5 reasons to have a website for your business

The covid19 pandemic has been in full swing for two years and here in the Trinidad and Tobago, businesses have struggled to adjust to continue serving their clients in an efficient and convenient way.

One of the main reasons for this is that businesses have never needed to learn how to deliver a product or experience digitally. They focused on traditional methods of advertising and driving traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores. Naturally, the pandemic has disrupted that, and businesses have needed to adjust.

Whilst businesses in 2022 still haven’t fully grasped the concept of transitioning their businesses to digital platforms to get business beyond using social media to spam us with ads, we got you covered.

We are going to dive into five reasons why your business needs a website and why it’s one of the most important digital assets for your business.

Ready? Here we go.

1. The sale starts online – According to Intergrowth.co, 63 per cent of all shopping begins online, even if the purchase itself happens in the store. Studies show that people will visit Google, conduct a search and look for the company that has the products/services listed on their website and place their order on the website or visit the store after confirming that the products listed on their website are in stock.

2. e-commerce is the future of sales – Your customers want the convenience of shopping online and having their products delivered to their house. The new Linx Visa debit cards offered by the banks can be used online for websites that are listed in TT currency. This automatically expands your available consumer base since now everybody with the new bank cards can buy from you online (once your website is listed in TT currency).

3. Extended business hours – Think about the times you do your online shopping…what time does that occur? 8 pm? 10 pm? 4 am? Having an e-commerce ready website will allow your business to be open 24/7 since your clients will be able to place their orders on your website at their convenience.

4. Your business is now Googleable – Did you know that there are 1.5 billion searches conducted on Facebook (the largest social media platform in the world and most used in the Caribbean) but there are over 8.5 billion searches conducted on Google per day? Google is the most used website here in TT as well. Once you have a website, you will now be able to be added to the Google Index, so that when people are conducting searches for products or services that are within your niche, your business has the potential to show up.

5. Data collection – Your website once set up correctly with the appropriate tools, will be able to collect data on your audience for you. You will be able to allow for your audience to subscribe to your e-mail list, push notification list, your Facebook Pixel Pools and you will be able to review things like Google analytics for deep insights on the demographics of your audience and their behaviours when on your website.

As a bonus tip, there are courier companies that would also allow you to directly connect their delivery service to your website, so that once an order is placed on your website, they can also be notified and they can send over a driver to collect the package from your establishment for delivery.

It’s worth noting that even if you do not want to connect their service, or the courier company you decide to use doesn’t have a plug-in to connect the service to your website, you can always call them to send over their drivers to create the pick-up requests. Some companies also have online portals for you to schedule the pick-up request.

If you are looking to create a website, I would recommend looking into platforms like WordPress, Shopify and Wix, as our Caribbean gateways can connect to these platforms to accept credit card payments online. Each platform has different fees and levels of expertise needed to create the site but most importantly they can connect to payment gateways like Wipay or First Atlantic Commerce.

I hope these tips get you started on building the most important digital asset for your business, your website.

If you would like more tips and tricks to aid in building your digital presence, feel free to follow me over at Keronrose.com or follow me @Keronrose on Instagram/Linkedin/Facebook.