Why Your Business Needs a Website

My wife and I recently decided that we wanted to add an addition to our backyard patio so that we can throw extravagant barbecue parties. Although our existing patio is a concrete slab, we wanted to get a variety of quotes from contractors using concrete, brick pavers and wood decking. Since most contractors only specialize in one area, I had to spend time contacting about 10 different companies.

At this point, you may be asking yourself: What does that have anything to do with web design?

The Internet is Smart!

Take a step back from my story for a moment and think about your business. How do your customers find you?

As someone who spends most of their day in front of a computer, I almost always do an internet search to find local businesses. Every time I want to go out to eat with my wife, we look online to find nearby restaurants.

The cool thing is that the search engines are actually pretty smart – they list businesses related to my search even if they don’t have a website. The results are even plotted on a map so I can see how close they are to my house. Address, phone number, etc – it’s all there.

Back to my Story…

So like I was saying, I needed to find a variety of contractors to give us quotes for our patio extension. I opened my laptop and quickly searched for concrete/landscaping/decking contractors in my area…

…and Google Maps neatly listed nearby businesses. Some had websites. Others did not.

After looking through the search results for a few minutes, I caught myself contacting only the companies that had websites. I shouldn’t have been surprised by that (after all, I build websites for a living) but it illustrates a very important lesson: If you don’t have a website, how much business are you losing?

Appearances Matter

As the contractors came and went, I started to notice something else: I liked the guys whose appearance was professional more than the other contractors – regardless of price. I understand contractors wear boots and blue jeans, but some of these guys could care less about their appearance. I’m not kidding when I say that I saw one guy’s ass crack because his jeans were hanging too low.

Ewwwww!

The point here is exactly the same with your website: Your visitors will form an immediate opinion of you when they see your website. The Young Entrepreneur agrees with me!