Yes, you need a website.

You’ve been wondering, right? Do you really need to sink the time, effort and capital into a website for your business? You don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars just lying around. Can’t people just find you on social media, or stop by your brick & mortar shop, or call you if they have questions?

There are so many reasons you should consider investing in a website for your business. It’s not just about FAQs or hours of operation. It’s even more than creating a cohesive brand experience and building credibility for your business online (although those are good reasons, too).

The ultimate reason you need a website comes down to ensuring you are in control. A website puts you in control of your business, your message, and your platform in a way you simply cannot count on with social media alone. Let’s dive in:

Most of us understand the difference between owning and renting. When you rent, you may have fewer responsibilities or input costs (who doesn’t love when a broken appliance is someone else’s problem?), but ultimately you’re also not in control of your own destiny. If you’re using social media for your business, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are your landlords. You rely on their platforms to store every photo, every post, every scrap of information about your business AND your lines of communication with your audience. Then one morning you open the app and you can’t access any of it. A Google search confirms your fear - Instagram is experiencing an outage. Twitter has shut down permanently. Facebook is battling a system failure that wiped account information and data.

With no warning at all, your business has lost its ability to reach your audience, sell products or communicate changes. If only you had taken the time to build a website and capture your audience’s email addresses so you could reach them on your own terms…

This may sound dramatic. But the reality is, temporary outages happen on social platforms all. the. time! Accounts can be shut down for violating terms, or be hacked by malicious third parties, rendering your years of hard work building brand awareness, nurturing customer relationships and making sales utterly useless moving forward. Unless of course, you’ve made the investment of time, energy and yes, a little money, to maintain control over your own destiny. 

Having a website is owning your plot of internet land. Rent the extra acres from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, of course. But build your house somewhere you won’t have to worry about losing, and build contact with your customers so they know where to go looking if those rented acres don’t work out. 

If you’re ready to dive in on building your very own website, I’m here to help. Drop me a line at callie@homegrowncreativeco.com to get started!