Most Americans shop online– 8/10 in fact as a Pew Research Center study has found. “Despite this, 46% of small businesses do not have a website and 35% feel that their operation is simply too small to warrant a website” (Digital.com, “Small Business Statistics”).
We all know that no matter how small your business is, it is never too small to have an online presence. As we’ve gone over in our piece about Hyper Local Marketing, there have been massive spikes in searches that include the phrase, “near me.”
If you’re a small business how are you going to compete if at least some of those searches don’t direct people towards you? What’s going to make your pizzeria stand out next to the one with great online reviews and a posted address and phone number? Why should we go to your thrift store and not the one that’s posting photos of choice new items?
You have to get a website, if only to display an address and phone number– but ideally, your website would do more. It should communicate your brand’s personality and what exactly your business is about. It should inspire something in people and gain you customers who gravitate towards your aesthetic.
We understand just how hard building a website like that is. And it’s not just the aesthetics of the website you have to be thinking of. It’s cybersecurity, it’s leads generation and search engine optimization, not to mention user experience. If your website doesn’t load in two seconds or less, you start losing customers. 79% of people say they won’t return to a site with poor performance ever again, and around 44% of them would tell a friend about their poor experience (Kissmetrics Blog).
On top of creating a website that performs wonderfully, you also have to remember the fact that, “85% of people think that a company’s mobile website should be as good or better than their desktop website” (Digital.com). This is quite important as “57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site”.
The website’s not dead, in fact, it’s essential for all businesses to have one to build and grow their customer base, since most Americans are now looking online before they check it out in person. And this number is only going to keep growing as more and more of us come of age having lived connected to the internet since day one.
Contact Critical Launch for a consultation on getting your new awesome website up and going.
Written by Cameron Sharpe.
