13 Reasons Why Every Business Needs A Professional, Modern Website

A website is the digital representation of your business. It’s the first impression your company gives to the world. Since the dawn of the internet, more and more people have turned to the World Wide Web as an important source of information about everything and anything. Not to mention, the internet is a powerful way to do business. It has become an expectation that there is a website for just about everything. And yet, with so many businesses on the internet, it’s tough to be noticed.

Having a website that does not render well on mobile, is slow, not secure, with broken links or functionality, or has outdated technology and content, definitely does not help your business stand out from the crowd, and it will get penalised by search engines so that your audience will have a hard time to find it in the first place.

On the other hand, there are countless ways in which a modern, professional website can help your business thrive in this digital era. Here are 13 (plus 1 extra) important reasons why every business, including yours, needs a professional, modern website.

1. Your website is your property (or should be…)

This is a big one. Nowadays, many people wonder if it is really worth the time, cost and effort to own and maintain a website dedicated to your business, when there are so many platforms available where you can piggy-back off someone else’s vision and mision to represent your digital presence. To name a few: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, and for more local options, Takealot, Bid or Buy, Gumtree, etc. Get the drift? Some businesses do choose to forego a website that they own, in lieu of riding the success of some Big Tech platform to establish their digital presence.

Some even go so far as to say: “Websites are dead! There’s no point to having your own website any more!”

This is purely my opinion, but I believe foregoing a website that you own is a huge mistake. Here’s why.

1.1. Who owns and controls your data?

When you build your brand, and your brand story, on someone else’s platform, they are in control of your data. The majority of social media platforms rely on their users to create content, and yet, the platform owns the content and often the IP – not the users. Think about this really hard for a moment. The social media platform you think is your ally, owns your data. What if your ally turns out not to be an ally, what if they sell out, what happens if government makes a law to ban/limit them in your country, or what if the ally falls? What happens to your data? What happens to your presence and your brand? Can you win the battle if you only rely on a perceived ally’s strength and don’t have any strength of your own? Maybe, but it’s a huge risk.

When you control the platform that anchors your digital presence, you own your data. You have the master rights over your own data. You are also in a position to make regular and complete backups, with a system in place to restore the backups, should your hosting provider for some or the other reason fail.

1.2. Who makes the rules? Who controls your brand’s story?

When you build your brand, and your brand story, entirely on someone else’s platform, they make and break the rules.

Your brand is pretty much at the mercy of their whims.

When YOU own the platform, YOU make the rules. YOU are in control of your brand’s digital representation.

1.3. Can your chosen platform un-choose you?

De-platforming. Ever heard of this term? All Big Tech platforms have “terms of service” agreements that give them wiggle room to de-platform (ban, remove or otherwise limit platform use by) users. To put this plainly: they can even decide, for a variety of reasons, that they don’t want your brand on their platform, and they can kick you off, with little or no notice and little or no recourse to change their decisions. Sure there are rules to being deplatformed. But often the rules are vague, and it is very hard to argue to reverse such a ban.

The platform itself is also at risk of getting kicked off the air. In some political climates, this is even the norm – and political climates can be quite fragile.

De-platforming has happened to others, and it can happen to you, in the blink of an eye. What’s your backup plan?

Depending on you, your brand, your government, the platforms’ jurisdiction and government, the prevailing political and socio-economic climate, your users’ attitudes and belief systems, your location and a great many factors outside your control, the risk of de-platforming may be large or small. Even if you believe the risk of being de-platformed on these Big Tech social media sites has a small chance of ever realising, the impact of it realising is so vast that I believe it is not a risk worth taking to put all your business eggs into someone else’s basket.

1.4. Diversification is key

Having at least your own basket for your eggs, is always the safer way. It doesn’t mean you should not be relying on social media and other tech platforms – on the contrary, you should be utilising their power to your benefit, proverbially putting your eggs into different baskets.

