Do I (Really) Need A Website?

Short answer, maybe. Theoretically, you can already showcase your wares or talents at your physical venue or your social media platforms. And having a website costs additional time and/or money to create or to host. But it’s probably worth it to have a website.

Here are some good reasons to have a website, for your consideration:

1. Getting Business Emails
If you have a website and domain name, you can get a business email addresses. Quick question, which of the following looks like a valid business email account? james_microsoft@gmail.com OR james@microsoft.com

Both email accounts work just fine and are valid ways to communicate with clients. However, the latter is perceived as more legitimate by more people. Anyone can create a gmail account and name it sounding like any company for any purpose - potentially for fraud. But only Microsoft employees can have a microsoft.com business email account, which proves to customers that they’re the real deal.

2. Get More Legitimacy
Your potential customers and clients will look you up on the internet and social media. Having your website gives your company extra credibility. Unlike social media, it’s neither free nor trivial to create, so it shows you have will and resources and should be taken more seriously. All major brands, each and every one of them, without exception, have a website.

3. Ownership Of Online Identity
Your domain name is a valuable and critical piece of real estate, with the .com extension being the most valuable. It’s how people search for your company online. If you do not reserve your company’s name, someone else on the planet might. In addition, there are people who will intentionally “squat” on a domain name hoping to resell it to the “legitimate” owners. Registering a domain name, like kimbel.com, only costs $15/year. However, if someone is cybersquatting on it, acquiring it will usually involves a significant fee. In this case, $6,900!

We’ve had multiple clients who finally decided to buy their domain name for their website, only to find out that either another company or cybersquatter had already acquired it, so now had to go to their 2nd, 3rd, or more choice.

Another famous example is whitehouse.com. Most people assume it’s owned by the US government. It’s not. Initially it was a porn website, and it has since evolved to now be the “World's Most Famous Adult & Free Speech Site”, which probably surprises a lot of people. This shows the power of a good domain name that matches your brand.

4. Presentation and Features
Want to have cool, animated bubbles on your website that open different POCs?

Or do you want Yummydiet’s nutrition calculator?

Or do you want a website that has online exams and certifications, like Lampcc?

Or show your latest songs, tweets, and posts from your website, like JoshuaKimMusic?

These, and other custom features, are only possible when you own your own website, and allow you to differentiate you from your competitors.

5. Ownership On Online Content
99% of the time, you can post whatever you want on your social media

However, there are cases where you’ll want to upload a product, song, or service, and you cannot, because it violates their term-of-services (TOS), or their algorithm thinks it does.

Or you can find that your content has been taken down, sometimes by spurious DMC allegations, such as tutorial videos related to popular products:

Or worse, your account may be suspended (temporarily) or banned (permanently) for whatever reason.

Ultimately, these social media platforms are all privately owned, and they choose what’s allowed or not allowed on their platform. And these platforms don’t like playing with each other. Having your own central platform that you own can make sure your clients and fans will always find you

In addition, we can implement social stream, so that all your latest content will appear on your website. You can also post all different social media platforms together in one place.

For example, with AteDick.com, we automatically link their 6 latest TikTok videos:

And her 6 latest Youtube videos from her channel:

And her latest 8 Instagram posts:
 

7. Availability
Different social media are popular in different countries, and different people prefer different platforms. Some platforms are outright banned in some countries. Your website is a neutral platform available in all countries that everyone can access and find. Your company information can appear on different websites that catalog public information as well.

And your business will even appear on maps automatically, as these are based on website information.

7. Summary
So, do I (really) need a website? Definitely maybe. If any of these scenarios apply to you, please let us know and we'll be glad to help.