Let’s say your small business only makes sales through in-person presentations. Your customers don’t come to find you, you find them. Because of the nature of your business, you don’t expect any prospects to really search for you online. You don’t need a website, right? Your business is old school!
Wrong.
A website is a must-have item for a small businesses that prospects and other contacts can and will rely on as a reference resource. If it doesn’t exist, it creates a big strike against your credibility and perception as a reliable company. You truly never know what reason someone might have for visiting your company’s website, but you can count on this: if they can’t find it, it’s a problem.
Perception is reality
The lack of a website can create issues when working with suppliers, partners, employees, and various other parties. It doesn’t have to be the most informative site in the world, but it needs to exist and it needs to project a favorable image for your company.
Think about your own experiences. Let’s say you solicited bids for a real estate development contract, and a bunch of builders submitted their bid packages. You reviewed the packages, got a sense of the builders, and then decided to check them out online. What would you think of a builder with no website?
“Is this guy for real? Where is his website? Is this a scam?”
A website is a critical way to demonstrate legitimacy, but also attentiveness to technological developments. A business that doesn’t keep up with basic Internet technology may also not be keeping up with developments in its own field. It may be an unfair perception, but it’s important to present your business as one that embraces advances and that can provide state-of-the-art offerings to customers. Without a website, you can’t do that effectively.
Websites make you look bigger than you are
A well designed website lets you directly compete with larger players. On the Internet, a well made website can make you look like the industry leader, if it compares favorably to larger competitors that have let their site lag behind. To the average searcher who doesn’t know much about the relative positions of the companies in your industry, website quality will be the first indicator of each company’s relative rank.
Essentially, your website is your global storefront. As far as the world at large is concerned, you are your website. Not having a website is the equivalent of putting your flagship location on an unmarked island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and shutting the blinds. For this reason, it always makes sense to build a simple, clean website, and make sure that you aren’t losing points from any of the parties that may be searching for you to learn more about your business.
