Top 10 benefits of having a business website [Data-based report]

by Dec 22, 2018Branding, Guides

If you’ve found this article you are probably currently considering whether or not to create a website for your business. Well, if you have a business that has no website in this modern era, you are certainly missing out.
Here’s why. People now spend average of about 24 hours on the internet every week, twice what it used to be 10 years ago. Also, online shopping is gaining more popularity worldwide, and e-commerce share of the total global retail sales increased from 7.4% in 2015 to 11.8% in 2018, and is still rising. If your business is not positioned to benefit from these new trends, then it is literally decades behind.
While there are several reasons to have a website for your business, we’ve compiled in this report the ten (10) most important benefits of having a business website, with special focus on the peculiarities of Nigerian small businesses.

10 Benefits of Having a Business Website

1. Brand credibility

In this 21st century, having a professional-looking website will increase your business credibility and customer trust by tenfold. In 2015, Verisign carried out a study that showed that 84% of consumers believe that small businesses with websites are more credible than ones with only social media pages. That’s too huge a statistic to ignore.
Navigating a small business through the high risk of mortality commonly associated with the early days of Nigerian small businesses is hard enough. Don’t do it on the negative end of such statistics.
Imagine handing out your business cards to potential clients and it does not contain your business website and email address. Archaic! Your business card is not complete without a website address and your professional-looking, company-branded business email.

2. Marketing

The business world is changing, and the possibilities of digital marketing has leveled up the playing field between small businesses and big businesses. Being able to afford repeated television, radio or large bill board advertising is fast losing relevance.
Traditional advertising channels are losing place to more modern trends such as content marketing (and SEO), Facebook ads, PPC, influencer marketing, growth hacking and email marketing. And having a website (at least a landing page) is a prerequisite to almost all these modern marketing channels.
Hence, a website is the backbone of digital marketing. All your digital marketing efforts will come to nought if you don’t at least have a website.
A good website is the backbone of digital marketing.
A well-crafted professional business website combined with expert local SEO efforts can potentially overtake your offline marketing efforts as the the primary lead generation source for your business. Don’t underestimate this.

3. Online presence and increased accessibility

Nigeria’s internet penetration is estimated to be 65%. What this means is that at least 103 million Nigerians now have access to the internet. That’s a larger market than what maybe accessible to your small business offline.
Also, the internet presents you an opportunity to reach a worldwide market without necessarily having a physical presence in any of those countries. It’s the easiest way to expand beyond your city, state and country.
Having a website makes your business accessible to potential customers at all times, even after business hours. That’s 24/7/365!

4. Stay ahead of your competition

In every emerging market, increasing internet penetration and maturity is usually positively correlated with increasing e-commerce adoption. This is exactly what is happening in the Nigerian space right now.
How do we know? Well, Paystack, a payment processor that allows Nigerian merchants receive payment online for their goods and services, reported an 82% increase in the number of businesses registered, and a 93% increase in the monthly amount of money that customers paid online to businesses  through their platform in 2017.
Also, according to NIRA, 4,589 .ng domain names were registered in June 2018. This is a 40% increase when compared with the 2,767 that were registered in June 2016, and a 14% increase when compared with the 3,947 figure of June 2017.
The interpretation of this is that more Nigerian organisations (most of which are businesses) created an online presence in 2018 than in the previous years, and your competitors were probably among them. Business is warfare, don’t lose ground to them.

5. It serves as a portfolio

A website presents you the opportunity to list your products, showcase your past works, and customer testimonials. This is even more relevant if your business is selling services.
A PowerReviews survey showed that a staggering 97% of consumers consult product reviews before making a purchase. The same survey showed  that “reviews have a larger impact on purchasing decisions than recommendations from family and friends, the brand of the product and the availability of free shipping.”
Yes, you read that right. Even the almighty word-of-mouth marketing is being reinvented by the internet.

6. Communication

A website provides your business an excellent channel of communication with customers. Potential clients can visit your website and make enquiries by filling a contact form; you could set up a live chat and answer pre-sale questions, offer support to your customers or even conduct feedback surveys.
Your business website can have a blog where important company news, product releases, investor information and announcements are communicated. The comments section on the blogs can also be a good channel of getting customer feedback.

7. Diversification

Some may argue that some of the benefits of a website discussed above are already possible using social media channels, and will rather stick to begging others to retweet their hustle on Twitter. While there may be some truth in that, it’s risky!
Social media companies are always changing their algorithms, so that a Facebook page with thousands of likes may make a post on it’s wall and not get up to 100 engagements.
A well-diversified omnichannel marketing approach is what the wise experts recommend, and it’s the safe thing to do. Having a website for your business is central to that.

8. Repeat business and automation

An important key to business success is the ability to persuade a customer to buy from you again or to upsell them a higher or newer version of your product. If this aspect of your business process is well set up, you can attract new clients in with ridiculously discounted offers and then upsell them, just as is done in the web hosting industry.
A quality business website can significantly aid this process. From your website you can set up and automate lead funnels. You can collect emails of all your buyers and set up campaigns to retarget them for upselling.

9. Customer behavior research

A website, integrated with an analytic tool (like Google Analytics), will afford you a ton of information about your potential customers. Information such as how they found you, what kind of devices they use, where they live, what time of the day they visit and how they interact with your website can help you better understand your customers, and make changes accordingly in your marketing plan.

10. It helps to cut cost (in the long run)

From reduction in the cost of marketing to that of customer care and support, having a website can help your business cut cost significantly in the long run.
A website makes it affordable for startups and small businesses to create minimum viable products for their ideas, and appear fast in front of customer online, experiment and make improvements before investing big in the ideas.

Bottom line

The world has changed, and is still fast changing. In this report, we’ve proven the importance of website in business. Having a business without a  website is almost synonymous with having no business at all. This is why we are offering to help your business get online.
At Digital Yeast, we make ultramodern responsive websites that gets brands noticed, at affordable rates. You can see our past work here.
Our website pricing starts from as low as £200, and all our website design projects come with free logo design, work email setup, full on-page SEO, basic off-page SEO and excellent customer support.
Let’s talk about your next website project, click here to get a free quotation.
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Get your Business online in 2023

Let’s make you a bespoke responsive business website. All our web design plans come with free logo design, free SSL integration for security and search engine optimization.
Prices start at £200
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