In our previous post in this series of articles explained the importance of having a website for your business.
In this post we will cover some more benefits of websites and features your website can provide in case you want to sell your products/services online. We will also go through some examples.
In later sections of this article, we will also explain about responsive and non-responsive websites and why having a responsive website can widen reach of your business to the audience who are using smartphones and tablets.
Some Interesting Stats To Begin With
Percent of small businesses with websites in 2009 was 45%
Percent of small businesses with websites in 2014 was 53%
Annual Revenue Of Small scale Business Through Websites
| Sales | Percent Sales with Website |
|---|---|
| $500,000 – $999,000 | 49% |
| $1,000,000 – $2,490,000 | 69% |
| $2,500,000 – $4,500,000 | 67% |
Some More Benefits Of a Business Website
List your Services/Products in detail : We briefly touched on this subject in last article. You can describe your services/products with images and text to save share precise information with your customers. This will result in your goodwill and sales going up.For example, if you run a restaurant business, you can display your restaurant menu card along with ingredients and price of food items on your website.
You can display images of cooked food items on website which will help customers see texture and get an idea of the portion they are going to get.
Keep your customers informed with Newsletter : Customers who subscribe to your newsletter can receive your latest addition of services/products, pricing and other changes. Customers can also be notified of the upcoming deals and discounts
Let customers register for upcoming products : Sometimes the product that customer wants to buy is out of stock. So your website can have the feature to let the customer register for a notification when stock of the product becomes available. Most of the successful e-commerce sites are providing this feature.
Collect testimonials and reviews : Online testimonials by existing customers help in building trust. Customers can write reviews for your services which can help others to know about the quality of work. These reviews not only help new customers, they also help your company to know areas in which you need to improve.
More Points If You Want To Sell Online And Some Examples :
Having a website for your business gives privilege to customers for online ordering and home delivery. This can be more beneficial for people living far away from company’s location. We had a client who got a website built for his restaurant. His restaurant was located far from a posh area of city where all rich people live. Soon restaurant got famous and now generates more revenue than what it did before having a website and online ordering.
If you own a medical clinic, patients can book online appointment instead of reaching the clinic and wait in the queue. Patients can download test reports online without visiting clinic in person.
A lot of people working in remote location are not able to celebrate precious days with their family and friends. Sometimes a person is not able to send greeting cards (real paper cards not e-greetings) to his/her loved ones due to unavailability of greeting card store nearby. If you have a company that sells greeting cards, such as birthday cards, invitation cards, festival cards etc, you business website can help these people. Card images can be displayed on your website, which will help customer to make the selection. Customer can pay online and place order. After receiving online order, your company can deliver selected actual paper card to recipient.
Having a website for your business gives your customer more options to pay to you. There are various payment options your company can provide to customers like internet banking, credit/debit card and cash on delivery. Even payment in installments can also be automated and managed online.
For example : If you have business of selling clothes, customers can browse and select clothes, add to cart, select mode of payment and place order.
Further to this, after order is placed by the customer, he/she can check status of order on your website. After delivery of product, you can offer facilities to the customer to return/exchange the product if they are not satisfied. Your company’s reputation will grow in market when customer gets all these facilities online and will recommend your products and services to other people.You can beat your competitors by giving discounts and E-coupons on your website and can also give offers on your products on festivals like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah.
For Example :
Responsive And Non Responsive Websites
Responsive website means a website that adjusts its content and images according to size of the screen (laptop, mobile, iPad etc) so that it looks good and is readable to the user.You must have browsed some sites on your mobile which either show such tiny content that you can barely read it or they do not let you scroll or use the features at all. This means website is not responsive.
Here are some images to distinguish:
Website technologies such as HTML5, Bootstrap and CSS3 help in designing a good responsive websites. In our next and final post in this series, we will talk about various technologies available in the market for Website development and their comparison.