketing and sales resources.
Share the latest news
Update your customers with any business changes via Press Releases, blog content, and uploading pictures to keep them in the know. A dynamic website easily includes your most recent activities and business progress. Use this to disseminate information to keep your users in the know. Usually, this involves updating company news, running a PR campaign, and promoting specific offers and deals.
The downsides of not having websites
Not owning a website can have out right disadvantages to your business. You will not only lose out to competitors but other downsides will follow.
Gives your competitors an edge
Users would search for businesses online before engaging with them. People may trust a firm that has a website. And, if you don't have one, you will fall behind in the competition.
Limited services
Your services are limited to your working hours, unlike the Internet, where servers are up and running to offer products and services to customers. You can expand your service offerings with an online presence. For example, if you are running an offline shop, customer service is limited to working hours. But, you can take customer queries and acknowledge their grievances by generating a ticket beyond working yours.
The audience won’t expand
Not having a website would mean keeping your audiences confined to your immediate region. The business growth, too, will stay limited to your network — close pals, word of mouth and local networking. Moreover, a survey concluded that 30% of customers wouldn’t even consider doing business with a company if they do not have a website.
Instead, explore the power of online presence to multiply your audience reach and see how the scope of business expands globally. Time zones and physical locations no longer matter. A website makes it possible to serve consumers on a global scale.
Steps to develop a great website
A small business website design needs a team of developers and designers who can bring your idea to life. Hiring a dedicated web development team can help create a compelling business website design.
Business website design theme
Website design draws visitors. Create a visually appealing website user experience by crafting a seamless theme. A lot of factors go into choosing the theme for a business website.
Are you looking for a business blog theme? Or is it for a hotel or travel website? Or, are you searching for a theme for an ecommerce site? Theme selection depends on business type, industry, etc. Start with a list of a prioritized list of features you need in a theme so you can see at a glance whether it meets your needs.
If hosting a site on WordPress, leverage its library offering 9000+ themes to choose the right one. As you explore themes, stray away from slow page speeds, poor coding, dated UI, etc.
UX Development
UX design is crucial because it considers all design factors, including a user interface. Blending UI/UX elements smoothen user interactions within the website and drive the desired goal — making a purchase, filling up a form, etc. This includes placing an easier-to-find call-to-actions in content, navigation, and message.
Such meaningful interactions occur from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. Like when a blog reader is encouraged to check out your case studies. There's also a middle-to-bottom approach, which involves figuring out what language and features ease a customer's journey and help progress towards a checkout procedure.
Content
The design, UX, and other elements will contribute to fully equipped website development knowledge and skills. Only your copy's actual content is missing now.
The key content section involves —
- Homepage
- About Business
- Product/Services information
- Client reviews
It is best to have a blog section that pushes out content frequently to enhance SERP features.
Engaging content is simple to read, contains vital information, and explains how your products/services can help users. Also, mention your unique value propositions that quickly demonstrate how you stand out.
Technology
A website is a mix of technologies that completes it. Usually, this includes using tools for designing, developing, improving, and maintaining it. An ideal website will have the following—
Front-end technology
Anything that faces the "client-side" is a website's front-end technologies. They're used to build the parts of your site that people can engage with and learn from (the UI and design part). It includes font, typography, theme, pictures, buttons, style, website structure, etc.
Back-end technology
Backend technologies are for your website's server. They build technological skills., organize data, and ensure seamless front-end functionality. It carries multiple tasks like verifying user credentials, logging in, processing payments, etc. Once it verifies the user identity, it sends back the profile name, photo, and other information that a user has stored.
Typically, back-end technology is divided into three parts —
- HTML
- CSS
- Programming languages like PHP, Python, Java, Javascript, etc.
Google page score
Get a PageSpeed score that shows how fast your webpage loads and whether users need to wait long to gain information.
PageSpeed Insights
You should also consider how consumers feel about your site's speed as you attempt to optimize load times. This ensures users get the fastest page load times while accessing your content.
While Google PageSpeed is not the sole ranking criterion, you still need to consider the Core Web Vitals indicators. They count against the new Page Experience ranking signal and might reduce your organic traffic.
Add Google Analytics
There are many methods to add Google Analytics code to your site. Once you install Google Analytics on your website, you can track the number of visitors, the keywords they used to find it, how long they stayed, goals (leads or sales) completed, engagement, etc.
Source
Once you have key Google Analytics metrics like pageview, bounce rate, traffic sources, network referrals, etc. Such metrics help make data-backed decisions for content refinements, reworking website design, altering CTAs, reworking SEO keywords, and building external links, amongst other actions.
Leverage heat maps
Clickable assets, such as buttons, CTAs, videos, and other links, may be evaluated using heat maps to determine the most and least successful.
You can use the Hotjar feedback tool that delivers detailed, visual feedback on particular web pages.
Source
Heatmaps show how people engage with your website. It'll show you website hotspots in red or orange and inactive locations in cooler tones.
If you use a hamburger menu on the website, check the heatmap to discover how many taps it receives. It shows whether the user clicks anywhere in the header space to navigate elsewhere.
Cost of developing a good website
Cost estimates for new websites vary from about €1,000 (for a simple site aimed at a small company) to €50,000 and above (for a complex custom website). Apart from the technology, scope of the website, and timeline, the country of developers can also affect the cost.
For instance, a developer in the USA would charge between €90 - €150 an hour, while those in Ireland would charge €60 - €120. On the contrary, developers in Asia (India, Philippines, etc.) would charge €18 - €50 for the same.
Here’s a quick overview of country-wise website development cost