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Originally Posted On: https://www.ncntechnology.com/is-your-website-doing-its-job/?_thumbnail_id=30005

Is Your Website Doing Its Job?

Is Your Website Doing Its Job of Introducing Your Brand to Customers? Is your website the advertisement for your brand or business it could be? The diminishing importance of real-world storefronts makes digital storefronts more important than ever. Every business needs a website. In fact, it’s fair to say that a business isn’t fully established until it has a website. Take a look at the five reasons why your business needs a website yesterday.

1. Websites Create Brand Credibility

Your brand trustworthiness depends on your website. Customers perceive brands based on the appearance and functionality of their websites. Every single interaction that a customer has with your website has a direct impact on whether or not they decide to choose your product or service —or your competitors.

Don’t have a website at all? People are quick to question the legitimacy of a business that doesn’t have a website. In fact, Googling a business name without finding an official website is a red flag for customers today. A recent study backs this up. The study examined the impact of a company’s website and other aspects of its online presence on customer loyalty and how trustworthy the brand is perceived. Nineteen out of twenty participants enrolled in the study said that the brand being active on the internet was important or very important to them.

What about having a presence on social media? Is that enough? Unfortunately, the answer is NO.  A social media presence isn’t enough to create legitimacy. Social media is littered with scammers using fake “brand” accounts to try to peddle products that don’t actually exist.

2. Leads Are Stronger with a Website

A website can be a passive lead-generating machine for your business. Having a website that customers can use to ask questions, browse products and services, and make online purchases increases your chances of getting hot leads. You may even get direct sales and bookings through your website.

3. Websites Drive Organic Traffic

A properly optimized website boosts your ranking in Google search results. That means that your brand is able to compete with big brands, local brands, comparable brands, and everything else in between without the need to pay for advertising. Organic traffic is one of the best ways to increase your customer base through boosting brand visibility.

4. It’s Hard to Do Digital Marketing Without a Website

Pulling off a solid digital marketing campaign is difficult when you don’t have a website that customers are being directed to after interacting with your ads. In fact, you may end up sinking costs into marketing and ads when customers are simply going to “drop off” once they realize they aren’t being directed to an official landing page. Having a landing page allows you to keep your audience in a funnel that turns leads into sales.

5. A Website Is the Ultimate Customer Service Tool

A website is a default 24-hour customer service line because customers can reach out on their own time. While you may not always have someone on the clock to respond to inquiries, you will always have a queue for accepting emails and messages that can be addressed during business hours. What’s more, automated tools and FAQ features on a website allow customers to find their own answers to common questions!

Case Study: How a Website Rebuild Brought Views and Vitality to a New Station’s Website

In 2021, NCN rebuilt a client’s website that was extremely slow. As a result, viewers encountered clunky, slow video when they tried to stream daily news and recaps through the website. The result was a frustrating experience that hurt page views. What’s more, nobody wanted to push through 17 pages of content to get to the stories that were important to them. After meeting with the client to discuss the type of performance they wanted from an updated website, NCN was able to develop an optimized, responsive, and lightning-fast website that was ready to launch within budget in just 11 weeks. In addition to being visually rich and appealing for viewers, the website was also beautifully organized from the backend perspective to make updates, optimizations, and metrics easy.

Is your business really a business if it doesn’t have an optimized website? NCN can build an up-to-date, fast website with rich visuals and analytics. Start with a free scan of your website performed by NCN’s team of digital experts. We’ll show you what’s possible. Reach out today!