Why Your Small Business Needs a Website (And How to Get One Fast!)
As a small business owner, having an optimized online presence through your own professionally-designed website is essential to remain competitive in today's digital landscape. While you may have succeeded so far using traditional marketing techniques, a website is now, more than ever, a make-or-break investment. Simply put, without a website you are invisible to a huge number of potential customers searching for your offerings each day via Google. That's why it's crucial for you to stop delaying the creation of your website as we step into 2025.
1. Boost Credibility & Trust
Imagine you hear about a new local coffee shop and decide to look it up online. If you can't find a website, you might second-guess its legitimacy or up-to-date information. A website acts as a stamp of approval, signaling that a business is established and professional. It's the digital equivalent of hanging your shingle. Your website tells potential customers that you’re serious about your business, and it gives them a platform to explore what you have to offer at their own pace. Ultimately, your website shows potential customers that your business is trustworthy and capable of meeting their needs.
2. Drive Leads with 24/7 Accessibility
A website provides prospects with round-the-clock access to explore your business before contacting you. Conversely, local reach is restricted to business hours only. Additionally, more than 22% of consumers check out websites before actually buying. By having a website, you can make sure that you don't miss out on this critical research stage.
3. Increase Organic Reach Through SEO
SEO allows you to appear at the top of search engines when prospects look for your products/services online. It involves optimizing various elements of your website like metadata, blogging, copy, and page speed to improve your search engine rankings and visibility. By using SEO, you can tap into the intent of buyers who are actively looking for what you offer and get your website in front of them.
4.Gathering Insights About your Customers
With a website, you can use tools like Google Analytics to understand who your customers are, how they find you, and what they like about your offerings. This data is invaluable for making informed decisions about your business. For example, if you notice that a lot of traffic comes from a specific city or that certain products are particularly popular, you can tailor your marketing and stock to better serve your customers' needs.
5.Customer Service and Satisfaction
A website can also improve your customer service and support, providing customers with a way to find helpful information without needing to call or visit your store. This could include a FAQ section, live chat, or support forms that can help you address customer service issues faster and more efficiently, improving overall customer satisfaction. Such features save you and your customers time, making it easier for them to get answers and for you to manage inquiries.
Additionally, implementing customer feedback forms on your website can encourage your visitors to feel like they have a voice, increasing customer loyalty and trust.
6.Competitive Advantage
In 2024, customers expect businesses to have online visibility. If your competitors have websites and you don’t, guess where those potential customers are likely going? By having a professional-looking site, you ensure you are not left behind in an increasingly competitive market. It’s about showing potential customers that your business is the best choice.
7.Integration with Social Media
Maintaining a website might seem like an expense, but when compared to other forms of advertising, it’s incredibly cost-effective. The potential reach versus the cost makes it one of the best investments. Plus, with techniques like SEO, you can continuously improve your visibility over time, drawing more traffic without necessarily increasing costs.
Integrating your website with social media can enhance your visibility and reach. You can use your social media profiles to drive traffic to your website, where more detailed information and conversions are possible. This integration creates a seamless flow between different platforms, enhancing user experience and doubling up on your exposure.
How to Get One Fast website
In a world where attention spans are shrinking, even a one-second delay can lead to lost visitors, lower rankings, and missed revenue opportunities.
Research finds that B2C websites that load in one second or less have conversion rates three times higher than those that load in five seconds or more.
Conversion rates are 2.5 times higher for B2C websites that load in one second or less.
In other words, speed is no longer a luxury.
Speed is a necessity.
A fast-loading website enhances user experience, boosts SEO rankings, and drives higher conversions.
And with search engines and consumer expectations continuing to evolve, businesses must prioritize performance to stay ahead of the competition.
Implementing the right strategies ensures that websites remain fast, competitive, and ready for the demands of 2025.
Plan Your Site Structure (Architecture)
Before we go straight into all the precise details, it’s important to look at the bigger picture first. You need a clear idea of why you need a website, what you want it to do, and how you want it to look. Those plans will almost definitely change as you build your site, but they can guide you in making informed decisions, from your choice of site builder or host to your color scheme.
It’s also important to keep that vision in mind as you build because your site needs to be consistent. A website that seems to change tones or direction from page to page won’t be particularly good for just about any purpose. Conversely, a simple or even uninspired site can still be effective so long as its elements work together to serve their purpose.
1. Identify your site’s purpose
It’s a simple question, but it’s also incredibly important: What are you trying to do with your website? You might want a simple personal website, a blog to publish your ideas on and inform the public, or an interactive resume/CV to capture the attention of potential employers and collaborators. If you’re an entrepreneur, you might need a website for your business or an online store to sell your products and services.
