The World Wide Web has been around for 30 years. Amazingly, almost half of all the small businesses out there still don't have a website! If you are an entrepreneur, whether you are looking to compete with the big guys, small-town competitors, or just want to join the 21^st century, here are three reasons you need a website.

You Want to Acquire New Customers

What business isn't interested in customer acquisition? People used to rely on the yellow pages to find what they need, but the landline telephone and print phone books are dying. Nowadays, people — especially younger people — are accustomed to using the internet to find the goods and services they want. They let their fingers do the walking across their keyboards. If you don't have a website, they won't be finding you — they'll be finding your competitors instead.

You Want To Educate Your Customers

Some products and services are very involved. They can be complicated to explain. You and prospective customers both may not have time to spend on the phone explaining a product's features and benefits or all the services you provide. Print marketing collateral, such as brochures, are expensive to produce. A website gives your customers what they want, which is the ability to privately learn about your business on their timeline with no direct sales pressure from you.

Adding a blog to your website will also work to your advantage in another way. In addition to attracting new customers and educating prospective and current customers, a blog that is regularly updated with new material will increase your search engine ranking. This means that over time, your business will gradually move up the page in search results, making your business even more visible to prospective customers. And if writing web content isn't your area of expertise, you can hire someone to do it for you.

You Want To Conduct Business 24 Hours A Day

When you lock the doors each night or on Friday evenings, your business comes to a halt. If a customer wants something, they need to wait until you are open again. When you have a website, however, business transactions can occur any time of day or night. With a website, you can have an online catalog and marketplace to sell your products. People can sign up for your services. They can even schedule appointments to come in. For example, if you own a salon, your website can include integrated scheduling software that allows your customers to schedule their own haircut without ever picking up the phone.

Contact a website development service for more information.

Share