Business Impact Of Building A New Website

The success of a business, regardless of its industry, can be significantly influenced by its online presence. Nowadays, it is important for businesses to acknowledge that the majority of their customers will likely visit their website before making a purchase. Some organizations may hesitate to establish an online presence due to a perceived lack of technical expertise or concerns about the cost. However, there are solutions available that can cater to various needs. To generate more revenue, having a robust online presence, especially a website, can make a significant difference. While the quality of a website can affect the outcome, the main point of this article is to emphasize the importance of having a website in the first place. Here are the top reasons why having a website is crucial for your business.

Improved User Experience

In the industry, there are conflicting opinions regarding the most effective layout for a website focused on conversion. One-page websites, for instance, have gained popularity as they are designed to be mobile-friendly with an infinite-scrolling experience. However, single-page sites have limited infrastructure for data collection, making it difficult to track user flow across multiple URLs. This limits the information you can gather on which pages and content pieces are the most popular or least valuable. An optimized website that is designed to convert will lead to a better outcome. At the very least, it is crucial to ensure that your website follows UX/UI best practices. According to the U.S. General Services Administration Technology Transformation Service, your website should be designed to be engaging, intuitive, fast, useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible. Creating a website that serves as a platform to conduct your business and as a vector for customer research will significantly enhance your operations.

Organizations worldwide are striving to enhance accessibility, safety, and privacy on the Internet due to the increasing interactions between corporations and consumers. While this is advantageous for consumers, it also means that companies must overcome more obstacles to ensure their websites adhere to various new and established regulations. Although it may seem like a lot of effort, ensuring compliance is crucial to avoid lawsuits, reputational harm, penalties, and customer exclusion. The rules intended to improve accessibility for the disabled are especially easy to neglect if your design focuses more on appearance than accessibility. According to the New York Law Journal, there were 814 website accessibility lawsuits filed in U.S. federal courts in 2017, and by 2019, that number had risen to 2,256. It may be challenging to update all of your existing content to meet these standards, depending on the age and extent of your website. The most effective approach is to hire an expert to assist with a redesign and ensure that your updated site meets compliance requirements during the development process.

Enhanced Branding & Credibility

One of the most crucial tasks is to present your brand to potential customers. By providing a clear understanding of your identity, values, and purpose, you increase the likelihood of your customers making a purchase from you. Furthermore, this is also an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitors. However, without a website, it can be challenging to achieve this objective as people may struggle to find credible information about your business.

Having a website for your business is essential to enhance your organization's credibility, as it sets you apart from other service providers who offer similar services. A visually appealing website that provides quality information to your consumers can help you make a remarkable first impression and distinguish your brand from the competition. Without a website, potential customers may doubt the legitimacy of your business. Therefore, having a website is a chance to demonstrate your authenticity and give people confidence that your business is legitimate.

According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review in 2018, the design of your website can play a significant role in gaining the trust of your customers, making it a crucial element for success in a direct-to-consumer marketplace. To achieve this, you need to ensure that your website has a clear user journey with appropriate calls-to-action, optimized search engine pages, a credible and helpful website, and effective conversion funnel measurement. Failure to do so can cause you to miss out on potential customers. The pandemic has seen a surge in website transactions and conversions, with a worldwide increase of 39.7% and 40.3%, respectively. A website redesign can help you take advantage of this trend and realign your site to match your brand goals, positioning, and identity, while providing better pathways for customer engagement and employing new communication strategies for improved message retention and clarity.

Increased Reach & Visibility

One of the most compelling reasons to have a website for your business is that it can increase your chances of generating leads. When potential customers find your business online, they become interested in your products or services, and with the information available on your website, they can easily contact you, providing you with a valuable opportunity to increase your sales. Although creating and maintaining a website can be costly, it has the potential to offer a positive return on investment (ROI) when utilized effectively.

Having an SEO-optimized website and an online presence provides you with the opportunity to appear in Google search results when people are searching for a product or service, potentially expanding your customer base significantly. This means that when individuals search for a particular product or service, there is a possibility that your website will be displayed in the search results.

Businesses often receive calls from prospects or existing customers inquiring about basic information, such as the location and hours of operation. However, if a call is missed, it can leave the customer dissatisfied, and answering calls can divert your staff's attention from critical business functions. By creating a website, you can diminish the number of these calls and increase internal productivity, enabling your staff to concentrate on the essential aspects of the business. Moreover, a website can provide customers with helpful information without the need for them to call, resulting in an enhanced user experience overall.

