Why do I need a website? These words echoed a lot in the past decade or so. Even today businesses are still questioning the worth. Seems astounding, but people are still holding off investing in a website for one reason or another – usually because they don’t see the point. Why do you need a website for business?

However, given the sheer choice the website world has to offer now and the range of pricing options available, there really is no excuse for any business not to have a website.

Why do I need a website?

No one uses anything else

Seen or used a Yellow Pages lately? Flicked through a company’s brochure? Read the trading post? Looked at ad’s and promotions in the news paper? I didn’t think so.

If you want something, you go out and look for it, usually on Google but almost exclusively on the Internet. This means, at one time or another, in the hunt for what you need you end up on a website, or perhaps on multiple websites, reviewing, assessing and making a decision on what you need.

The cold hard reality is, no one uses anything other than the Internet to research things. Whether it’s a big purchase like a house or a small purchase like which avocados to buy, at one time along the chain the consumer will be on a website gathering information.

 

Consumers are smarter

These days consumers are smarter and more informed than they used to be. The general rule is, by the time someone comes to you with a request or an enquiry, they have already a lot of information on you and have made their initial decisions on what they’re going to do!

Why should this matter to you? Well – what if you aren’t one of the ones with a website. What does that give the consumer the opportunity to learn from you? Absolutely nothing is the answer. They’ll get all the information from your competition and call them instead of calling you.

 

The world is digital

In the bigger picture it’s just about the world becoming digital. Everything we as consumers have access too these days is digital, even down to our fridge which can order our groceries for us. Sure bricks and mortar stores still exist and will continue to exist but consumers are utilising the online presence of today’s retailers to work out what they want to buy prior to going in store.

Take Bunnings for example. The countries largest hardware supplier has a massive online store, almost every product they have is available online. How many people have you heard of buying hammers online? Perhaps an outdoor setting? Maybe a barbeque? Yes, that’s right. Next to none.

And why is that? Well it’s quite simple, people are used to buying hardware in the store. Often they need it that same day or more frequently it’s just too large to move around or to get delivered. I’ll bet Bunnings don’t actually sell a lot online. Yet they do have a lot of people visiting the website, you can see it from the number of online advertisements they run.

The point is, people still look online and review your website to find out what they want, in their own time on the comfort of their own couch. No-one is rushing off the couch to get up and roam through Bunnings for hours, they’d rather do it on their iPad in front of The Block.

The world is digital now, like it or not. If you don’t have a website, you don’t exist.