Why It's Important to Have a Website
by Colleen Beeson

Every vendor knows they need a website, but with all the pressures of running the day to day operations, its hard to find the time to get one started. When you think about all of the things that you need to do, it's easy to not spend time on this. If you have two machines to clean and another to install, creating a website could be hurting your business. Easy decision, right? Yet, what most venders don't realize is how not having a website could be hurting their business. First of all, are people going to walk by your place of business? Not likely. They will instead likely find you online:

The main reason that it is important for businesses to have a website is how people are likely to find you. These days most people will go online and research products and companies before they make a purchase, if you don't have a website you are missing out on all of this potential business. Even if people don't buy your product online they are still likely to research it online so you have to have a website so these people can learn about your business.

When I can't find a company online it raises a red flag. Do you want your potential customers thinking things like: "Does this company really exist?, "Do they have the things I want or even, "How do I get into contact with them?". With scams popping up everywhere these days, people are more skeptical than ever. More and more customers are putting their trust in companies with a web presence;


Even when consumers don't purchase online, they research and look online before they buy. In fact, 58 percent of global online consumers said they more likely to trust a company with "owned media", such as a company with a website, versus one who doesn't (Nielsen Advertising Survey, 2012).

Additionally with internet coverage expanding to most of the U.S, and the popularity of smart phones there are few people not using the internet. Therefore, businesses with websites have a significant advantage over those who don't:

If you're looking for an audience, more customers, or people to influence, the web is where your business needs to be. With over 78% of adult Americans using the Internet and an astounding 2.2 billion people online worldwide, it's no surprise that small businesses with websites experience an average of 39% greater revenue per year than those without websites.

If these figures seem a little abstract for you, consider this cases study where a small business makes the transition from traditional forms of advertising their business to online marketing:

Van Beek’s Garden Supplies started in business in 1962. The company realized that most of their business was being driven by internet marketing and began questioning the worth of traditional print media, especially Yellow Pages advertising.

They decided to test the Yellow Pages results by having a unique tracking phone number inserted into their Yellow Pages ad. This experiment proved to them that they were getting very little value from the $60,000 that they were investing annually for multiple print directories.

Here is the actual comparison of yellow pages traffic compared to Google traffic, evaluating 4 and a half years of data for the Van Beek’s website: approximately 236,000 visits from search engines compared to about 3500 visits from the Yellow Pages.

Do the math and you will see that they get 6742% more search engine traffic than Yellow Pages traffic. Where would you choose to invest your marketing?

As you know, potential customers have a lot of options when it comes to choosing a vendor. They aren't going to look into every option. That would take a lot of time, and their time is valuable. Unless your customer is coming to you from a referral, how can they find you? The traditional approach is to invest in marketing with the yellow pages. For years they were the leader in sending traffic to small business. The new approach is to have a website. Which one sends more leads to you? Many other vendors have been asking this question and been investigating the results.

Where do I start?

If you don't know about creating websites, check out our article on how to create a vending website.

Colleen shoots and edits the Vending How videos. As a former route driver, she understands the ins and outs of vending. Prior to Vending How she did Business Development at an internet start up.

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