Small businesses especially often think that a website is something not worth spending any money on, after all, why “do a website” when all they want to do is advertises to local customers?

We get this and what we often see is a website built by the business owner or, a basic listing on Google, Yell, Facebook and a bunch of other free platforms. Most often, the business owner doesn’t see the need for a “proper” website.

But these days people, probably yourself included, turn to online searches to find companies and services that they need for most things. Even if they are looking at buying goods or services they will often search for you online and see what you do, where you are and if you can provide what they need.

Your web presence is what they will find.

If they find a hastily rattled up Facebook page it is unlikely they will be impressed. Or worse depending on the page content, no listing at all.

Negative reviews on social media can be hugely damaging to a business so it can be a very dangerous path to take. Just one or two disgruntled customers can make your life a misery and, do untold damage to your business.

Another of the problems with using the likes of Facebook is that people can see when there is no activity on the page for a time, it is completely transparent. If you are not active on there then are you still trading, do people actually use your company? How do your potential customers know?

If none of the above applies to you or, you’ve not had any of these problems yet then great but a website allows you to control the presentation of your business and the narrative, you can tell people what you do, why they should choose you over others, where you are, how to contact you and provide lots more information about your business.

For local service businesses we see this as being absolutely vital and results have shown us that clients with a good clean website that promotes their services does generate extra business, in every case we’ve been involved in, a lot more.

People want to see what you do, they want information about your business and to know that they can trust you to provide what they need. You need to provide this vital information.

Even if you choose not to use our services our advice to all businesses both small and larger is to get yourself a website and get online. Make it look clean, smart and professional as that is what you want to present to your clients and customers.

In the modern world where 92% or more of all UK homes are online not having a website is like not publishing your phone number.

Can you afford to ignore the internet?

why is a website so important?

The graphic below shows the number or internet connections by country scaled to show the relative size based on the number of connections. As you can clearly see, the UK has on of if not the greatest number of connections in the world.

The UK is a leader in this regard making the need for a website, for UK companies, essential in our opinion.