I just don’t believe it is wise to put your entire online destiny in their hands. I believe it is foolish to not have something to fall back on, something that YOU are in control of. If you don’t have your own basket for (some of) your eggs, then other people’s baskets are a pretty risky place to nest them… Eggs for ransom, anyone?

1.5. Choose your website platform carefully

The above-mentioned reasons are also why I will never host my own business website on a third party platform that controls my data and my brand story, like Shopify, or Wix or a great many other DIY website creation platforms that have sprung up of late. I have nothing against DIY, it can be very beneficial. I just don’t want to hand over my data and control of my brand’s story to a company that can deplatform my website. A major benefit of having your own website is that you SHOULD be owning your data and your narrative – even if you choose to DIY your website, don’t negate this benefit by choosing a creation platform where you don’t own your website.

(And no, renting space for your website, i.e. hosting, is not the same as handing over ownership and control.)

2. A website is a fantastic way of transferring information about your business, your products and services

When you have a website, it is easy for potential and existing customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders to get information about your business. This can pertain to your business brand and brand values, the location, contact details and available hours, the services and products you offer, delivery and payment options, specials and promotion deals, making queries and appointment bookings, company news, events details, company performance and achievements, affiliate or partner portals, information that ambassadors can share on other sites, and the list just goes on and on. The use cases and benefits are endless, so let’s break this down into a few key points. Sure you can find other ways to convey this information, but a website is possibly the most cost-effective, versatile and efficient way with the broadest reach.

2.1. Information can cater to different audiences and stakeholders

2.1.1. Potential and existing customers / clients

This is most likely the most important audience you’ll want to cater to. Potential customers want to get to know your business before they buy from you, and your website can convey the information they need to make that leap of faith to invest their money in what you offer. Existing customers are actively being wooed by your competitors, and your website can help retain their loyalty by convincing them your brand is superior. It can also help improve customer service by being customer-centric (see point 8 – A good website benefits customer service).

Especially if your customers/clients will in some or the other way use your product or services to sell to their customers (directly or indirectly), or underpins a core infrastructure they need for their business or their homes, they will want to know a lot of information about your offering, and a website can automatically give it to them, costing your once-off effort for repeated returns.

2.1.2. Potential ambassadors / collaborators

This is harnessing the power of digital word of mouth. However, it can become time-consuming and taxing to need to physically speak to the people who spread the word and transfer every little tid bit of info in drips and drags (you know… like EXACTLY what types of service you do and don’t offer, what are your opening hours, what are your call-out fees if the destination is at XYZ address, etc. etc.)… So instead, you can let your website present the tid bits of repetitive info.

If you want to get fancy, you can also convey the information that ambassadors will need to spread the word with good exposure on social media, affiliate links and portals, commission fees, kick-back coupon codes, etc.

Having a partner network is essential, and your website should be the cornerstone where potential collaborators find the information they need before they decide to partner, and where existing collaborators can return to for up-to-date information.

2.1.3. Potential and existing investors

This should be fairly obvious, but an important place where direct (and even indirect) investors look for information regarding their investment… is the website of said investment. Besides your business financial sheets, it is up to your website to win over boosts in capital injection and good will.

2.1.4. Potential and existing suppliers / sub-contractors

Very often before closing supply or sub-contracting agreements, the involved party will have a lot of questions to gauge whether your business, brand values, market niche and business model is a good fit for them. Your website can convey the information they’re looking for more succinctly and yet more thoroughly, with a bird’s eye view, than you can through multiple long and time-consuming phone calls or emails.

It also keeps existing suppliers and sub-contractors up to date with the latest happenings and news, so news they hear from external parties regarding your business does not catch them by surprise. In this way, it strengthens ties and keeps communication channels open in a world where everyone is overwhelmed with to-do lists.

2.1.5. Potential and existing service providers / partners

Similar to supply and sub-contracting agreements, core infrastructure and service providers will often want to know what sort of business they’re dealing with before they choose to proceed with the service agreement. Having a website convey the majority of information can speed up the negotiations and keep service providers in the loop as changes happen, corroborating your personal communications to them.

