{"id":1258,"date":"2014-06-05T14:26:56","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T18:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justaddcontent.com\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2021-01-24T00:04:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T05:04:52","slug":"why-half-small-businesse-no-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/why-half-small-businesse-no-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Why 50% of Small Businesses Still Don’t Have Websites (& How to Leverage This Opportunity)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Half of small businesses still<\/em> don’t have websites.  Why?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

41% of these businesses without websites say their business “does not need a website.”<\/strong>  This is a dismissal, not a reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digging deeper<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As you can probably guess, most small business owners without websites are not tech savvy.<\/strong>  They dismiss the need for a website because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • They don’t understand it and how it could help their business<\/li>
  • It seems too expensive, complicated, time-consuming, etc.<\/li>
  • They’re “doing just fine without it” or they’ve “never needed one before”<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Consider how much the internet has changed in the last 10 to 15 years: smartphones, tablets, Google, Facebook, Twitter, the slow death of newspapers, Amazon, etc.  It’s a different world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    76% of small business owners are over 45.  <\/strong>As we get older and busier, we fall out of touch with technology as we settle into our ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These changes are easy to miss if you’re busy running a business and most of your customers are repeat customers or referrals, but this is a deadly deception.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Just because things seem ok now doesn’t mean everything is fine.  That’s like jumping off a building and halfway down saying, “So far, so good!”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is how businesses die:<\/strong> they don’t see the need to change until it’s too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The real problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The “don’t need it” argument boils down to two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Lack of education:<\/strong> Not understanding 1) how a website helps a business, 2) how a website helps customers, or 3) the long-term negative impact of not having a website.<\/li>
    • Not easy\/affordable enough:<\/strong> Getting and maintaining a website (still<\/em>) isn’t fast, easy, or affordable enough for most small businesses to feel comfortable.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      As professionals in the web development community, this is a failing on our part.  So, how can we fix it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Need vs. want (enough)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      Almost half of small businesses without websites say they don’t need a website, but they really<\/em> mean they don’t want it enough<\/em>.<\/strong>  There’s a threshold where the want<\/em> for something surpasses the pain<\/em> (cost\/complexity\/time) of getting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I’d wager that 99.9% of small businesses<\/strong> claiming they don’t need<\/em> a website would change their mind<\/strong> if they could snap their fingers and have a fully built, maintenance free, zero cost, zero effort website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      No such thing exists (yet), but that’s not the point.  The point is that if it were easy\/cheap enough, they’d want one.  Now it’s just a matter of helping them want it enough<\/strong> to cross that threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      That’s where education, ease and affordability come in:<\/strong>  Education raises their willingness to get a website.  Making it cheaper and easier lowers the threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      WordPress and WordPress professionals are the answer to make it cheaper and easier.  As a WordPress professional it’s our duty (and our opportunity) to bring more businesses online for the first time and help them thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Half of small businesses still don’t have websites. Why? 41% of these businesses without websites say their business \u201cdoes not need a website.\u201d This is a dismissal, not a reason. WordPress and WordPress professionals are the answer to make it cheaper and easier. As a WordPress professional it’s our duty (and our opportunity) to bring more businesses online for the first time and help them thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12259,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/12259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitpress.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}