So, you have a Facebook page and an Instagram account alongside a few Pinterest boards. You are surfing all corners of the world with these platforms and feel that you are creaming it. Your statistical numbers are increasing – 100 followers last month and now you have 500 this month! All is good!! Your new business is rockin’ n’ rollin’!! Woot!! Woot!!
You have energy, excitement and are constantly on your device blogging, chatting and pasting images or videos. Viewers reading, liking and sharing your content. Life is so easy with social media; so cushy!! It must be all good, right?! But is it?
Sure! It’s all heading in the right direction at least. You have many followers, likes and shares. Your Facebook has more shares than your new business could ever wish for, your pin boards are overflowing with thousands of viewers and your Instagram is networking at a rapid speed. But, just stop and think. What if ….. Facebook has a major server error and completely lose your page – forever! What if Instagram ceases to exist tomorrow. You thinking about this now? How do you feel …. nervous? Well, you ought to be!
ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET
You have invested so much time and energy into your social media platforms to build your new business. You have earned the stripes within your community advertising your great products or services. Your potential client base is growing. But, if these platforms shutdown overnight – what will you have then?
The reality folks is that you will have nothing! All your data, contacts, connections, content – will be gone. Your new business could come to a halt. Your income could suffer. Your dreams, shattered!
THE IMPORTANCE OF A WEBSITE
Having a website in today’s marketplace, no matter what type of business you have, is paramount. It has become the hub for many businesses. Crazy I know but, as we have become so reliant on technology – our little scrolling devices – the website plays a bigger role in our success than we like to think it does!
Small businesses tend to start with Facebook – ideal, quick and easy. Set up a FB page, fill in the gaps and you’re away! Easy to blog; easy to post; easy to communicate with those who are interested. Then, you expand to other social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and so on. You get excited as your ‘followers’ and ‘engagement’ scores grow. How exciting it is to see on your device that you’ve grown to many more in just a month! “Wow!! My business is doing great! Woot!! Woot!!”
BUT! ….. and a big BUT! ….. What you don’t have is control over your data. You haven’t collected your data to a location that belongs to YOU. Not having this in place leaves you vulnerable.
Having a website is not just to sell your wares or services but it is also where you can capture valuable information from your viewers and turning them into subscribers so that you can enlighten them with points of interest that you know they want to receive. It’s where you capture their attention, build a trust and develop a relationship. This is when your social media statistics become more than just numbers. They become your customers as well as having such data safe on a platform that you have full control over.
For your new business to grow, you need to develop a subscription listing. This listing will then enable you to communicate regularly with those who have signed up to know more about your services and products; they want to be kept up to date with your new creations; your new products; your blogs! They want to hear from you. This is gold dust for the success of your new business!
HOW TO BUILD A WEBSITE
The idea of creating a website, is daunting. Small new businesses in the creative world often shy away from such a task because they either consider themselves not ‘techie’ or, that they just don’t know what to write for content or, more the case is that they just don’t have the time to implement!
For those of you who feel you can manage such a task for yourself but not the greatest with the ‘techie’ stuff then, you can opt to build your website with a ready-built website platform (such as Wix, GoDaddy, Shopify). These sites do all the technical back-end programming for you. They offer a variety of templates for you to choose a style, easy guidelines to follow for you to enter your content, images, videos, shopping cart, etc., and at the end of the process, your website is done, finished, up and running. Easy, clean and all for a very reasonable price range.
However, for those of you who are either far too busy to deal with this task or perhaps are clueless and consider the word “website” a dirty word, can opt to appoint someone to deal with this for you. Granted, it’s a more expensive route but, you can’t have the best of both worlds! You either do it yourself and capitalize on expenses or, you have someone do it for you, carry on full speed with what you are good at (and more to the point, would rather be doing!) and have a great investment at the end.
There is the misconception that if you have a website built for you, that it’ll just arrive all done and ready. Whilst your VA (or whoever) has the knowledge, skills and know-how to create the perfect website for your new business, you would however be required to provide content, images or film videos for them to incorporate into your website. Afterall, this is about YOUR new business and it needs to represent YOU! And it doesn’t end there either! Once the website is live, you would have to keep it up to date with current blogging, information, products, etc. Of course, such tasks can be managed by someone on your behalf but you would have to provide the content most of the time, especially with regular blogging content.
Other issues that you have to consider is the cost implications of setting up a website. If you go with a ready-built website platform, you may find all that you need for your new business is all wrapped up in their package deals (domain, hosting provider, a landing page, ecommerce requirements (shopping cart, shop), email management system, blogging page) for a fixed monthly fee. That’s great if that’ll work for you. Some ready-built website platforms include everything and others include some items whilst others include items but are limiting. Whoever you go with, remember to check that you have full control of your captured data too.
If you opt to build your own website, then your world is your oyster! There are no limits, no boundaries and it can be tailored exactly to your needs as well as expand as you grow.
I have built great websites for my clients on a shoe-string! Of course, websites can become expensive if you don’t know what you are looking for. That’s why its a good idea to hire someone to help you. But for starting up your new business, I can suggest the following as your immediate needs:
- Purchase a domain from a domain site; independent from a website platform. Costs are minimal and you are not tide to any fee structures with a platform provider.
- WordPress is the largest leading website platform and it’s for free. Excellent program to build either a basic or a complex website.
- WordPress has many free plugins and widgets to add to your website design enabling you to easily bolt on different aspects to your site, e.g. fonts, colors, SEO, affiliated links, forms and many many more.
- Email Management System – this will be required for you to build your subscription listing. It’s a back end program that generates automatically your regular emails to your subscribers with news that they have requested to receive as and when it becomes available.
- SEO & Analytics – a back end program that is configured to inform search engines of your existence; listing you in good standing with Google making it easier for folk to find you on the internet. The analytics are for you to assess your ratings within your marketplace.
There is more but, this is all that you really need to start your new business on a good footing. The best part is that majority of what is needed to start up, is for FREE. Those of you with tight budgets, it’s all reachable for you to have a website too!
The only costs involved at this stage are the purchasing of your domain name and a hosting provider – I would estimate these to be about $6 per month for both (one domain and a hosting provider (Bluehost.com)). The EMS can be expensive as they are quite powerful systems and depending which one you opt for but to start off, go with Mailchimp it’s for free!
I can’t stress how so much is for FREE. FREE. FREE!!!
SUMMARY
Now that you have a website, all your other social media platforms will now funnel to your website allowing you to capture your data (on your own turf!) for further usage. Should they choose, viewers from your Instagram, Facebook and alike become subscribers to your website. You will earn their loyalty and trust by regularly feeding them with actual information they WANT to receive; you will gain sales and foremost, the power of “click” will increase tenfold!
One thought on “THE IMPORTANCE OF A WEBSITE”
Thank-you, most interesting and very helpful read!
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