Why Do I Need A Website?

Sep 8

The number one question we’re asked during consultations is - Does my business really need a website and why? In today’s digital era, the answer we give is always yes. No matter your trade having a website makes you visible, accessible and gives your business a professional look. It acts as a virtual storefront, available 24/7, enabling potential customers or clients to learn about your products, services, or personal brand at their convenience. A website also provides a platform to showcase your expertise, share valuable content, and engage with your audience through blogs, social media integration, and interactive features. At the very least, a one page site for your landscaping company or a booking site for your hairstyling business gives perspective customers a core point of contact and an easy way to refer you to others.

With a website, you can expand your customer base, increase brand visibility, and ultimately, boost your success in the online world. Below we’ll share some of the core reasons why you need a website for your business.

A good business is built on a foundation of trust. Having a website is the starting point to building credibility with your clients and business partners. Including awards and accreditations in your websites About page allows you to build higher levels of trust.

Another smart move: creating blog posts, videos or other content aimed to educate your audience. This shows customers that you care about their needs and genuinely want to help them solve their problems with your product or service. You can easily start a blog with Squarespace as a standalone entity or addition to your website.

When creating a site on Squarespace we always advise that our clients have two important things. An About page/section and a call to action button. An about page should display a summary of your business, services and maybe even a teams section. An about page is a way for customers that are deep diving into your business to learn more about you, who their doing business with and get confirmation of legitimacy. This page, your header and your footer should hold a call to action button such as ‘Contact Us’, ‘See How’, ‘Sign Up’, etc.

**#2 Showcase your products & services**

Regardless of what small business you run, a website can be a one stop shop to showcase your unique work. Maybe you own a brick & mortar shop and want to start selling online or you already sell on platforms like Instagram and want an easier way to manage your inventory. Use high-end photography, graphics and quality copy to display your content from all angles. Videos and gifs show customers how your content can fit into their lifestyle.

If you are a professional offering therapy, courses, or legal services, your website can offer details about your services, pricing and easy to use scheduling tools. Using Squarespace’s Member Sites to create gated content for clients is a great step for this. Member Sites hides content behind a paywall, creates a tailored experience for members that sets apart from your regular site content.

Here’s how: Squarespace Member Sites

To offer a booking experience all within your site with absolutely no code, we recommend using Squarespace’s Acuity tool. While many people use free tools like Calendy (which is great), you will need to either add code to display Calendy in your site or add a link to your Calendy page. Requiring customers to go to an external site can be off putting. Acuity is built into your site for a seamless experience, lets you create multiple appointment types and more.

Here’s how: What is Acuity Scheduling

As a creative such as an artist, designer, or shop owner; use Squarespace’s custom collection pages to showcase your products. These range from portfolio pages to display galleries for each type of art you offer, art from different eras or genres, etc. Use a blog page to educate your customers on different types of design, create an online magazine or news article or even podcast as a content creator. Finally, use a store page to display and sell products. For those selling pieces of art, we recommend taking images of the artwork all in the same aspect ratio and from different perspectives. Set product variants with ease, sales pricing and even pre-sales to create an illusion of high-demand.

Image of a globe connected by lights — **#3 Building an Overall Brand**

No matter what, having a website allows you to build an overall brand. Your brand should be cohesive, having a website, social profiles, logos and even paper marketing brings everything together under one umbrella. A website builds awareness of your brand worldwide and allows you to use tools like Google Analytics to build your SEO ranking.

We recommend that our clients have a main website to showcase their business to the world and then use third-party tools like Etsy, Shopify to sell products and services. Having your products on Squarespace and then other e-commerce platforms promotes visibility and increases sales. For artist, we recommend uploading your work to portfolios and galleries on your Squarespace site and then creating business cards with your URL for things like gallery showings or pop-up shows.

As a small business owner I know that creating a site can sound scary for those that aren’t tech savvy or design oriented. It can also be daunting because of the price. As web design experts our team chose to specialize in Squarespace sites after careful research because we believe they are the best out there in regards to usability, pricing and features. Squarespace offers a variety of features to support a business and makes managing inventory seamless.

When you choose us to build your website we support you from start to finish. The process is completely transparent, we are always there to answer any questions and address concerns, each website launch comes with access to training videos so that you can edit and manage your site without paying for additional maintenance. Overall, we are a small business and we know how difficult it can be to start and to grow. Our goal is to offer stable, affordable, quality web design services.

What’s the next step? You now know that having a website is a must for businesses, artist and brands. Do your research to legalize your business name, DBA, and taxes. Once you’ve done this, contact our design team to discuss branding tools like basic logos and building your Squarespace website. We also support you with color palettes, refer you to marketing specialists for SEO and much more.

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