According to the SBA, of the 30 million businesses in the U.S., only 64% of small businesses have a website. This should not be a shocking statistic since there are so many owners that don’t know where to start and for many, it’s still is too hard or too expensive for them. But this is a problem since a study by Blue Corona shows 80% of customers will research a company online before visiting it. Similarly, a Stanford University study reveals that customers will judge a company’s credibility by their website design.
On this weeks, Small Business Radio Show, Beth Thouin, Vice President of Digital Marketing at Web.com tells us that building and maintaining your own website should be a lot easier. According to a Blue Corona study, 58% of those who don’t have one, want to build one. She explains that small business owners get stuck because they aren’t coders or designers. There is also so much to think about when assembling a web site including:
- What should the content be?
- What should the headlines say?
- What layout and design should be used?
- What are the calls to action?
- How can it be made mobile friendly?
- How are people going to find the website once it is built?
Beth discusses that all these questions are still so overwhelming for many small business owners. They also don’t understand the difference between a domain, a website, hosting and a blog. For a lot of company owners, using a sophisticated content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Drupal is just too expensive. They can’t afford to hire freelancer or an outside professional firm.
Easy Website Maker
Beth demonstrates a new alternative to all of this by using a website builder. It’s a software as a service solution (SaaS) that offers industry design templates and drag and drop components (like “add text here” or “add an image” here). According to Beth, the good news is that the website builder manages all of the website’s security, hosting and the small business owner can easily update it themselves.
Listen to the entire episode here.
Image: Depositphotos.com
This article, "The Hidden Mystery Behind Why 36% of Small Businesses STILL Don’t Have a Website" was first published on Small Business Trends
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