10 Reasons Your Offline Business Needs A Website Today

In a post-Covid-19 world, almost all businesses are moving towards digitalization. Be it healthcare, manufacturing, banking, or retail, all industries are exploring their digital potential.

This trend raises the question; Does every business need a website?

In short, yes. Be it a multi-page website that goes into great detail about your services or a simple one-page website that acts as the perfect calling card, your business should have some form of an online presence.

‘If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.’
– Bill Gates.

It is that simple.

Even if your business doesn’t trade online, your digital efforts will never be in vain, instead, they will provide you with a steady position in the marketplace.

Reasons Why Your Offline Business Needs A Website

1 – Helps to Create a Modern Brand Identity

Every business needs to cultivate a unique brand identity that communicates its services and products. And what better way to achieve this than through an effective website?

Even the most traditional business will benefit from a simple modern website. Such as trading and selling used laptop computers for cash. One that reinforces long-standing brand values, whilst embracing new technologies to better compete in the modern era.

2 – Enhance Company Reputation

A website not only helps in generating sales and driving customer enquiries, but it also works great for strengthening your reputation.

Combine your website with a strong presence on Google My Business (including plenty of reviews from satisfied customers) and your company’s reputation will grow.

3 – Increased Company Visibility & Reach

Unlike a physical store that is confined by its geographical location, your website can have a far greater reach. Grabbing the attention of potential customers from locations further afield. Even from other countries.

Simply put, creating a website for your business will allow you to showcase your products and services to a larger target audience.

We suggest starting out with a good local SEO strategy that will help target neighbouring areas. You can grow the business further from there.

4 – Higher Sales

Building a website that achieves the above-mentioned points will directly result in better sales.

When you are able to reach a wider audience, you automatically increase your chances of better sales for your services or physical products.

Even if you do not sell directly online with an eCommerce website, you can drive more footfall to your bricks and mortar locations and convert sales from there.

With a website, you can analyze your customer behaviour and find out what products they are most interested in.

Another tip is to combine your website with a social media marketing campaign to reach your target audience. Another recommendation to increase sales is through performance marketing. This can also be automated to an extent through an ad management platform, these platforms help in managing all your Meta and Google campaigns from single dashboard

5 – Build a Social Relationship with Your Customers

Social media is another great tool to increase your reach and reputation.

Younger generations are turning to social media more and more to research products and services, so having an active social media presence enables you to tap into this growing market.

Add social sharing buttons to your website to help scale your business and grow your social media profile.

6 – Building Great B2B Relationships

Websites and social media platforms are not only great for finding new customers, but they also offer the chance to grow your business network.

Many companies are looking to forge strong relationships with other services providers who complement their own offerings. This can lead to increased business opportunities in new markets.

You may also find suppliers that help reduce your own running costs just from being discoverable online.

7 – Improved Responsiveness

There’s no doubt that an online business is more responsive than a physical one.

An offline business will generally only respond to business enquiries over the phone or face-to-face, but a website allows you to communicate in other ways, including:

1. Email – Via a link on your site or using an enquiry form on your contact page
2. Social Media – More people than ever before are using social media to contact companies about their products
3. Chatbots – AI-driven functionality that can handle enquiries for you

With a website, you can instantly respond to customer queries, thereby enhancing their experience.

8 – Round The Clock Availability

With a website, not only can you communicate with your customers in a wider variety of ways, but you can do so at all hours.

A website is not like a physical location that operates within fixed opening hours. This is especially true of eCommerce stores, where sales can be made around the clock, 24-7, 365 days of the year.

We are living in an ‘Always on. Always available’ era, where services and products are researched and bought at the strangest of hours. Having a website means that you stand a good chance of benefiting from this cultural change.

9 – Excellent Customer Support

Improved responsiveness and round-the-clock availability result in an excellent level of customer support.

Consumers align themselves with brands that are trustworthy, who deliver quick and informative support. Those that fail to support their customers in this way will quickly lose out to competitors.

The ability to deliver good support not only comes from being responsive via email or social media but also from having useful and highly informative content on your website.

One tip is to include helpful documentation on your website in the form of FAQs and ‘How to’ blogs. This enables your customers to answer their own questions and reduces your time responding to queries.

10 – Lower Operational Costs

Possibly the most attractive benefit of having a website is the lower setup and operational costs.

An offline business can take the steps to become an online business with a relatively small investment. All you need is a domain name and hosting provider to get started.

With your domain secured, you can set up an email address and start to talk to a trusted website design agency about creating your ideal website.

Be it a static, dynamic, or eCommerce site; you can start your online business with less money than it takes to expand your offline business.

The Bottom Line

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the digitalization of businesses has accelerated over the past 12 months, leading to an irreversible trend in how businesses operate.

Traditional brick-and-mortar companies are embracing the opportunities that come with being online and responding to changes in consumer behaviour.

With minimal operating cost, businesses can launch online and begin promoting their services in a matter of weeks.

If you are looking for strong business growth and the chance to create great customer relationships, then you need to invest in a good website.

Kris David 

A student by day and a wordsmith by night, Kris David works as a freelance blogger. He is currently pursuing a degree in communications and is relying on his freelance writing to jumpstart his career in journalism.

Editor duties provided by Greg Macdonald at LWDA.

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