Is Having a Website Necessary?

Is having a website necessary? A question that often asked by lot of people. In today’s Internet world, almost everyone is on social media including your customers. With social media, businesses can easily engage with its customers and easily helps them build stronger customer relationships; it’s all about showing that the business cares about its customers.

Setting up a business page on social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram is “FREE”, requires no technical expertise and it comes with readily millions of people on the platform looking to interact with you.

Most social media platforms have great marketing features and allow easy integrations. You can easily build your email list, have online chat, provide business information, sell products and many more from the tabs on your social media page.

Social media also have analytic features which provide valuable information which can help businesses to track what visitors are doing on your pages, what content they like, and how many people your content has reached. This allows you to know quickly and easily what works and what does not, hence you can keep improving. There are lots of benefits businesses could get from using social media.

However surprisingly, not all who operates business on social media have websites.

Why websites then?

• With a lot of benefits of using social media, why even build a website for your business when you can make use of these free social media platforms to market your business online?
• What are the advantages of having a website vs social media?

Two simple answers…

1. With a website you have 100% control.

One of the very best answers for you is that you own your website. It gives you complete control over your entire media brand. You will have 100% control over your websites than any of these third-party platforms that are known to be quixotic. You are required to follow the company’s terms of service, which are continually revised or you risk your account being deleted. You are also at the risk to changes to their products and features. Besides, there will always be newer social media platform to knock out the other one, which will leave you scrambling even more.

2. It has become a necessity to have your own business website.

Even if you have already been using social media like Facebook or Instagram for your business, it is very important to your organization to have its own website. Having social media alone is a very informal way of establishing presence online versus a personalized website which often indirectly reflects your status of professionalism and establishment. Having a website not only allows you to market your business online, but it is also important because it helps you establish credibility as a business. You can make changes anytime and at your discretion and match your website design to your branding goals and business identity.

The verdict

Social media is an excellent way to engage and interact with your customers, by using the comments or messaging features. It can also be used as a tool to promote important features and updated content from your website. For example, a blog that is published on the company’s official website should also be shared on the company’s social media pages to increase traffic to your website.

It is highly recommended for online marketing practice to use social media in tandem with your official website. Both are important in building your brand, but each of them has specific roles. The tone you employ and the information that you promote on each media often varies.

While a website should be set at a professional tone with informative features with “easy to access” product or service information and company information, social media should have an informal ‘conversation starting’ tone: persuading a conversation between your company and customers or readers. A useful social media rule is that you should be able to have a conversation about any topic you post about.