2.1.6. Potential and existing employees

An often overlooked benefit of having an up-to-date, authentic and professional website is that it will send out the right vibes to attract and retain the right type of employees. Potential employees very often turn to a business website to learn all they can about your business before they even decide to apply with you. The real catches out there are even more picky, and having the right website can win them over.

On the other end of the spectrum, if an existing employee is ashamed of your business’ website… that really does not help employee loyalty to the business as a whole. If they perceive your bad website (or no website) as unprofessional and uncaring towards your customers, it also in turn does not inspire the employee to care about and treat your customers professionally.

2.2. Different types of information can be shared

This is almost as vast the number of audiences you can cater to, and is very much dependent on your audience and the nature of your business. Here are some examples of vital, useful and common information shared on modern websites, that your business should be looking into.

2.2.1. Brand identity

The who and why of your business… that which distinguishes you and sets you apart from competitors. It includes your logo and stylistic elements of voice, your vision and mission, your values, your reason for being, the gap in the market you’re addressing, your team and partners, every thing that establishes your business personality and connects with your audience on a personal level (also see point 5: A good website builds audience connections).

2.2.2. Core business products and services

The essence, the what of your business. Those assets that you primarily trade for compensation. You should include sufficient details to be very clear in your audience’s mind what your specialities are, what your products and services benefits and limitations are, and why they would choose your services or products. The more convincing and enticing the detail, the better! But most of all, it should be honest and authentic.

Representing this information on your website is of vital importance.

In the USA, 88% of consumers research products and services online with the aim of making purchasing decisions.

South African consumers are following suit. If you don’t provide enough information about your products and services on your website, you run the risk of chasing potential customers straight into a competitor’s arms.

Remember: In our digital era, your competitor is one click away. You should be a click ahead.

2.2.3. Peripheral (value added) products and services

Those things that sweeten the deal, but are not your core expertise. This could be things like having a gift registry or gift vouchers on an online store, offering home improvement consultations as a handy-man, having a local delivery service as a local takeaway place, project management reports as a building contracting, offering stockist listing and social media exposure as a wholesaler, offering online bookings as a catering venue, or offering hair care advice as a hair stylist.

2.2.4. Logistical and practical information

The where and how of your business. Information like location, contact details, operating hours, company organizational structure (with top management listed, if the size warrants), quality guarantees, returns and refunds, shipping policy and fees, or service areas and call-out fees, your company’s general security and privacy policy (especially in light of all the recent privacy compliance laws that not only pertains to websites, but to how your company obtains, processes, stores and uses all user data).

You can include all the nitty gritty, practical and logistical information on your website, to reduce the man-hours you spend answering questions. You can also present the information in an FAQ schema, that reads easier and is easily indexed by search engines, to serve your visitors answers to their questions with minimal effort of their part.

2.2.5. Sales information – Pricing, fees, payment terms and methods, specials and promotions

This includes your normal pricing structure as well as any limited time discount or promotional offers. More and more, consumers are actively searching for savings, and more and more, they are searching online.

Research from 2020 shows that 35% South African consumers have mobile shopping apps where they compare prices, but that 58% of their online purchases are made through websites (where pricing information tends to be easily accessible and transparent).

Not only does a website provide information, but it also provides a way to start a customer’s purchase journey.

2.2.6. Process information

Very often, the thing that sets a great product or service apart from a mediocre one, is the process that is followed to deliver the end result.

If your business follows industry standard and/or best practice processes, you should definitely share that with site visitors because it will boost your standing and credibility (also see section 3 – A website is a business boon of credibility). Sharing this information up front also helps to manage expectations in terms of turnaround times, communication and documentation protocols that will follow, what recourse and deviations can be accommodated, etc.

Even if you do not follow best practises, in the interest of keeping prices or turnaround times low or any other reasons, you should also put your processes on your site, because it helps to manage expectations, reduces come-backs, and contributes to better customer experience (see section 8 – A website benefits customer service).

