Importance of Websites for Small Business

Note to readers: This article was written waaaay back in 2005! Since then, all kinds of things have happened—social media, iPhones and iPads, etc.—but websites are still command central for marketing. For a more updated look at the importance of websites, check out our article on how in the future, websites will still be important.

The main point: how this will radically affect you

I don't remember the exact figures from the Jupiter Media presentation about the advertising spending of small, local companies that currently buy most of their advertising in the yellow pages, but it was a big number. To get an idea of just how big this number is, try to picture your Yellow Pages and estimate the number of ads that represent local companies and services. Multiply that by the number of Yellow Pages for each metropolitan area in the United States and you'll start to get an idea of how big this really is. Interestingly, only 50% of the local companies represented in the yellow pages currently even have a website. What do you think will happen as fewer and fewer people use the printed Yellow Pages in favor of local web search? Do you think these small local companies will continue to pay as much for their Yellow Page ads since fewer and fewer people will be using them? Where do you think their advertising dollars will go? They will go to the place where people are searching...the search engines.

If they start spending part of their advertising money for online ads instead of Yellow Page ads, do you suppose they will want a website to follow up with their online ad? You bet! Until now, a website was only marginally useful to fifty percent of local companies. Now a website will be a standard part of their marketing.

This is good news for me... after all, I own a web development company... but it is also good news for you.

There is a massive number of local companies that are going to start asking someone about setting up a website to link to from their online local search listing. I think they are very likely to call local advertising agencies and design firms for help. And it will be easy for them to find you, since all they have to do is type "graphic designer" into Google's local search. Your company will be listed along with all your local competitors... unless your site is built in Flash, in which case it is quite possibly invisible to search engines and probably not listed (but that's another newsletter!).

When they call you, are you going to tell them that you don't do websites? Are you going to be able to tell them how much it costs to build small business websites? What if they want to be able to update the content themselves? What if they need e-commerce? What if they want to be able to track the clicks that result from paid local search ads? Are you ready?

My guess is that for many of you, the answer is no. But that's okay. Newfangled's mission is to: "fortify advertising agencies and design firms to confidently, comfortably, and profitably offer web development services to their clients." We've been partnering with companies just like yours when your clients ask for a website that requires more than Dreamweaver or Flash can deliver. We can help.