What do you want the website to do, what is its purpose ?
The internet is the world’s largest information resource. This means that most people today are turning to the web for nearly everything. Sites are popping up left and right, each one with it’s own purpose. If you are creating your own site, why are you doing it? You can reach your audience through social media, build a community, promote your brand, business and products, etc. Also track your audience and run marketing campaigns to retarget them for better sales and conversion. Then, Why to put efforts time and money to build a website and run behind it ?
Well there are two ways to look at it. Below mentioned are ten reasons that why you need a website ?
- Because search engines wont work without websites and people are constantly searching on search engines.
- If your brand is aggressive and want to be omnichannel or multichannel for getting more sales, then you need a website
- You need a website, because your competition has a website on search engine
- The nature of your business demands for a website, for e.g. e-commerce, D2C, Services, B2B, subscriptions, learning, etc.
- Flexibility that Social media doesn’t offers, you can achieve by creating your website
- Creating a website is creating your own platform and not a third party regulated media
- Data collection of your audience through search engines can be gathered on your website
- Having a website is a brand identity and a must for a brand image
- You want to scale your business and publish your app on android & ios
- If It’s lot of effort to bring or promote business on noisy social media, creating website helps you get more followers on social media
Hope you get the clarity, why you need the website or why you don’t ?
If not read further and you will able to make your mind.
What is your audience and where do you find them ?
- Local or global, B2C or B2B. Online or Offline
- What is their online & offline behavior ?
- Are they purchasing the product and service that you sell through internet
- Are they using internet to research about your business or competitors
- You want them to find your business through search engine
- You reach them through any alternate channel like social media or just by listing your business on other website directories & marketplaces.
- Can you reach them through social media by promoting your business on social media
What type of content do you want to publish on the site? Can you do it through other channel ?
- Offering Content to your audience that is insightful and worth reading.
- Content that provides or adds value in their life.
- Showcasing categorized products & services to meet customer needs.
- Building portfolio to increase your conversion & lead generation.
- User generated content that helps in survey or feedback
Are some of the objectives that can be achieved through written articles, demo videos, product images, infographics, forms to collect data that can be shared with your audience on the website or through social media profile.
What will the website’s design be like?
A good design is a good business and website offers you this flexibility to showcase your brand personality that you cannot achieve through social media.
Your business model, products and your audience are the factors that are to be considered while designing a website. If you are not sure about the design, search on internet and you will find readymade themes available for your website that you can refer to or get inspired by.
What are the necessary requirements to run a smooth website ?
Domain Name – Existing business name is by far the best choice until you don’t have any plans to rebrand it.
Hosting – A hosting plan, that offers great speed, uptime, enough storage that suits your business requirements, CDN, backup, security, great customer support and is not heavy on pockets are some features that one should look for, while purchasing a hosting plan.
Most of the players offer a free SSL certificate for a website that is free for lifetime. The one we recommend is Hostinger as it is a reputed brand that offers all the necessary requirements to run a smooth website and is not expensive.
E-commerce website solutions – If you have plans to take your e-commerce business to multichannel strategy or planning to go for a D2C business model then you have two popular options Shopify & Woocommerce to create your E-commerce website. Below is the difference between them.
- Shopify – Shopify is a SAAS based e-commerce solution, It is easy and ready to use, doesn’t requires separate hosting plan or SSL certificate. However to begin with, it will cost USD 29 per month and any customization charges if you want to go with additional features, that usually are not required, due to its various business based themes. Shopify also comes with great benefits like 24×7 support, excellent speed and uptime with great security & daily backup of your store.
Woocomerce – It is not SAAS based eCommerce solution but a wordpress plugin and is a great alternative to Shopify as it is not expensive. Unlike Shopify, Woocommerce requires hosting, . The only drawback is that it is little complex than Shopify or any other SAAS eCommerce platform.
WordPress dashboard with Woocommerce plugin is not easy to setup as Shopify dashboard, so you need to learn how to go back and forth between your blog dashboard and your store dashboard with Woocommerce.
With Woocommerce you need to be attentive while buying your hosting, to get all the features of shopify in your hosting plan. As you are building a shop on Woocommerce
Site maintenance & How to do it ?
Website developer usually teaches you how to manage and maintain your website. But if you are busy with other business priorities then it’s a good idea to hire a website developer to maintain your website.
Expenses to promote a website ?
There are millions of other websites on the internet. Why on the internet people would visit your site ?
If you are a business, there are hundreds of other websites that are similar to yours and to compete with them you need a digital marketing strategy that drives traffic to your website and generate sales.
Hence to get traffic on your website, you need to promote it through Search Engine Optimization(SEO) & Social Media Marketing and to generate a organic traffic through this may take some time but depends upon your efforts. The other way is to get into online paid advertisement.
Creating, Maintaining & promoting a website is a task that requires consistent efforts, time and requires a dedicated resource. So if you can’t do it all, then hire someone to do a part of it.
What are the benefits of hiring a developer to design a website ?
The developer will take the time and effort to understand your business goals for the website and will be able to advise you on features that would best suit your business.
You can work closely with the designer’s ideas and make changes accordingly.
A site developed by a professional designer will be SEO competent, will have necessary features and will be easier to navigate.
Conclusion
You need to list down the answers to the above queries and this will help you in your consideration before creating a website.
Also list down, what are the alternates of the websites available to you & adding a website to these alternate would be a effective strategy for your future business growth.
As creating a website to meet its business objectives & goals takes time and how sooner to start is what you need to consider ?
Businesses that run on social media or on marketplaces are like swimming in lake or a river, but having a business website is like swimming in ocean of internet.
We believe that a website should be about what it can accomplish, as there are many businesses with various requirements, so this article is to help you make a decision, about having a website for your business or to look for alternate solutions like social media, marketplace or business directories. And also to contemplate, how soon you would require a website to accomplish your business goals. Our aim is to provide you with an objective viewpoint so that you can draw your own conclusions from our research. Hope you liked the article, please leave your comment below in the comment box.