Do You Need a Website?
The question is simple, and legitimate in the age of Facebook: why do you even need a website? If a company has a Twitter account and five-thousand followers of Facebook, is there even a point to having a website? And what about all that money you will spend?
First the obvious; people go to Facebook to catch up with friends, not to be sold to. They want to read cute dog memes and watch funny cat videos. They are not there to see an ad for your business.
Second; you have little control over your Facebook page. If fact, it’s not your page at all: it’s blue & white because thats Facebook’s colors, not yours. You want a directions page with a big map? Maybe… Want a store? Want control?
Third; people expect to be sold on a website. They know you will ask for the order and thats OK there but not on your Facebook page. Facebook is at the top of the Sales Funnel (lecture 4.1) and the website is much further down. The visitor has different expectations.
A final thought: what are you going to do if you need to reach out to tourists but your Facebook page doesn’t rank? Now, if your website doesn’t rank, you have a great number of options (all of Section 3) and you can work the issue until you are satisfied. If your Facebook page doesn’t rank, well, you can buy some backlinks and play with the text but that’s more or less it. It’s not your page and you will not be changing the PHP/HTML code.
So, we are interested in Spaced Repetition & the Sales Funnel. We want multiple points of contact and each of these has a job to preform so we will need to Social Media and a website to accomplish everything we want to do.
Video Transcript
Behind me is the Kuleli and she
comes from Istanbul. This is where the
natural gas on our little island comes
from. The ship comes by about once a week or
so and she's getting ready to leave
right now. Came late yesterday afternoon
and just over there a small pilot boat
and the pilot has boarded the ship. I
heard the anchor coming up a few minutes
ago. So she'll leave in just a moment.
Lesson 3.1 is all about
websites. And why do you need a website
in the age of Facebook?
question of do you need a website, is
something that has evolved really over
the last 10 years. You know, 10 years ago
there was no question about it but today
we have Twitter and you have Facebook.
And during this time do you still need a
website? And I'm going to answer yes. But
remember back at the beginning of this
course description I said, I'll try to
explain things to you and explain why
and hopefully you can decide for
yourself what's important. You see, in an
age of Twitter and Facebook, people
expect social media sites to be all
about what their friends are doing. You
don't go to Facebook to shop for cars.
Well at least most of us don't. And so if
you're on Facebook, you're wanting to
find out what your friends are doing. You
know it's important to note that you can
have things on your website that you
cannot have on a Facebook page. Consider
this: You can have not just directions but a
complete map page so that the folks from
out of town can find your place of
business when they arrive. You can also
have things like the specials, and a good
contact us page. Those things, while
technically possible on a Facebook page,
you really need to know what you're
doing to install the apps to get those
types of things to work on your Facebook
page. Also what are you going to do if
your Facebook page does not rank well?
Consider this, you have no website: you
have no fallback position. I got a number
for you: the number is 38. That is how
many websites the average family visits
before booking their vacation. And by the
way, ninety-seven percent of these
families have at least one family member
doing the research before they leave and
normally that family member is Mom. And
mom is the decision maker. Think about
this: if folks are booking the hotel room
before they leave and they're booking
the major shows, the big money is being
spent before the car pulls out of the
driveway. If you don't have a website,
that means you're fighting over the
scraps, the leftover money. Also if they
buy that ticket on your website before
the car leaves the driveway, it doesn't
really matter how many billboards they
pass on the way into town. You've already
got your money and you can be assured
they are going to walk into your
establishment. I wanted to talk to you
about one last thing before we wrap up
this particular lecture and that is
having a mobile version of your website.
This topic is so important it's going to
receive its own lecture a few
lessons from now. But for right now I
just wanted to make you aware of folks
are coming to town, they're tourists and
they're using their smartphones.
Obviously; you can't carry a 27-inch iMac
with you, so they're using their
smartphones. Google knows this and
searching on smartphones is so important
now, Google is actually penalizing
websites that do not have
mobile-friendly versions of the site. So
you really need this in order to show up
in search and folks who are coming to
town are finding things like where to go
next, and where they're going to have dinner
tonight. Did you know "restaurants near me"
is one of
most common searches on Google? So you've
got to be in that ballgame if you want
to be successful. Especially with tourists,
because they don't know where they're
going to have dinner tonight. By the way,
it's not necessarily tonight. The average
delay is one point seven days between a
search and when the customer actually
walks through your door. This is
terribly important and I really want you
to be aware of it. Now, coming up in our
next lecture, it's going to be the Home
Page. Notice we're really starting to get
into the nuts and bolts of marketing.
You've done a good job if you've watched
all these things up to this point. I hope
you stay with it I'll see you soon bye
bye.
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