Hello, and welcome to the Midlife Business Show with Suzanne Mountain. This is the podcast that celebrates all those of us who are building a business during our middle years. I’m an ex corporate girl who started my business six years ago in my fifties. And I’m loving it. This podcast is here to inspire you with conversations with other entrepreneurs about the messy and magical ups and downs of this period of our lives. Plus, I’ll be sharing simple, actionable step by step strategies to help you build a business with impact and a life that you love

Suzanne (00:43):

Hello, I want to talk to you about websites. Now, when people book a call with me for the first time, one of the questions I ask them is, Do you have a website? And I then go and have a look at their website to understand what their business is and how it’s working for them. Many, many times when we actually get on the call, I find out that the individual I’m talking to has a website but isn’t clear who their ideal client is. Often they’re not making regular sales, and yet they’re investing money in a website. And quite often I see a discrepancy between the images I see on social media and the ones that I see on the website. So I thought it would be worth me talking to you today about three reasons why you don’t need a website, and then to show that I’m not anti website.

(01:47):

Three good reasons to have one. So having a website isn’t something that you should rush into without getting a deep understanding of who your ideal client is and what problem you are solving and how you are going to solve that problem. So what services does your ideal client want to buy? Start there rather than necessarily with what do you want to offer? Creating an effective website can be hard work, and rest assured it’s not once and done. I remember back in 2016 when my first website went live, I remember thinking, Great, I’ve done that. Tick that box, I can move on. Now, my website is currently just about to go through a refresh, and I think it’s probably been through four or five iterations since that original one, so almost one a year. So it’s not something to rush into because your website needs regular updates and it needs a refresh to keep it looking fresh and on message and on brand with new photos.

(02:54):

And let’s be honest, Google rewards us for mixing things up. So the first reason why you don’t need a website, and certainly not when you are in the early stages of your business, is the cost. So good website is a cost. It’s an investment of money that you make in your business. And if you are not bringing in income, you should not be spending it on a website. That’s not the first thing to do. Now, I know that many templated web builders offer free or low cost websites, however, they’re not always the best option. And doing it yourself without any guidance from someone who knows what they’re doing can end up being time consuming and also expensive. The time involved in personally building your site is an indirect cost to your business, and the monthly charges for hosting and domain registrations, et cetera, can all start to add up when you don’t have any income coming in.

(04:03):

The second reason why you don’t need a website, this is around appearance. So your website needs to not just be functional, it also needs to look good. First impressions count. The look and feel of your website conveys your credibility as a professional business. It needs to be easy to navigate on brand with good copy and professional images. If you are not in a position to provide those things, it’s best not to have a website and to use other things instead. The third thing is time. Now, room wasn’t built in a day and neither should a good website be. Quality websites take time. It takes time to write the copy in your client’s language and to make sure it’s clear who you are and what the problem you are trying to solve. If you try and rush it, then you will not end up with something that’s worth having.

(05:09):

So those are three reasons why you don’t need a website, and certainly not in the first instance. You can very much launch your business and operate for the first year also, or even more with using social media, email marketing, Google Documents and those other tools to promote your business, to create your services and sell your services and make sure that you are getting your language right and you are getting your offers right before you invest in the website. Now, I promise that we’d look at the alternative. The three good reasons you should have one. So now I’m gonna talk about them. The first one is you don’t own your Facebook page or Instagram profile. What happens if one day Facebook decides that it’s not gonna support small business owners anymore and that you cannot have your business on all those followers that you’ve built up?

(06:11):

Potentially you’ve lost the opportunity to communicate with them. As an aside, this is why you should always have an email marketing list and you start that before you have a website. This past week, Instagram accidentally deleted thousands of profiles, and I dunno if you are aware, but certainly on Twitter, there was a fair bit of panic and complaining going on from people who had seen their Instagram accounts just disappeared. They’d gone to have a look to see how their latest post was doing and found that it said their account had been disabled. Now, this was an error on Instagram’s part, and they did what they could to get it rectified quickly. But imagine if that had been a change of policy. Imagine how you would feel if you’d invested years in building your Instagram or Facebook following only to find it taken away from you.

(07:07):

Just like that. And sadly, it does happen. So having a website makes sure that you’ve got that online presence where people can find you if they need to. The second reason that’s a good reason to have it is Facebook and Instagram have such engine optimization. So SEO limitations, 3.5 billion daily queries are made on Google, 3.5 billion. Can you imagine that? So Google is one of the primary places that people go to find things they want. You can make sure that you optimize your website to be found on Google using such engine optimization, using seo. And 46% of searches on Google have a local intent. So people are looking for local things, local services, local places. So if you have a website and you have spent some time on seo, you can be found locally, people can find you, and then they’re more likely to purchase from you.

(08:25):

So that’s the second reason why it’s good to have a website. And the third one is if you have a good looking website, it looks more permanent and credible, you have complete control over the look and feel of your website. You can make sure that it’s easy to navigate. You don’t have to obey the rules of the other social platforms. You can lay out how you want it. You can fully brand it in your colors. You can make sure that it uses your fonts. You can think about your customer journey and where you take them from and how you lead them through your website. And of course, you can connect it with the Google Search Console and Google Analytics and look at the data as to how people are finding you, how long they’re spending, what pages they spend time on. And that really helps you go back and tweak your website and make it more impactful, make it what people want so that you can sell more of your services.

(09:33):

So that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. If you are new to business or not making any money yet, then don’t spend your precious money on a website at this point. Yes, there will come a time when your business absolutely needs a brilliant website that does you proud, but in the early days, that does not need to be your priority. Your priority needs to be getting clear on your ideal client, getting your message clear so that your clients are attracted to you and want to work with you finding out the ideal products and services that they want to buy and at what prices. And when you’ve got those things and you know about those things and you are making some consistent money in your business, then think about a website. That’s all from me this week. I’ll be back to talk to you again next week. Take care of everybody. Bye for now. Okay, that’s a wrap for today. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate and review the Midlife Business Show. And if you’ve enjoyed it, tell your business buddies all about it. Bye for now.