2.2.7. Achievements, awards, reviews, testimonials and other social proof

If your business is achieving results and receiving acknowledgement, in whatever form it may come, that definitely belongs on your website! Your site visitors want to know what sets you apart, what you are good at, and they want to know others recognise your business. Social proof, in whatever form it comes, is one of the strongest motivators for people to trust your business.

2.3. Information can be conveyed through many forms of media

Exactly because you control the platform on which your website is built, you also control what form of media you want to share. Long form text, short form text, tables, plain contact forms, conversational forms, advanced information entry forms, images of any dimensions you like, infographics that span multiple pages with interlinks, video content of any length, animations, surveys, polls, courses with interactive questions and answers, calendars with available booking slots and booking prices per person who handles that booking time slot, interactive process steps, interactive time lines, road maps, change logs, specifications and data sheets, interactive maps, embedded content from other sites (like social media posts, feeds, PDF’s, slide shows, video’s, etc.), product catalogues, restaurant menu items (to order online or just for information), recipes (for food, DIY projects or chemical compositions), custom query reports, bills of materials, the possibilities are (almost) endless.

2.4. A large volume of information can easily be shared, indexed and searched

Further to above… it is clear that a massive amount of information can be presented on your website, in a format of your choosing. Not only that, but you also have the means to index, sort, and serve specific information based on specific searches your visitors perform. You can choose how to prioritise content that is delivered to your visitors – you can dictate “the algorithm”, if so you so choose.

3. A modern, professional website is a business boon of credibility

3.1. The purpose of website credibility

It gives the brand a professional look and feel. Customers are not going to want to do business with a company if they feel like the company is not professional or they don’t take their own business seriously. The same goes for potential suppliers, service providers, partners, collaborators, employees and anyone else who has a stake to lose, when they do business with someone who does not take the business seriously.

A modern, clean, attractive, relevant, fast, mobile-responsive and secure website is an elegant and simple way to convey to any and all stakeholders that you know what your business is about, and that you go about your business professionally. It makes your business look legitimate in the eyes of the beholder. Your website, and the way information is presented on it, can convince your audience that you are an expert in your industry and that you are worth their time and money.

A good website says: “I am open for business, and I mean business!”

In this way, a website becomes a cornerstone of your online reputation management. It does not eliminate the need for review sites, but it compliments and corroborates good reviews, and can help to prevent bad reviews.

3.2. Website elements that build credibility

Here are just a handful of elements to include on your site to build brand credibility:

Furthermore, the presentation should be clean, legible, on-brand, organised and easily searchable and navigable. The performance should be fast (expect significant user drop off if your site, or any page on it, loads in more than 3 seconds) and mobile-responsive (expect more than 60% of your visitors to use the site on their mobile phones). The information should be accurate, complete and up to date. Pay attention to spelling and grammar. The basic infrastructure should be fully functional, with no broken links, broken buttons or menu items, and no glaring security vulnerabilities (SSL is a MUST! If you are still running on HTTP – this is the very least you should fix, ASAP!)

3.3. Website elements that destroy credibility

As expected, the website elements that destroy brand credibility are the opposite of those that build credibility. To name a few:

4. A website levels the playing field between small businesses and large corporations

Yep. You read that right. A good website is all it takes. When you combine that with a good product or service at a reasonable price, strong search engine optimisation, great content that relates to your audience (also see next point), and an active social media presence, you have everything you need to play alongside the big boys.

5. A website can (and should) build a connection with your audience

A good website is designed to build a connection with your audience, whether potential, new or existing customers and clients, suppliers, contractors or employees

A professional website is a representation of a business. A website can assist in branding your company. It’s the way in which the business can formally connect with customers and spread awareness of who and what they are. It’s an opportunity to learn and interact with your customers.

Moreover, in all the above, the same can be said for other stakeholders, such as suppliers, sub-contractors, partners, service providers, collaborators, and employees.

