If you are an entrepreneur starting a business for the first time, you can ignore this post. Don’t worry about your website, worry about getting clients and building a business based on your personal reputation. When you have a real business and clients, then you can focus on building your website.
For the rest of you… yes, I’m talking to the 45% of entrepreneurs who say they don’t have a business website according to CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey. The easy answer is that you’ve probably waited too long, and you know it. It’s been on your list but has never become a priority because your taking care of your current clients and/or running the daily operations of your business. Sound familiar? The truth is, for so many people I meet that own businesses, once the doors are open, they are going a 100 miles per hour with no time for anything. NO TIME, NO TIME, NO TIME. And they’ll keep saying that until that critical moment they hit a wall, they burn out, or the business is missing the mark in terms of sales or sales growth.
You can wait for that moment to happen, or you can put your business growth at the top of your list and stop making excuses. Need another reason? How about digital is predicted to influence 77% of all retail sales this year. And any online engagement should have the opportunity to lead to your website where you can tell your story, engage with your customers, and encourage initial sales and repeat purchase. Even if you are a word-of-mouth driven business, once the customer hears about you, it’s highly likely they will be checking you out online before they call you. They want to know more about you, your products or services, and see if you are a fit for what they need.
If you are business with a physical location like a retail store, you can rely on natural foot traffic initially, but even then, you’re missing the opportunity to tell your story to a much larger population. And even those great customers who love your store, will tell their friends, who may want to find out more about you online before deciding to visit. Not to mention the very simple idea that they may not know your address, your hours of operation, or what you specifically sell that they may want right now.
Now let’s talk about all the reasons that the time is now.
1) Your customers want it.
People want to know who they are working with. They want to know about products/services before they buy them. They hope to find exactly what they are looking for and the Internet is their tool to find it, to research it, to validate it, to compare it, and to buy it. This is the baseline expectation… for everything. And yes, I’m even talking about the older generations who didn’t grow up with the Internet. The expectation is universal.
2) It pays for itself and more.
Whether the website helped someone discover you, or it validated an opinion about you, or it made a current customer feel better about you when they thought about going somewhere else, it will pay for itself. For every single benefit that you gained, you can expect that it was compounded over time. For every person that shows up to your website, you have the opportunity to sell them the first time, or the second time, or to encourage word of mouth, or to build a reputation for when they want to purchase in the future. And every day that you aren’t out there, you are losing a potential sale, or future sale that could have been a reference from an initial sale. etc. etc. etc. etc.
3) If you aren’t growing, you are dying.
For every sale that you make, you are either gaining a repeat customer, or they are forgetting about you. You are either moving to the top of their list for their next purchase, or they are thinking about trying someone else instead of you. They are either telling their friends about you, or they are talking about the competition. People like to try new things, and no one is 100% loyal all the time. So, while you are losing customers, you better be picking up new one’s as well if you want to survive.
4) If you provide value, people should know it.
There are a lot of reasons why your business is potentially perfect for someone. If they don’t have the opportunity to discover you, you both lose. And more than that, they deserve to tell their friends about the value they they’ve gained so their friends can benefit as well. Everyone is looking for something, so be present and findable.
5) You deserve a break.
For all the excuses about being to busy, whether true, or not, there is always a way to make time. And when you make that time, and business picks up, you don’t have to work as hard to keep people coming through the doors. It’s twice as hard to bring in customers when no one can find you, so you can spend that time now or spend twice as much time later. And the best part is, there are so many easy ways to get a website built these days. It can be done with very little time or expense. It doesn’t have to be perfect right away. It just has to be done. And then you can keep improving as you give yourself time each month to reevaluate what your business needs. If you don’t have the time spend the money to have someone else do it. If you don’t have the money, take the time to do it yourself. If you have neither, then go out and make some time so you can make the money. Or borrow the money so you can keep your time! I think you see what I’m saying.
As a famous
philosopher once said, Just Do It.
Your future self will thank you.
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