Do You Really Need A Website?
 by: Mark Gerrard


Savvy business owners have jumped on the Internet bandwagon. Take a look at the amount of websites on the World Wide Web and you’ll see that the number is in the 100’s of millions. However, what does this mean for you? After all, you’ve been established and you sell solidly from your store-front; or on the other hand, you’re content to sell at the marketplace or other seller’s venues.

That’s perfectly fine. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing wrong if you’re content with your current sales volume. However, an increasing number of customers want to have the convenience of shopping from the Internet. Through a few clicks of the mouse and a few keyboard strokes, they can have the product shipped to their house and they didn’t have to speak to a salesperson!

Can you afford to miss out on this potential revenue stream?

Here are 3 reasons why you, as a business owner need a website:

1) Your Customer’s Expect You to Have a Website

Maybe you’ve had a few customers ask if you have a website. When you reply, “No” or “Not yet”, do you get a sinking feeling that you just lost buyer’s who would gladly buy from you multiple times without the trip to your store?

2) No Pressure Selling

Customer’s really, really hate pressure selling techniques. In fact, when sales people approach most customers, the typical, “I’m just looking or I’m just browsing” is the typical answer. So why not let your customer browse? Get a website and they can browse all they want without having a sales person breathing down their neck. The perception is that your customer feels relatively at ease because there’s no one trying to alter their decision. The reality is that every step of the way, you’re reminding the customer to buy from you and making it easy every step of the way to get what they want, all through your website.

3) Accounts for 3 Times the Amount of Sales vs. Phone Sales

There are numerous marketing studies done that all point towards the same conclusion: a website has 3 times the amount of sales than phone sales/walk-ins. So, 25% of sales result from phone/walk-ins and 75% result from on-line sales. These groups tend to be mutually exclusive as well (and phone sales/walk-ins tend to be more mature buyers age 50+) as opposed to Internet buyers, (age 16-49).

In conclusion, do you really need a website? Yes, you do.


About The Author
Mark Gerrard is the Development Manager of the Freestart Website Builder Platform. See our website builder in action at http://www.freestart.com