In today’s digital world, having a professional website designed specifically for your business is crucial to your success. With more and more consumers going online to research products and services before making purchasing decisions, your website can make or break new business opportunities. Investing in a custom-designed Website erstellen lassen brings numerous benefits that can elevate your company’s credibility, improve customer experience, generate leads, and boost sales.
Benefits of Having a Custom Website
When weighing if your business should invest in a professionally designed website or continue forward with only social media pages, here are key advantages to having your own website that make it well worth the investment:
Increases Credibility and Professionalism
A custom website immediately increases perceptions of your legitimacy and brand professionalism. It shows customers and prospects you are serious about your offerings and have made effort to establish an online presence that highlights your capabilities. Visitors will have much more confidence in you compared to only having social media pages they realize you can shut down anytime. Investing in a real website demonstrates you are in business for the long haul.
Additionally, with features like staff/owner bios, certifications, awards, a blog, and press features, a business website lends credibility by highlighting your expertise. Social media simply does not allow room for telling your full story.
Improves Customer Experience
Your website allows customers to learn about your business on their own time before ever contacting you. The user experience and ease of finding information is completely in your control with a website, unlike social platforms.
Some key website elements that improve customer experience include:
- Menus/navigation: Making it easy for visitors to browse topics and find what they need
- Product/service pages: Fully showcasing your offerings, with features, imagery, pricing, and calls-to-action
- Frequently asked questions: Anticipating and answering customer questions builds trust
- Contact forms: Allowing prospects to conveniently reach out on their own schedule
- Appointment scheduling: Enabling visitors to book timeslots eliminates phone tag
Crafting custom web pages designed specifically around your customers takes their experience to the next level compared to scrambling to provide answers on social media.
Allows You to Capture Leads
Every visitor to your website is a prospective customer you otherwise would have no way to follow up with or retarget if all you have is social media. Email newsletter sign up forms and lead capture contact forms on a website allow you to collect prospect contact info and permission to market to them.
Now you can nurture these visitors by sending email newsletters, promotions, and offers to turn them into buyers. Retargeting ads can also help turn website visitors into paying customers by following them around the web reminding them to come back and purchase.
None of this lead generation and nurturing is possible with just social platforms. Websites open up marketing automation opportunities that can greatly expand your reach and directly attribute sales back to your online presence.
Boosts Sales
The ultimate goal for investing in a business website – increased sales! With the ability to highlight your products and services in detail, include calls-to-action across all site pages, provide an easy online purchasing process, and implement marketing automation a website can directly boost your revenue.
Here are some website elements that can lead visitors right into your sales funnel:
- Ecommerce capabilities: Allow customers to purchase directly online
- Coupons/offers: Incentivize visitors to buy from special promos
- Buy now buttons: Streamline purchasing right from any page
- Social proof: Build trust and credibility by showcasing customer reviews and testimonials
- Retargeting to website visitors: Remind those who didn’t convert to come back and complete checkout
Your website works 24/7/365 to promote your offerings and attract paying customers at scale. The greater your online visibility and web traffic, the more sales opportunities you can generate.
Features to Include in Your Website
Now that the major benefits are clear, what exactly should you ensure your new website includes? Prioritize these elements:
Responsive Design
Having a responsive design that adapts to any screen size with optimal viewing and interaction is arguably the most vital feature your website must include. With the majority of web traffic now happening on mobile devices, a website that is not optimized for smaller screens will mean losing over half your potential visitors and customers. Pages need to fluidly adapt as users resize windows or move across devices.
Mobile optimization not only provides an excellent user experience but also boosts your search engine rankings. Google prioritizes sites that meet the needs of mobile users in listings.
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization essentially helps surface your website pages to the top in search engines when prospects are searching relevant keywords related to your offerings. Your developer should make your website completely optimized for SEO best practices, including:
- Keyword research to build pages around terms prospects search
- Metadata improvements such as page titles and site descriptions
Technical elements like site speed, security protocols, and internal linking structure also need to follow SEO guidelines that help pages rank high. The higher visibility your pages can gain for valuable keywords, the greater web traffic you earn and website-driven leads/sales you generate.
Lead Capture Forms
As highlighted earlier, you absolutely want to include lead capture form fields across your website, typically newsletter sign ups, contact forms, assessment takers, or demo requests. This allows you to gather prospect contact info and permission to nurture them into customers.
Make forms short and simple encouraging website visitors to complete them without overthinking it. Offer something compelling in return, such as exclusive content, discount, or special resource. Follow up swiftly with meaningful information before incorporating leads into your email marketing and automation funnels.
Forms are what transition an interested website visitor into someone actively raising their hand for your marketing. Placement on high-value pages with relevant calls-to-action are key for good conversion.
Ecommerce Capabilities
Any business selling products or services should directly enable purchasing through their website checkout flows. The easier the checkout experience, the more revenue you gain.
