In times like these, when in-person interactions are being kept to a minimum and customers are increasingly interacting with businesses online, many entrepreneurs and business owners are trying to adapt. Some are setting up new websites, while others are updating their existing websites to add new capabilities like online ordering.
We find that most entrepreneurs default to thinking that they need a website to run their business, but while that is common, it’s not always the case. There are other ways to promote your business online. Before you spend time and money on a website, we thought it’d be beneficial to take a step back and ask you a few specific questions to help you decide if your business needs a website.
Start by asking yourself if your business already has an online presence. Your online presence includes any accounts your business has on social media and messaging platforms like:
It will also include profiles on other platforms like:
If you already have a strong presence on one of these platforms, you may not need to build a separate website for your business. For example, if you run your business from home and take orders through Instagram direct messages, you may find that this workflow is manageable for you. Or, if you sell products on a platform like Etsy or eBay, you might be benefitting more from their features, like payment processing and the ability to easily create a product listing, than you would benefit from managing it all on your own website.
Building a website requires you to invest time and money, so if you already have a strong online presence, you’ll want to weigh the costs and benefits of building a website, as opposed to using what you’ve already built. Of course, at a certain point, you may grow out of managing your business via direct messages and emails, or find that you have achieved enough sales volume to stop paying fees and commissions to ecommerce platforms, and that’s when the benefits of having your own website will likely outweigh the costs of getting online.
If you don’t already have a strong online presence, it’s worth considering if building a presence on one of these platforms is a faster and cheaper alternative to building and managing your own website. This is especially true if you’re just getting started with your business. If you can interact with customers and transact elsewhere online (like by accepting Venmo or Paypal payments), you may not need to launch a separate website.
A big benefit of having a website is that it may make it easier for customers to find you. Think about it, as a consumer, when you’re looking for a product or details about a business, you probably start your research by googling.
If you already have an online presence, a website can add a certain layer of legitimacy to search results when customers look for you online. If you don’t have an online presence, a website will make it possible for customers to find you in an online search.
There are some caveats - like, if your business has a generic or common name, or shares all or part of its name with another business, a website can help customers differentiate and find the business they want (hopefully yours!). In order for that to happen though, your website will need to have enough content on it for search engines to be able to tell the difference.
You also want to consider what information you would put on a website for your business. You can create a website to share basics like your business’ contact info, hours of operation, location, and some information about your products or services. You can also add to that and share even more information, like details about your products, pricing information, your business’ policies and even a blog.
Consider how much of this information could be shared elsewhere, either through your existing online presence or other means. It may be easier to enhance or update your social media accounts, instead of starting and maintaining a website. Of course, if you want to have a place to consistently direct customers to certain information (eg. product specifications) you will probably need a website for your business.
If you’re considering blogging as part of your marketing strategy, you could consider using a blogging platform like Tumblr or Medium instead of your own website. Using these platforms comes with tradeoffs (like who owns the content you’re posting or control over what ads are shown to readers), so make sure to factor that into your considerations, too.
The last question to ask yourself is, do you have the time and money needed for a website? There are plenty of website builders, tools and services out there to help you get your business online, but the one thing they all have in common is that you will need to spend time and money getting your website set up.
A website is an investment of your time and money into your business’ online presence. Depending on what you’re looking for and what your business needs, this can be a small or big investment to make and you should decide if you want to prioritize it against other tasks. After all, a website can be a very low-cost single page site that just lists out your business’ basic information and ways to get in touch (like an online business card), or it can be a fully immersive experience for your customers, with embedded videos, written content and ecommerce functionality.
Once a website is live, you also need to invest time and money in ongoing maintenance. This can be relatively easy, if you don’t plan on making a lot of updates to your website or collecting customer information online. Website maintenance can also be time consuming and expensive if you decide to build something completely custom or want to add a lot of functionality to your website later on.
At the end of the day, you are the best person to decide if you want or need to make this investment in your business and what types of outcomes you expect to achieve with a website.
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Ada Chen
Ada Chen
