Why Your Small Business needs to be Online

Feb 11th, 2014

Maybe you run a small bakery, or a small contracting firm. Perhaps it’s a small dental practice, or a small business of another kind. Whatever type of small business you own, you have probably considered starting a website for it in the past and shaken off these thoughts with the belief that your business doesn’t actually need one. After all, you serve the local public, are not an international business, and therefore, simply don’t need to tell the world that you exist. Even more so, you’ve probably talked yourself out of a website because you don’t want to spend money in the budget that you don’t have in order to do it. We’re here to tell you now to forget about all those nay-saying thoughts. Your business, no matter how small or how local, needs a website. Here are a couple of reasons why.

Your customers are talking about you online
Even if your business isn’t online, your customers are. If they have a bad experience, or feel that they’re not getting the attention they need from you, gone are the days when they come home and tell their family and that’s it. The chances are good that instead, now they’ll hop onto social media or review sites – sometimes right after they walk out your business’ door – and they’ll tell the world about it. This could be enough to stop new and potential customers from coming to you when they need your products or services, and it will give your business a bad reputation. Even worse, you might not even know about it until it’s too late, if ever.

By taking your small business online and creating a website for it, you will be able to control that conversation. Maybe instead of telling the world about the issues they’ve had at your business, they will come straight to your website and let you know through the contact page. Having a website for your business, no matter how small, will give you control over the online conversation about your business and will allow you to help your customers even more so.

A website will help customers find you
One of the major misconceptions small business owners have about starting a website is that they don’t need one because they’re a local business with local customers. However, just because you service only those in the nearby area doesn’t mean that local customers know about you. And when those same customers need your product or service, the chances are very good that they’ll go online to find a business they need – even if they know it will be within a 10 mile radius once they find it. If your business doesn’t come up in that search, customers won’t even know about you to consider using you; and you’ll lose valuable business because of it.

It really cannot be stressed enough. No matter how small your business, and no matter how local your customers, your small business needs a website. Not having one is essentially the same as locking your business’ doors all day and wondering why customers aren’t coming in to see you.