Why do business owners spend so long over designing their websites?
I’ve been thinking. Why have, ever since a clever chappie first got the idea that his business needed to promote itself on this thing called the World Wide Web, have businesses spent so long ruminating over their websites?
Why do business owners insist that they get them done before any other marketing activity can take place.
Why do they spend so much time, money and resource on them?
There are so many ways to get an online presence these days – LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, even WhatsApp. Do you even need an website presence these days? After all, once you’ve spent all that time on it, worrying about what you’re going to say, how it’s going to be on-brand and on-message and all that jazz, if it’s not actually an e-commerce site and is selling product, who’s going to be bothered with you anyway?
This view seems to be shared by more businesses than you might think. Despite that fact that, as at the end of 2018, there were 4,208,571,287 Internet users and 1.94 billion websites, 46% of small businesses didn’t have any web presence.
The thing is, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a web presence or even that you shouldn’t have a website.
In fact, if you don’t have a website, you’re probably doing completely the wrong thing. I have it on good authority. Stu Davis, founder and Head of Agency at Creative Bloom, says that if you want a web presence, the very first thing you should do is “set up a business page on Google. Just enter your details. It only takes 10 minutes”. Voilà! Your web presence. He then goes on to say that you can set up a 3-page website very simply, either by talking to a reliable local web designer or by using a content management system, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Blogger, or Shopify.
For the rest of you, what I’m really just saying is that you should be realistic about what you’re actually doing when you go about commission a website. Think about what your audience will actually want to see. Chances are they’ll want to see you. In fact, chances are they’ll want to get to know you. Because people buy from people, not their website.
So don’t spend so much time designing pretty pictures and writing clever words about how you’re going to change the words. Tell the world what you’re up to and where you’re at. Grab your phone, find a suitable place to film and video yourself. Or do a podcast. Then post it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. And of course on your nice-&-simple website.
If you want to know more about how to video or podcast, have a look on the Just Jez blog, the Just Jez Instagram feed, or on LinkedIn.