5 reasons you need a website to compliment your business

Do you think you don’t need a website to run your business? Think again.

Websites are the online real estate for modern businesses. It is the virtual reception space where your client can meet you and know about your business. You can use a website to sell your products and services.

I am a website fanatic. Maybe because websites are the door I used to enter into the world of technology and develop my career in IT.

This post is inspired by an article on freecodecamp that differentiates between a website and a web app. It is also a follow-up to my earlier post on the basics of how to build a website.

In this post, I will elaborate on 5 reasons why you may need a website for your business, or individually as a professional.

1. Showcase your products and services

Everyone has products, services and even a skills to sell. It is in fact the basis of the complex economic world we live in. And it is that way since the time humans rule the planet.

A website will help you showcase your products and services as a business. You can dedicate a whole section of your website to describe your products or services in detail.

As an individual, you can showcase your work in portfolios that showcase the quality of your work.

Your website can save you the time you may spend to ‘pitch’ your salable products and services to your prospective clients.

With a website, your products and services are on the show 24/7, and if your inventory allows, it stays on show forever.

Massive companies like Apple drive their sales through their website. They showcase all the products they have in great detail on their website. Everything that a customer needs to know before buying is on the website.

2. Establish your brand

Branding is everything in the modern world. If your business is a person with a personal ID, the brand is that ID. It is how the world will know you or your business. Branding gives you the genuine and credible mark you need to trade.

Your business can be a brand, but trends nowadays also show that a lot of skill full and talented individuals can be brands themselves. Individual brands are usually tied with content creators and influencers.

Having a website establishes everything you work towards becoming a brand. In fact, as soon as you introduced yourself to prospective clients, the first place they will want to know more about you is your website.

It is safe to say that a well established brand usually have a well-designed website that reflects the success of the brand it represents.

Using Apple again as an example, their website has all their brand all over it. Their logo, color, font types, to finer details such the font sizes. Everything on their website reflects their brand.

3. Social proof of your work

Having a website shows the public and especially prospective clients the proof of your brand, especially your work.

It is almost a basic human instinct that before we buy something, we must look for proof to satisfy our curiosity.

On your website, you can show your proofs using reviews and testimonials from your clients. This of course works if you already sold your product or service to a client.

Even as a start up, your website acts as a guarantee that you can provide this proof.

Prospective clients need to have some proof of your work and mere existence of your brand before dealing with you. Your website help caters for this.

4. Online presence

Online presence is key to the existence of any entity on the internet. As a business, online presence is very important. Just like you have a physical presence as validation, so should you have an online presence for your business.

I cannot stress this enough, but your online presence will help determine the existence of your brand to the outside world.

Time have changed and sooner or later, online presence will be more important than physical presence.

Take Zapier for example. Almost all of their staff worked from remote locations all over the world. They do their business over their website using collaboration tools. Had it not be for the legal requirement to register a physical place of HQ existence, Zapier could exist fully online.

Your website enforces your online presence, and it’s slowly becoming an unspoken requirement every business or professional entity need to have.

5. Advertising and brand awareness

Your website plays a critical role in advertising your business and brand awareness in general. Ideally, it is online 24/7 and this can help meet the advertising and brand awareness goals you may want for your business.

Your website enables your brand to be available to your prospective clients to see 24/7. Even when your business is closed for the day, or even when you sleep, your website continues to advertise to the world as long as it is online.

. . . . .

Those are the reasons why you need to have a website. Having a website can even help drive the success of your business via the above points.

All in all, we just need to run profitable businesses. We just need to sell something for a few buck to survive in the modern economy.

That is why it is important that you need to have a website.