In recent years Facebook has been the go to for small businesses to advertise their goods and services.This is fine for a social media presence but if you want people to take your business seriously then a website is a must. Many People are now asking, Should I build a website for my business?
Anyone can create a Facebook or Instagram page and it is difficult to achieve any individuality within the constructs of a social media platform in terms of branding. If your business has a website, however, you are separated entirely from the monotony of a Facebook page and thrust into a limitless world of creativity and customization.
With a website the identity you want for your brand is free to take form in any way you like. Take a restaurant business for example. Having a Facebook page is fine if you want to interact with people and maybe show some pictures of the food you serve, but it's still just a Facebook page like the billions of others trying to gain an edge in the already competitive food and drink sector.
In comes your website.
If a user visits your site, they are met with a digital impression of your businesses life force. They might only be visiting to check what your opening hours, but within seconds they are interacting with an amalgamation of everything you want the restaurant to be and more. A great website is thematically linked to the subject that it is built on. So the great question remains; Should I build a website for my business?
A Very Tasty Design Example
Lets pretend your restaurant is a nice family run Italian with great home cooked food. Your website might have a couple of branches, so to start with maybe a landing page with an option to go to either of the branches pages shown below in la lanterna's website.
As you can see from the screenshots of each page there are subtle differences such as a more modern design on the West end website. The header also has links to all the restaurant's social media accounts, showing that they still use them as a form of promotion.
I chose to use this website not because I thought it's design was the best (although I think both pages are perfectly adequate) but because La Lanterna's website was the first page to come up when I searched for 'Italian Restaurants in Glasgow'. This is because of the website's Search Engine Optimization.
Why you should always use SEO
I have outlined the details of Search Engine Optimisation in another blog post, but the long of the short of it is that search engines don't actually search the whole internet every single time you do a search, they actually have programs called 'spiders' that traverse the vast network of pages and index them so they are on hand when a search is made. A website can be optimized for a search engine by containing certain keywords pertaining to the information on the page that might be useful to a search engine user.
This is a big advantage of having a website for your business as you have the opportunity to streamline your website's SEO and then go up against the competition, rather than screaming into the void of bots and fake news shared by your weird aunt that Facebook seems to have evolved into over the years.
Rounding Up
In Summary, I would highly recommend creating a website for your business, and not just because I design websites. I firmly believe that creating even a simple website shows that you believe in what you are offering to the public, and it has several advantages such as:
- Not being waylaid by any strange rules set out by a website provider.
- Search Engine Optimisation is a great tool to get your name out there.
- Truly representing your brand is much easier to do on something you have creative control over.
- Websites offer advanced functionality meaning you can add extra components such as a booking form or request page.
I hope this post has inspired you to ask "Should I build a website for my business?" If you are interested please feel free to reach out to me even if you just have some questions on where to start.