You don’t have to limit yourself to a single purpose either. For example, your business site could also have an online shop section, or your personal site could include your CV information. The possibilities are endless.
Most website builders will allow you to create just about any kind of website, though it’s true that each has its strengths. So for a purely e-commerce site, you might want to go with Shopify, while Wix will allow you more creative expression for a personal website.
WordPress (the open-source software you can get from WordPress.org) can also help you create any kind of site, but knowing its purpose will help you choose the right plugins, templates, and even hosting plans.
2. Outline your site’s structure
Structure will mean two things here. The first is how you’ll arrange the different elements on each page.
Start by making a rough sketch of your homepage. Which sections will you include? How will they be organized? You can make this sketch using pen and paper or something more modern like design software. It really doesn’t matter so long as your sketch makes sense to you, and you can come back to check it as you build.
So, let’s say I’m building a photography portfolio. My first section would be a hero section – the large banner at the top of the page to capture the viewer’s attention and provide essential information about the page. In that section, I’d include a heading with my name, a small paragraph with my description, and a call-to-action button for visitors to contact me. Then, I might include a mini gallery, an “About Me” section, and a contact form.
A simple sketch of your planned structure can help a lot later on I sketched a rough example, but as you can see, I wasn’t too concerned with the visuals of the site at this point. Here, we just want to get an idea of how it flows. Once you’re satisfied with your homepage structure, it’s time to do the same for the rest of your main pages.
If you choose to use a website builder template, it might already have a pre-existing structure different from the one you had planned. You can still use your original sketch to modify that into a mix of the two. That way, your site will stand out from others made using that same template.
The second thing I mean by structure is the overall layout and organization of your site. How many pages will it have? Which are the main pages and subpages? How can they flow into each other?
Good website structure is important for both user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. As a general rule, you want to make sure that no page on your site is more than three clicks away from any other page on your site and that only the most important pages appear on the main menu.
Again, it wouldn’t hurt to just grab some paper and a pencil and simply draw a route of how your different pages connect, starting from the homepage.
3. Define your site’s identity
I could talk all day about color combinations, typographies, and design elements. But not only would I be talking beyond my expertise, this is also something that eventually comes down to your own preferences. That said, planning on some key aspects of your site’s identity beforehand can be hugely beneficial later.
Whatever colors, fonts, and design elements you choose, make sure they remain consistent. That means not changing your site’s color palette from one page to the other, or using a completely different font for two paragraphs. Though the design itself is completely up to you, keeping it cohesive is crucial for the overall user experience.
Once you’ve got the key aspects of your site settled, it’s time to decide how you’ll go about building it.
4.Using a Website Builder
The Easiest Website Builders
- Squarespace- For the ultimate user experience.
- Hostinger- For beginner friendly onboarding.
- Shopify- For easily adding products.
- Wix- Easiest editor for total creative Control.
- GoDaddy- Easiest for beginners.
5.Choose a plan
Before settling on a hosting plan, it’s crucial to evaluate key factors like traffic expectations, content types, and scalability.
Match Your Website’s Needs To What The Host Provides
Different hosting solutions cater to different website requirements, ranging from budget-friendly shared hosting to more robust, performance-driven plans. Bluehost offers multiple hosting options tailored to various business needs.
Shared Hosting can work well for smaller websites with moderate traffic, offering a cost-effective way to get started
6.Implement Caching Mechanisms
Caching is an essential tool for optimizing website speed by reducing the need to load the same data repeatedly. By storing frequently accessed files, caching decreases server load, enhances response times, and ensures visitors experience faster page loads.
7. Absolutely Leverage Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Another way to speed up websites is to examine how content is delivered to users. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) enhances website performance by distributing content across multiple servers worldwide. This reduces latency and ensures visitors load pages faster, regardless of location.
CDNs minimize the physical distance between the server and the user by caching static assets like images, stylesheets, and scripts at various data centers worldwide. This results in load times and reduced bandwidth usage.
Beyond speed improvements, CDNs also enhance website security by protecting against DDoS attacks, traffic spikes, and malicious bots. Some CDNs offer additional features, such as image optimization, automated compression, and firewall rules, that further improve performance and security.
8.Optimize Images & Media
Impact of Media Files on Load Times
Large images and unoptimized videos can significantly slow down a website. Why? High-resolution media files require more bandwidth and processing power, leading to slower page loads and a poorer user experience.
9.Minimize Plugins & External Scripts
Selecting the right plugins is crucial for maintaining website performance. First, look for lightweight, well-coded plugins that prioritize speed and efficiency.
Then, regularly auditing your plugins and removing outdated or redundant ones can prevent conflicts and minimize resource usage.