Why You Need A Web Presence
Why do you need a web presence? And just what is a ‘web presence’?
Web Presence Defined
A pretty simple one to answer, though like every question in existence, if you don’t know the answer, you need informing. Basically, web presence is the presence of your company or business, on the internet. This is by way of having a website, no matter how basic, that your potential clients can visit and take a look at.
Why All Businesses Should Have A Web Presence
OK for this we need to take a look at a few different angles, including customer perception. A few years ago, unless you were a medium to large sized business as a minimum, web presence was not as important as it has become during the past 2 – 3 years. The following points show why that has shifted, and how the importance of having a website is now paramount.
Illusions of Grandeur
Apologies for the play on words, but what that is meant to convey is the thought placed into your prospective client or customer’s mind is that even if you are a one man band operation, as far as the customer is concerned, the existence of a website equates to a larger scale operation.
Even though the vast majority of us use the internet on a daily basis, and visit a number of different websites, most of us don’t know what goes into building a website, maintaining it, and having the site hosted so that it is visible online in the first place. The assumption is that it’s a pretty big deal to create and serve a website, and while this is partly true, getting an expert to build you a simple website is a pretty painless task, and one which will reap rewards far in excess of the outlay.
Customers who don’t know this are impressed that your business has a website, customers who know it’s not such a big deal to have a website created by an expert expect one anyway, and the end result is a win-win situation for you and your business.
Customers subconsciously gain an impression of a medium – large company and ‘trust’ your business/products.
24 Hour Accessibility
In fact make that 24/7/365. If you are anything like the vast majority of internet users, many an hour is spent in the evenings and outside normal business hours surfing the internet for a variety of sites, including things that ‘pop’ into your head even whilst surfing or thinking about unrelated items and/or topics.
This leads to those times where we go check a product we need, or find some information on a purchase we need to make, and if your competitor has a website where the customer can get that info, or see that item, or check the opening hours in preparation, and you don’t have a website – guess who gets that sale the next day, and all the future repeat sales? The customer didn’t even know about your business, service, or product, as you have no web presence – think of it like this; if you have a store or office on a busy high street, you want and would expect passing trade. The internet is exactly like that, except on a colossal scale! You want as much passing trade as you can get, and the cost of getting a website built pales into insignificance when you compare the cost of a brick and mortar building situated in a prime location. What’s more is you get the potential for passing trade every second of the day, all year round – no other advertising medium or physical location even comes close.
Passing trade every minute, hour, day, week, month and year to your local and global audience.
In short, a website gives you credibility, which is a major factor in whether a customer chooses your products and/or services.