6. A website can (and should) anchor all your other marketing efforts and help them pay off

You’ve probably seen plenty of ads pop up on your Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram news feeds that promote business services. On most of them, the ad is anchored to a website (a landing page, if you will), as the backbone. A landing page is nothing other than a page on a website that is tailored for receiving and converting advertisement responses. In this way, a website is a powerful marketing tool.

When your landing pages are hosted on, or at least connected to, your website (as opposed to some other hosting platform), it contributes to your website traffic and ranking scores. It is technically where you want to drive incoming traffic, because it is the consolidated and definitive “guide” to your business and your offerings. It will also most likely work out much cheaper to host all your landing pages on your main website, as opposed to another platform. It will create a consistent look and feel, thus contributing to a stronger and more memorable branding experience.

Your website can be your strongest form of lead generation – if you set it up that way.

Your website, even without any other landing pages or social media interlinking, can be your strongest form of lead generation. And that is after all what you want – more leads, to convert to more sales.

It is a much more convenient form of marketing than traditional print lead generation. Arguably, before you even spend money on a business card, you should spend time, effort and money to establish a good website that captures leads.

7. A modern, professional website targets a wider audience and broadens your reach

When you hand out flyers on street corners, you reach only the people who pass that street corner, and maybe one or two people that they interact with personally. When you advertise in the local newspaper, you reach only that local newspaper’s audience (the local community) and maybe a handful of people they interact with personally.

When you have a website, your reach is in theory limited only to the number of people with internet access – and that’s a pretty massive reach.

Of course, I say “in theory” because nothing in life is quite that easy. There are a gazillion other websites out there, and yours risk being just a needle in a haystack, so you have to ensure (1) your website compares favourably and (2) your website gets found.

Modern, fast, responsive, secure, and up-to-date websites are favoured by search engines and will help your business get found easier and cheaper (organic SEO is much, much cheaper than paid ads!) When you are winning the SEO game, is when your reach really starts paying off. It also sort of escalates, in the way that success breeds success – more your website is discovered by potential clients and customers, the more they will share it on other platforms, to help you reach yet more audiences.

8. A website can (and should) improve customer service

A website can provide an outlet for customers to submit feedback, inquire about products and services, and create a dialogue with your company. It can help you funnel negative feedback directly to you, in private, as opposed to customers posting bad reviews on social media or review sites, and once you have channelled the negative feedback in private, you can rectify the situation and convert the unhappy customer to a happy customer, with no public spats and no harm done to your reputation.

A website is also a great way to keep existing customers coming back to you for more – you can share tips and tricks, advanced instructions, interesting research, tutorials, and product highlights.

9. A website saves you time and money by automating the time-consuming stuff

The sky is the limit with all the things you could automate programmatically. A website offers a subset of this automation, but quite a big subset. When your funnels and automations are set up in a thoughtful, systematic way, you can save a ton of time and money.

As an example: say as a beauty salon owner, you put an ad on Facebook that leads potential customers to your landing page, where they subscribe to your newsletter and their contact details are automatically added to a lead database. Ideally your newsletters and email marketing campaigns will be sent out in an automated sequence, to nurture the potential clients, until they are ready to book an appointment with you. This is a fairly common use-case of online sales funnels and applies to any kind of business, not just the example beauty salon.

You could, however, take the automation sequences many steps ahead. You could for instance, once the potential customer is ready to book an appointment, lead the person back to your website, where they can see a calendar with available time slots and real-time updates of availability info. They can see which beauticians are available when, and select which type of beauty session they’d like, along with the fees and duration of each type. They make their selection, are taken to a payment page, and once they’ve paid successfully, the calendar will be updated on your website as well as on the customer’s calendar app. The customer and relevant beautician will then receive automated reminders when their appointment is due. The beautician can make notes during the appointment to market targeted beauty products and specific follow-up treatments to the customer, which can automatically be fed back into the email marketing campaigns to repeat the sequence in a more optimized way.

