A website for small business is essential in today’s marketplace. The days are long gone when having a website for your small business is an option. It is now a necessity to have one.

You may say that you are doing just fine without a website, but not having one will continue to hinder it from reaching its fullest potential. There are several reasons why your small business needs a website.

Customers now utilize the Internet in searching for products and services. Many customers solely use the Internet for their search. The yellow pages are dead.
Customers want you to have a website so they can easily educate themselves on the products and services that you sell. People want instant access to information. A website gives them this information any time they wish to access it.
A professional looking and easy to update website gives your small business important credibility. Customers are more likely to patronize businesses with websites than those without. Why? A professional looking website with up-to-date content shows your customers that you know how to convey information in the most effective way possible.
Smartphones are changing the way customers use the Internet. They no longer need to wait until they are back at home or even within range of a Wi-Fi connection. Again, people are now expecting instant information at their fingertips. If you do not provide it, they will go to your competitors who do.
Prices for website design, creation and hosting have dropped significantly in recent years. Cost is no longer a barrier or excuse for not having a website. Today, you are now at a disadvantage to your competitors by not having a website for small business.

Using WordPress is a great way to manage your website. WordPress is a content management system which allows you to easily create new updates and pages for your website. Keeping your website updated with fresh content is important both for pleasing human visitors to your site along with ranking favorably in search engine results. You want customers to be able to find your website after they have searched for products or services you provide.

These days most people appreciate the importance of websites for small businesses but many people lack the experience to decide exactly what a small business website should feature. To many small business owners, so long as they actually have a website then they consider that enough, however such an attitude would be a mistake.

Not only are some websites very difficult to get listed in the free search engines if they are built wrongly – meaning that you will struggle to get many visitors to your website – but they also fail to turn browsers into buyers. With so much competition online, it is no longer enough to just “have a website”. You need a website that attracts visitors morning, noon and night and turns those people into customers for you.

So should you build the website yourself or get a professional web designer to build your website for you? Well there’s no real right or wrong answer. Some people have the software and the patience to learn how to do it all themselves and while it is a struggle, it is certainly possible. And this is of typically cheaper than hiring a professional.

In contrast, while hiring a professional will cost you more, the money is often well spent. Not only will a professionally-built site typically looks better and get better results but it will also be completed far quicker than if you had to learn how to do everything yourself.