If you\u2019re just starting your business you may be faced with some old-fashioned advice. One of the worst is \u201cyou don\u2019t need a website, just get out there and get clients\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that worked just fine back in 2008 but times change and if you haven\u2019t got a website presence in 2021 \u2013 then what kind of a business are you? Everyone checks out the website\u2026 I suppose we want to be reassured that you\u2019re real and your business is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve just this morning hired someone (to look at my horse\u2019s feet!) and she doesn\u2019t have a website! Seriously! I found a name online and she\u2019s local to me, but all the stuff written about her was back in 2013 or so. So I popped off an email with the only address I could find \u2013 and it turns out she IS<\/em> still in business \u2013 she\u2019s just lucky I\u2019m an internet sleuth and was able to track her down going years back! I bet she\u2019s missed out on a lot of business!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another lie you may be told is that you just need a Facebook page. Now I know we all use Facebook \u2013 in fact if you don\u2019t \u2013 I\u2019m wondering why you\u2019re even here or considering opening an online business! But Facebook selling pages are kinda weird\u2026 it\u2019s like sending your money off into the ether and hoping your goods arrive. There\u2019s no accountability, no face, name or address behind the sale \u2013 it puts the willies up me and there\u2019s no way I\u2019d part with my cash like that. How about you? Can you afford to hand over your hard-earned cash to someone who may or may not be legitimate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if you mean this \u2013 and when I say \u201cthis\u201d, I mean your online business \u2013 and you\u2019re serious about it \u2013 then you need to get serious about your website.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The best way to do this is to go all-in from the start and get a fully-customisable WordPress website. Because WordPress is open-source (that means it\u2019s been designed and maintained by a group of volunteers) there are no license fees or ongoing subscriptions to use WordPress itself. There are a myriad of plugins you can use for extra functionality and more than half the world\u2019s websites run on WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With a WordPress website you\u2019re totally in control \u2013 you own all the data and you won\u2019t need to hand over to an expensive designer \u2013 or even worse, the person who designed the website in the first place \u2013 because it\u2019s common software and so you don\u2019t need that one expert which saves you time and money and you won\u2019t be held to gunpoint by a rogue developer (unfortunately they exist).<\/p>\n\n\n\n By having a WordPress website you can easily collect leads (that means grow your email list) and make sales online with all those bits and bobs fully-automated so you can get on with running your business and not worrying about tech or having to manually handle sales and initial customer interactions. If you\u2019re just starting your business you may be faced with some old-fashioned advice. One of the worst is \u201cyou don\u2019t need a website, just get out there and get clients\u201d. Now that worked just fine back in 2008 but times change and if you haven\u2019t got a website presence in 2021 \u2013 then what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"You Need a Website for Your Online Business","_seopress_titles_desc":"By having a WordPress website you can easily collect leads (that means grow your email list) and make sales online with all those bits and bobs fully-automated so you can get on with running your business and not worrying about tech or having to manually handle sales and initial customer interactions.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexsheach.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
**Update April 2021. WordPress’s closest competitor has come on in leaps and bounds since I first wrote this blog – and I would now also recommend SquareSpace for having GREAT functionality and ease of use if you’re not a techie!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"