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I Use Social Media, Do I Still Need A Business Website?
Yes, absolutely, certainly, without a doubt having a website for your small business is an absolute essential.
Your website is your online identity for your business. If you need to grow your business (or even we will say sustain your business in coming years), you need a business website. You need a website to be in the eyes of your potential clients. More people are on web through their mobiles, so you need to be there, where they are. You don't need a just website, but it should be mobile friendly.
You need a business website to generate leads, to share information about your product and services with potential clients. Your website provides service and information to your potential clients whenever they are online.
Social media is a great way to spread the word and attract the attention of a larger audience. With so many social media platforms, each one of them different from other, it's difficult to create unique presence and experience for your customer about your product and service. Further, you have no control over them. Facebook will do what is best for their business model, and Google+ will do differently. For example in recent past Facebook removed unpaid promotional posts that impacted many small businesses.
When you have your website, you can control every aspect of it. You can control your websites look and feel suitable for your brand and logo. You total control over contents of the website. A website is a great way to build your small business identity, your business brand.
You want to drive the traffic back to your website and control your user’s experience. Make sufficient impact on them to lead them to buy your product and services. Your website is more than just the place to sell your services or products. You website is great tool educate your potential clients about you and your business, provide information why your products and services are right for them.
Your potential clients are using websites as a research tool to learn about you and can you offer them what they need. They study your website before they come to your shop or buy your product online. If you don’t have a website then simply move to your competitors who have a website.
Social media sites are alternative to search engines like Google and Bing to find interesting content. Social media is a great place to advertise and spread awareness about your business. Social media platforms are like leased social communities where you are engaging with your clients, but you need to bring them to your own user community, and it's your website.
So in conclusion we will say use social media to amplify the impact of your website contents and drive your online audience back to the platform you control – your website. You need a website to show you are a credible and real business.
Small Business Website Solution.
Here is our experience with small business owners and solution to build a decent website that you can manage easily.
We every day meet many small business owners who say they want to spend money on a business website, but they don’t know how to. And further they feel social sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are easy to use, free and update many times without spending money. But, Social media can not be a replacement for the website.
We know it is a real problem especially for small business owners who are less tech savvy. But that's where ShimBi Labs innovated and came up with a perfect solution for small business websites. Of course, you don’t have to spend a fortune on a website. ShimBi Labs CMS Budo a free tool to build and manage your website can help.
CMS Budo is built based on single principal easy to use just like Facebook!