Must-have ecommerce elements include:
- Shopping cart: Lets customers select multiple items to purchase at once
- Integrated payments: Securely accept debit/credit cards and payment platforms
- Automated tax: Correctly calculate orders including local sales tax
- Order management: Track purchases and fulfillment from your business backend
- Coupons: Discount codes applied at checkout to incentivize buyers
Ecommerce functionality means customers can self-serve online purchases 24/7/365 rather than solely business hours or manual processing. Expanding your sales channels dramatically scales revenue generation.
Tips for Choosing a Website Developer
Selecting the right partner to create your custom website is clearly critical before investing your budget. Here are proven criteria to evaluate candidates:
Check Their Portfolio
Any developer worth working with should have an extensive portfolio highlighting stunning examples of past client websites across diverse industries. Checking multiple case studies will showcase their range of capabilities designing for unique business needs. Make sure they have produced professional sites that would meet your expectations.
Understand Their Process
From scoping through launch and ongoing optimization, you need to understand exactly what the website creation and maintenance processes entail. What are the phases? How long does each take? What is expected of you? How will they gather your input? Clarifying roles and timeline set clear guidelines upfront.
Ideally, you want to select an agile web developer who offers transparent timelines and continuous feedback yet also brings creative recommendations to the table from their years of expertise. Understanding workflow demonstrates planning for success.
Get References
Asking for and contacting client references is the best way to determine what the engagement, delivery, and post-launch support is truly like. Speaking directly with other business owners who have gone through the website design process with your prospective developer gives invaluable insight into their working dynamic.
Backchannel references establish trust and credibility that the company can deliver on promises to exceed your expectations. If a developer hesitates to provide references, that is a major red flag. Hearing positive remarks directly from clients gives you the confidence to move forward.
Compare Pricing
While website design and development pricing depends on project size, timeline, number of pages, and complexity, you still want to gather general quotes from a few companies you are considering to get price comparisons. Just remember you get what you pay for — bargain bottom pricing likely signals lesser quality or inexperienced work.
The best way to accurately compare bids is having all candidates review yourRequirements For Bid (RFB) outlining exactly what elements, integrations, content, and outcomes you expect so they provide apples-to-apples quotes based on the same specifications.
By focusing on these criteria when shortlisting website design companies, you can feel fully confident investing in one poised to create exactly the custom site you need to elevate your brand, captivate customers, and directly drive revenue 24/7/365.
Conclusion
As today’s buyers more than ever research online before engaging, establishing your professional brand visibility with a custom-designed website offers invaluable visibility, credibility, and functionality that social media alone simply cannot provide at scale. Investing in website creation immediately levels up your digital presence and marketing capabilities in numerous ways:
- Increases perceived legitimacy exponentially
- Allows customers to self-educate on their schedule
- Enables lead generation and marketing automation
- Expands sales opportunities massively
The right developer partner will guide your brand through designing a high-converting website ready to capture more leads and sales. Just remember to evaluate portfolios, client references, project process, and pricing quotes to select the best fit.
Prioritizing website creation sets your business up for immense growth and success in 2023 and beyond. Do not wait any longer to invest in this vital component driving modern revenue.
FAQs
Should I build a website if I already have social media for my business?
Yes, you should absolutely invest in a professionally designed website even if you have social media pages for your business. While platforms like Facebook and Instagram have great visibility, websites establish legitimacy, allow you to customize messaging, provide immense marketing potential, and directly enable ecommerce that social media simply cannot offer. Websites and social work hand-in-hand to promote your brand across both owned and discovered online channels.
How much should a small business website cost?
Professional custom website costs for small businesses typically range from $3,000 – $15,000+ depending mostly on complexity, number of pages, lead gen forms, ecommerce capabilities, custom designs, and types of integrations needed. With the immense growth opportunities a new website fuels through continuously driving traffic, leads, and sales it is well worth the investment into this vital online presence pillar.
What is the turnaround time to create a business website?
The typical timeline for professional design and development agencies to create a full custom website is 4 – 12 weeks from start to finish. The process involves discovery, planning, initial design proofs/revisions, content creation, development, testing, migrations, and launch. Expect at least a month but more complex sites with extensive pages or customizations may take 3+ months, which is why you want to choose an agency with project management proficiency meeting deadlines.
Should my business website offer live chat?
Yes, implementing live chat capabilities allows you to immediately respond to website visitors in real-time, helping answer questions faster and qualify leads through personal engagement. Studies show including live chat boosts conversions by 20% or more thanks to facilitating quick communication. As customer expectations involve quick responses, even just during business hours live chat shows users you can provide an instant high-level experience that centers their needs.
What are the ongoing costs for my business website after launch?
Typical ongoing website costs involve monthly or annual investments into hosting, required security measures like SSL certificates, domain renewals, and optionally support/maintenance plans. These help ensure your site remains constantly online, protected, and updated. Budget $100 – $500+ per month depending on services included. Ongoing costs guarantee your website investment continues delivering value, security, and performance for your business year after year.