This is just one example – it could just as well have been a car service business instead of a beauty salon. A completely different type of example could be a restaurant that would like to accommodate online bookings, as well as accept online orders for either collection or delivery, where they need to manage the load of simultaneous orders at any given time. It could be an engineering supplies company that needs to track tender requests, tender proposals and the progress in between, while tracking relevant bills of materials, stock quantities and lead times, available man power, etc. Other classic examples are automated financial reporting based on online sales, automatic requests for cheapest or fastest shipping quotes and automatically selecting a quote to schedule a shipping collection request, automatically posting new content between a website and a social media platform (in either direction), etc.

Of course, every type of business will have unique opportunities and challenges where automations can help or hurt sales conversions. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the business is required to understand how exactly a website can and should automate the tedious bits.

10. A website can make you money almost on auto-pilot

It very much depends on the nature of your business, but if necessary you can pivot slightly, to automate a lot of repetitive tasks that can either generate your main income or supplemental income.

For example, if you are a chef and your main business is catering (but catering is not making money due to lockdowns and Covid), you can pivot in any of the following ways:

These examples can be adapted to pretty much any industry – any type of business can benefit from automation and supplementing / optimizing their income streams through digital automation channels.

11. A website is always accessible, 24/7, even while you sleep

With a website, customers can reach you 24/7, even when you sleep. There is minimal down-time (or rather, if there is a lot of downtime, then it’s time to relook your website!) Your website can talk for you, market for you, and sell for you, while you get on with life and with business. Your website frees you up to do more important things.

12. A clean, modern website architecture is easy to keep up to date and to expand

Depending on your chosen underlying website platform, in general websites are really easy to update and add content to. A well-designed, versatile architecture is also very easy to expand in terms of functionality (one of the reasons WordPress is often favoured by web developers, is the ease of expansion).

Have out-of-date information that should be updated? Easily done. Have a static website that needs to be updated for user interaction, like a contact form? Easily done. Have a contact form on your website that you want to convert into an online appointment booking form? Can fairly easily be done! Have slide shows on your website that you want to convert into online courses? Can also fairly easily be done!

13. If you desire a mobile app: The cost and time to market for a niche website is almost always cheaper and faster than a mobile app

So you had a brainwave for a new app! You’re very excited to get an app developer on it, ASAP! That is, until you hear what the realistic costs and time frames are. A very basic, run of the mill e-commerce app can set you back anywhere between R50,000 – R750,000, and take anywhere between 3 months to a year. A more custom mobile app, with more intricate features, will cost more and take longer.

On the flip-side, almost everything you would like to achieve with a mobile app, can be achieved with a website that is responsive to mobile devices. The cost, and the development time, of such a website will typically be a fraction of the mobile app equivalent. Therefore, it’s almost always savvy to validate your brilliant app idea with a website first. Get it up and running fast, do small and quick trial runs, fail fast, get feedback fast, learn fast, and improve fast, until you have a fairly good idea exactly how your app should work, and how to the income / expense trajectory will look.

Bonus: 14. There’s no reason not to have a modern, professional website

Generally, it is very affordable to obtain a basic website that is still modern and professional. The more advanced the functionality you require (e.g. automations and features), the more expensive it becomes. But as a starting point, it does not need to be expensive and you can reap a ton of benefits from a basic website, as long as it is professional and modern.

Many design companies start at R1500 for a basic website that still passes for modern and professional. For a little bit more, you might get a more respectable website, or one that is more tailored to your brand. For specialised functions, you could be looking at anywhere between R3500 – R15000 (or, if you like, you could inflate the tenders to R50 million, as was the case for one of the SA FIFA 2010 stadiums, but that is definitely not the norm!)

Either way, for such a small fee, you really have no excuse to not get a website, or a website revamp, as the case may be.

Conclusion: A modern, professional website generates more sales, and saves time and money while doing so

A website is essential to any business. But for maximum effect, your website should be kept up-to-date, modern, responsive, secure, and professional.

If you are in need of a new website, or an old site revamp, feel free to contact us and let’s chat!