Is it worth having a website for a small local business?
With hordes of people now turning to the internet to find local businesses and services , the bottom line is you better get online or get left behind. You might have been wondering if it’s really worth you getting a website built for your business as it’s just local or only serves a small area. Well here’s a few points that might help you make up your mind.

Many people are using the internet to find local business and services and are actually choosing to search the internet instead of traditional methods like the yellow pages to get phone numbers and local listings. So are you going to be there to be seen and found or are you going to be sitting back and passing the custom straight to one of your local competitors that are online??

The fact is people are getting into the habit of checking out something online before going there or purchasing the item. They might also see if there are any reviews online about your business and or service and products, or use a website to help them compare similar local business and services as its much easier to check out a website than pick up the phone or go door to door to compare.

For example say someone wants to go to a Mexican restaurant in Edinburgh. They can quickly and easily go online and look through the websites that come up for “ Mexican restaurants in Edinburgh”, they can check out the menus, prices, reviews, promotions, and depending on the website even photos of the place and it’s food, or even watch a video about the restaurant. They can get directions and the contact details are there for them to use when they want to call and they can do all this from the comfort of their own home.

The same is true for all other small local businesses, not just restaurants.The trend is showing that people are searching online to find local businesses and their products and services.

There are many reasons why it is beneficial to be online not matter what size your business is or how local your market. Also you need to think of the bigger game, there is a whole other range of benefits that await you…

Having a website can become marketing heaven!

You can quite easily target your specific market no matter how “specialty” it is.

You can measure, track and test almost everything on your site for it’s effectiveness, it’s as close to being in the mind of your customers as it gets and you can tweak your site depending on what works and what doesn’t.

For example you can

  • see how  your customers are finding you
  • see how many customer your sites getting
  • see what they are clicking on (and not)
  • see what pages they visit
  • see how long they stay on your site

So you can keep what works and chuck what doesn’t.

Having a website can give you valuable information about your customers and by not having one you are just stepping aside and letting your competition take all benefits.

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