Do I REALLY need a website?


I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked whether or not a website is really necessary to do business these days. "I have a Facebook page, isn't that enough?" People will find you wherever you are, right?


Social media plays an important role in the modern business. Yes, people use social media, and it's important to have some kind of presence there if you want your customers to feel like you're accessible to them. But social media is not all that your business is.

Here's a question: do you remember myspace? How about Friendster? AOL? CompuServe? In their day, they were all the big thing. But who uses them now? Some people have never even heard of them. Someday, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will all suffer the same fate. The world moves on to the next big thing. Where does that leave you if your social media account was all you had?

Aside from that, there are aesthetic concerns as well. When you look at a social media page, a lot of space is taken up with things that are not yours - mostly, the social media's own logo, branding, and style. It's their platform, and your company's appearance and needs are a distant second to their own. Having your own website allows you to control the look and feel, establish credibility with your customers, advertise on your terms, and set the tone for how people will interact with your business.

The purpose of social media is not to replace a company website, but rather to complement it. Social media is used to entertain, to entice, or to inform. Consumers recognize that a professional website is a mark of quality that social media alone just can't duplicate. A 2015 study from Verisign found that 84% of consumers trusted a company with a website more than one without, and 65% said that a company with its own domain email was more credible than one using a generic email like gmail or yahoo for official communications.

So use social media to its fullest extent - entertain your followers, entice new ones to interact with you, and inform them about who you are and what you do. Be useful, and be interesting. But don't skimp on your website!

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