Why you need a website in 2023
Your business deserves the best in every respect, but especially online. 99% of businesses absolutely need a website today, and we’re going to go through 6 really good reasons as to why you need a website in 2023.
As a business owner or entrepreneur, what do you aspire to? What are the big things you’re looking to achieve this year and going forward? Despite all of the ‘scary’ things we’re hearing on the news and in the media right now, it’s important to be striving for success in our businesses and making sure we’re pivoting in new directions.
But which type of businesses do we mean? If your success relies on achieving any of the following goals:
Booking appointments/sessions with clients
Booking calls
Booking tables
Growing an audience for your blog
Growing an audience for your business/increasing organic traffic
Growing your email list
(… and we’ve probably missed a number of things), then having a website is going to be key for you.
6 Reasons why you need a website in 2023
Increase organic traffic to your business
Having a website is great but there isn’t much point to it if the right people aren’t finding you. By implementing good search engine optimization (SEO), you’re increasing your chances of better Google ranking. Squarespace has made it very simple to optimize websites, including each page and blog posts. Other SEO practices are also really easy to implement, such as including image alt tags, creating good URL slugs, and creating blog post templates (to ensure good SEO for each post).
Once search engines like Google start seeing your website as good authority in your niche, those bots will start making your site more visible to the right people (your dream clients), and you’ll see a natural and gradual increase in traffic to your site!
You can easily create a Blog on Squarespace websites, and blog posts are such an amazing way of providing valuable content to your visitors. You can include not only evergreen articles, but also images, videos and charts. By producing these consistent posts (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly), you’re also really helping your search engine ranking.
2. Makes your business a lot more credible
Imagine your loyal followers want to learn more about you and your business, and they type your name into Google after visiting your restaurant, seeing your work on social media, or meeting you at a networking event, but they can’t find a website.
At that point two things could happen. They either decide that you’re not a ‘real’ business and head somewhere else, or they get bored and quickly forget about you (people are often in a hurry or too busy). Either way, you’ve pretty much lost them.
A website offers all of your information in one place, and better yet, a chance for your visitors to contact you within minutes.
3. Better than social media
Your social media followers are not ‘yours’. What we mean by that is, you don’t actually own any of your social media followers’ data. You also don’t have any control over how the algorithm changes and potentially could slow down your growth. At any given moment, the Instagram team might decide to change a number of things, making you lose visibility.
And in many cases, social media is often just a source of entertainment or simply, great for vanity.
Don’t get us wrong, for many businesses it works, but by no means is it a long term or sustainable solution.
You’re in control of your website, and how you optimize it.
4. Financially feasible
You can pay for personal (this option has its limitations) or business plans on Squarespace. You have the choice of doing this monthly or annually (where you can save a little money).
With these annual costs, all of your website maintenance & security is covered. You don’t have to do anything towards maintenance. All you have to do is continue to produce wonderful content for your site (e.g. blog posts, copy, updating your menus, etc).
5. Reach people globally
Search engines are accessed by people on a global level. A website has the potential to take your business worldwide.
With this in mind, it doesn’t matter anymore where you’re based in the world. If you’re a photographer in London whose work catches the eye of someone in New York, then you’ve instantly increased your chances of more leads & sales.
6. Your website becomes your virtual assistant
You can implement automations & information on your website, which you can’t do elsewhere. This will become a kind of assistant for you, to enable you to take the attention off some of the day to day admin work.
These can include any of the following & more:
Contact forms
Booking systems (which can integrate with your Google calendar)
FAQs section (to address those frequently asked questions)
Include downloadable information
Integrate your email marketing platform with your website
Let’s conclude
A website is going to enable your business to achieve a lot, and it’s for the long term game. It is your business’s and brand’s best online representative, where you have control over your content & when you update that content.
With all that is happening in the world’s economy right now, opt for your business to be active online and for your audience to easily find and reach you (from across the globe).