What’s a website useful for

What’s a website useful for? A question like this seems almost out of place at the beginning of 2023, however in the UK there are still tens, hundreds if not thousands of companies that do not have a consolidated online presence yet.

According to statistics in 2018 from 4 to 7 out of 10 companies did not have a website and therefore we think it would be appropriate to develop this topic and explain why you should make or create a website, especially in this historic moment, when the pandemic suddenly projected us onto the digital world.

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1 What’s a website useful for

What is the use of a website? It is essential to a company

Some companies’ leaders still think it’s not that relevant to possess a company website. The reasons for this “false belief” are several, here are some:

my company works a lot with the word of mouth;
my company is small or offers niche services;
my company operates only on the local territory;
a website costs too much and those costs scare me;
I know people who have a website but it is not visited, does not generate traffic, it is not positioned on Google, does not work;
I don’t need a website because I use social media… and so on

These are some real situations of people expressing their fears and concerns to us. These fears and doubts are often also justified by the fact that someone relies on pseudo web agencies or pseudo consultants who ask for a lot of money and do not bring the promised and hoped results.

However, this is a real and irrefutable fact and I will now explain why it is important to have a website for your company.

Website, why to have one

Let’s see now why it is important to have a website and clarify your doubts about this topic.

Excellent! If you are a serious professional or your company enjoys a good reputation, your customers will probably speak well of you and your services. Have you ever thought that people who hear good things about you through physical word-of-mouth will probably search you on the web for your name or company name?

Isn’t that what you do when you want to find information about a company you’ve heard about? Now, if you don’t have a company website you might miss a potential opportunity to validate your company’s reputation online with a website showing relevant content appropriate to your industry.

A company website is useful to give more authority to your company, your employees and your services. Also remember that a lot of people who don’t know you could google the services that your company offers

If you don’t have a website, how will you be able to intercept their needs at the very moment they are looking for what you have to offer? With a website you can increase the chances of generating new contacts, new customers and consequently increase your turnover.

What’s a website useful for when your company mostly works upon word-of-mouth?

Your company is small or offers niche services

Your business’ size, even a small one, should not be a limit to you. Having a structured online presence it’s not just a thing for big enterprises.

Thanks to my expertise I can tell you that a lot of small businesses take advantage of the internet by generating more clients and revenue than what they could have done by continuing to invest in print advertising.

Those who propose niche services may think that their public target could be so small that investing in a website is just not worth it.

Couldn’t be more wrong because thanks to a website focused on that niche you can expand your target even outside your city and surroundings and offer your services or products to your target audience in other regions.

Again, people are exploiting Google to do specific searches, and if you have an online presence with a website it will be easier to intercept users who do those searches and get in touch with them.

What is the use of a website if your company operates only on the local territory?

The fact that your company is located in a certain city should not prevent you from going online with a website for several reasons.

You can develop areas where you can offer online advice in different parts of your country. I’ll give you a practical example. Suppose you have a company that provides legal or tax services. With modern communication technologies such as Skype, Zoom and other platforms you can easily offer support, training and advice wherever you want. There are also many people who are looking for good professionals who can provide remote advice without having to move.
Still wondering what a website is for? I’m going to give you one more reason supported by statistics. According to a Moz statistics of 2019 every day we make a minimum of 3 searches on Google. According to another statistic, 63% of people who search Google using a smartphone are looking for localized services. Do you now understand the importance of owning a website for your company? You may miss a great opportunity to get new customers if you are not present on the internet.

A website is too expensive and the price scares me

One of the reasons many give up the idea of having a website is the fear of incurring high costs.

As I wrote before, this fear is easily comprehensible and we fully understand the feeling you feel in this sense because we often get contacted by companies and professionals who have invested large sums to achieve a result that is irrelevant or null.

It goes without saying that a website that costs too little must trigger your suspicion because it takes time, expertise, experience and appropriate tools in order to make a quality product and of course all of this has its cost.

However, the fact that an agency or consultant asks you for exorbitant fees does not necessarily mean that you will get the results you hope for. We suggest, before entrusting to any agency, to ask for advice and evaluate your case.

Website is not visited, not working or not ranking on Google

This is another situation that we often face when a customer contacts us because they already have a website but they don’t make a profit out of it.

This is a very unpleasant situation for a company that has invested money and has no feedback of the investment made or ROI. In these cases you can save the situation by following these steps and doing a series of analyses:

For the technical part : technical analysis of the site to assess the causes of the malfunctioning and evaluate the best solutions for the solving of problems.

For the strategic part : visits and traffic that the site receives depend on the positioning that it has on Google. If the relevant and appropriate keywords to your industry are not positioned, it goes without saying that the site cannot receive visits. In this case we must evaluate a series of aspects ranging from the site performance from a technical point of view, the loading speed, to the semantic analysis of the site content and to SEO factors on-site, on-page and offsite.

These analyses will serve as a basis for a restructuring of the existing site and will enable it to reach the result you want.

What is a website for if I don’t get contacted?

The reasons for you to not receive contacts are 2:

You do not receive visits to your site because either you are not organically positioned on Google or you are not sponsoring the site with Google Ads.
If the site receives visits but you don’t get contacts you probably need to review the user experience of the site, the calls to action and whether there are elements in the web pages that can increase your contacts such as contact forms, clickable telephone buttons, Facebook or Whatsapp chat buttons, etc…

What is the most important thing for you: to have a website or to be present on social media? Many would say social media. But now I ask you one more question: if tomorrow Facebook, Instagram and other social networks were to close their doors, what would happen if you invested your marketing strategy only on them?

You will lose all the content, posts and various activities you have done. Maybe other social networks will rise but you will have to start over from time to time. Is such a strategy truly effective? Social media are useful but should be contextualized within a larger vision that includes a solid starting point and above all your property: your website.

Another fact is that the attitude of those using social media is different from those using Google or a different search engine.

Social media are used to socialize, to play, to spend free time or to enhance one’s vanity by posting the best side of our lives and then? Then it happens that while you have fun you see a sponsored ad and maybe it is something of your interest and you press the button to check it out. Remember, you weren’t there for that, at that moment your thought was somewhere else.

So, in 2023 during the social media era it is still a need to own a website and whose need is it?

Is there still a need for a website?

The answer is yes! Without ifs and buts. Social media can never replace a website.

Those who go on Google have a precise intent (unlike social media), that of satisfying one’s need, curiosity or maybe looking for a specific product or service by typing a key phrase on the engine.

If your company doesn’t have a website no one will ever come from that channel to consult your services.

Who needs a website

A website is useful to any type of business, commercial or professional activity. There are no limits to this.

How long does it take to build a website?

Timing depends on various factors such as the kind of site you need to create. A showcase site with a few pages takes much less time than a portal with a lot of content or an ecommerce site.

Atena Solution is a web agency located in the Umbria region and takes care of website development, e-commerce, SEO and web marketing. If you are looking for a Prestashop e-commerce web agency for your online shop realization, contact us and we’ll offer to you a professional e-commerce consultancy in order to analyze your project and determine its applicability.