If you intend to use digital marketing as a tool to boost leads and expand your business, you will probably want to direct traffic to your website or landing page. To accomplish this, it is crucial to utilize past traffic that has already visited your website to focus on the most suitable customers and get the most return on your ad expenditure. Since this is not something that can be implemented retrospectively, it is wise to create your website early, even if you are not presently planning to run ads.

Improved Analytics & Insights

Collecting analytics and metrics is essential to understanding your visitors' needs, improving their journey, and ultimately boosting your bottom line. According to Adobe's 2021 Digital Trends Report, companies with strong digital analytics functions were more likely to have customers who are positive about their digital experience. To make an informed decision that ensures safety, it's important to understand your website visitors first. By knowing their age, gender, geographic location, and interests, among other things, you can take steps to enhance their user experience. Similarly, understanding the technology they use, such as their device, operating system, and browser, can help you test your site's compatibility with those technologies and make necessary improvements.

One way to accomplish this is by using popular website analytics tools. With such tools, you can gather information about your site visitors and use it to improve their experience. For instance, you can use device breakdown data to determine if your site should be optimized for mobile devices. You can also use location and language data to provide translations if needed, and age and interest categories to tailor your site's content to your audience. By making these improvements, you can encourage your site visitors to stay longer, and ultimately increase the chances of turning them into customers.

Website analytics tools such as Google Analytics provide insight into which content receives the most visits, the average time spent on individual pages, and the bounce rate, enabling you to evaluate and improve user engagement. By examining this data, you can strategically add more call-to-action buttons, purchase links, and other elements to the most popular pages on your site, thereby increasing conversions. Additionally, you can keep your top landing pages fresh and up-to-date by updating their content or giving them a complete makeover. Furthermore, analytics tools can help you understand which types of content are most effective and which are not, allowing you to concentrate on producing the type of content that attracts the most visits and improves your site's engagement, ultimately resulting in more customers.

Website analytics have various ways of helping with your site's SEO. By understanding the demographics and interests of your visitors, you can tailor your content and increase your visibility on search engines. Additionally, tracking your referrals can provide insights on backlinks. By connecting your Google Analytics account with Google Search Console, you can track the search queries that send you the most traffic, including total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position. Site search tracking can also be set up to monitor what visitors search for on your site. Using this feature in Google Analytics, you can compare your existing content to what users are looking for, assess whether their expectations are being met, and get ideas for new topics to include in your website.

With the help of website analytics, you can monitor the sources of traffic to your business website, identify the top referral sources, and develop strategies to increase the number of referrals from them. For instance, if your website is primarily receiving traffic from search engines, this indicates that your SEO efforts are working effectively. By putting in some extra effort, you can further enhance the online visibility of your website, which can lead to a surge in traffic.

Website analytics not only provide insights into your website referrals but also your outbound links or the websites you are referring to. With Google Analytics, you can identify the top links clicked on your website that lead to other websites, analyze the data, and reach out to those websites with partnership offers. Collaborating with related businesses through mutual recommendations and cross-promotions can lead to many business growth opportunities. However, finding the right business partner and reaching out for a partnership can be challenging without knowing what works for a partnership. By using the Google Analytics outbound links report, you can show other business owners what works between the two businesses and easily persuade them to collaborate.

Whether you run a business that sells physical products, software, or online services, it's crucial to be familiar with your sales report. Luckily, website analytics tools such as Google Analytics provide you with all the key eCommerce metrics, such as total revenue, conversion rates, top products, top referral sources, and more, in a single report. With this information, you can identify who is referring the most sales and create strategies to increase your sales even further. If you're using WordPress, setting up eCommerce tracking is easy with eCommerce add-ons. You can enable this option with just a few clicks, allowing you to access your most important eCommerce data.

Final Thoughts

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns have accelerated the shift to digital, making online business more important than ever before. According to a McKinsey & Company study conducted in 2020, 80% of customer interactions are now digital, which is three times more than before the pandemic. To keep up with the rapid pace of change and stay ahead of competitors, businesses must embrace the new digital reality and update their websites to meet the latest technological demands. Creating a website is now essential for any business, and it's never too late to start. Even if you already have a website, you can always improve it to enhance the user experience and stay ahead of the competition. Vofox can help you with your website redesign. Our team of experts in web development and design can create aesthetic and functional websites that align with your organizational goals. Contact us today to get started.