Despite anything that you may have heard, yes, your business really needs a website.

A website is the most crucial element for establishing a successful online presence, plain and simple. But why? Because a well-constructed website can provide large amounts of quality data from former, potential, and current clients that can be used to make better decisions.

Sadly, entrepreneurs and small business owners fail to see these benefits and believe that social media outlets (SMO) like Facebook or Instagram can lead to a solid online presence. Do not take me wrong. An initial incursion into the virtual world solely using SMO could help you gain some exposure, but this is an unsustainable practice in the long term.

The main difference between managing a website and an SMO is the amount of data you can collect. When you base your strategy on Facebook or Instagram, there is just as much data you can get. You may know how many likes or clicks your posts get, but aside from that, there is not much information to use.

What is a well-constructed website?

You say a website is well constructed when it is built to support the business’s central goal. Its design and coding should make it easy for customers to acquire the products and services offered.

Consider the following example:

• You own a restaurant and want to use a website to increase online orders or reservations. A well-constructed website will always offer the possibility of placing an order or making a reservation because that is why it was developed. That is its purpose. A website could be beautiful but useless to your business if it does not help you accomplish objectives.

If a website is well-constructed, it can provide several added benefits in the long term.

A website collects customer data

A well-constructed website equipped with basic web analytics can help you gather the following data:

• How customers find your website and where they are coming from.
• Total time spent on the website.
• Entry and exit pages to your website.
• The path followed by your customers while they were on the site.
• Most and least visited pages.
• Customer engagement, e.g., if customers click where they are supposed to.

Notice that the information gathered from a website could be more relevant than knowing how many people saw a post on Facebook or how many liked them.

Websites offer certainty about businesses, their products, or services

Another benefit of having a website is that it can display crucial information about your company, products, or services. Commonly, customers are interested in knowing opening hours, delivery options, return policies, and payment and contact methods. This information should always be clear and easy to find. Remember, the more customers feel their questions have been answered, the most likely they will lean towards acquiring your products or services.

Also, contemplate adding a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section to your website. A FAQ section could give great peace of mind to your customers, as they can get all their questions answered in a single place.

Your website as a showroom

Well-constructed websites can help create awareness for more of the products or services offered. For instance, you could group products into categories and thus make it easier for customers to find and discover them.

A website gives you the freedom to present products and services without constraints. You control the information, images, fonts, and colors that make your products or services more appealing to customers. Moreover, any page on your website could be used to promote products or services.

Use SMO to strengthen your website

Social Media Outlets are great spaces to promote your content, run marketing campaigns, and as customer care platforms. However, they should support your website, not substitute it.

Ideally, you should create content on your website and share it via your social medium of choice to lead customers to your site. Why? Because your site will be more memorable than a Facebook or Instagram post that will get lost in a never-ending ocean of content.

Also, most social media companies will only share a small amount of the data they collect. And that is if they share any relevant data at all. As a matter of fact, social media companies are likely to share some of their data to convince you to acquire their ad services. That is their business, and those are their goals.

With a website, you own all the data that you can collect.