If you’re serious about building a business in 2019 and beyond, you need your own website. And no, yourbusiness.tumblr.com, yourbusiness.blogspot, or yourbusiness.wordpress.com don’t count.
If you want people to take you seriously, YOU NEED to take your business seriously.
Your own website with its own domain name (yourbusinessDOTCOM or exampleDOTNET) and web hosting are the minimum technical requirements for having a successful business in today’s world.
If your small business or side hustle is making solid $$$ without a website, your success is in spite of your lack of a serious web presence. NOT because of it.
To see exactly how having a website will benefit your business, keep reading.
3 Benefits of Having a Website For Your Small Business
While there are dozens of reasons your small business will benefit from getting a domain name and web hosting, here are some of the most notable…
#1 Building Trust
What do you think when you get a business card and it only has a link to that individual’s or business’s Facebook fan page or Twitter handle?
Good things?
Probably not.
More likely, you’re wondering how established that business really is. Having a website is a way of showing customers your business has its sh!# together!
Here’s an example to drive the point home.
You or someone you care about would like to get a prenuptial agreement before getting married. With the divorce rate hovering around 50% these days, a good lawyer and a bad lawyer could mean HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars down the road…
All else being equal, which website is more likely to inspire confidence in you?
PrenuptialLawyersDOTCOM
Or…
PrenuptialLawyersDOTwordpress.com
It’s not even close. You’d go with the first option every time. While not always true…
We all judge website’s competency based on their websites. Given this fact, it’s better you allow yourself to be judged positively by potential clients.
#2 Generating Leads
Your annual vacation was great… Except that the hotel was infested with bed bugs.
And everything was fine after you returned to work… except for the fact that you brought those pests back home with you.
Now, you’re facing a HUGE problem you’d be willing to pay LOTS of $$$ THIS INSTANT in order to solve it.
If any of your friends could give you a recommendation on a pest control company, you’d probably hire said company TODAY.
But, what if none of your friends have ever dealt with bedbugs? What do you do when there’s nobody that can give you a good recommendation?
You do the only logical thing… You type a search into Google!
That’s EXACTLY where having a website comes in for your business.
Having a website is an EXCELLENT way for your business to generate leads. While referrals are the best source of leads, it’s not always possible to get enough of them.
Having a website to generate leads along with getting referrals from happy customers are great supplementary activities that’ll keep your business thriving for years to come.
#3 Establishing Authority
Having a website is a great way to build authority. ESPECIALLY if you regularly update the website and produce new content.
Depending on your industry… maintaining a daily or weekly blog may or may not produce a worthwhile ROI for your business.
But…
Having a blog with solid evergreen content (content that is relevant both today and for years into the future) probably would.
When potential customers can educate themselves using your website, YOU become an authority figure to them.
They see you as an expert. What does that mean?
— Higher conversation rates.
— Higher willingness to pay premium prices.
— Higher likelihood of referring your business to others.
Now that you see the importance of having a website, let’s talk about YOUR website and the best web hosting for small businesses…
BlueHost — The Best Web Host For Small Businesses & Solopreneurs
(Note: This is a photo of Bluehost’s homepage taken while writing this post. Please visit Bluehost’s website for current pricing.)
Bluehost is one of the world’s oldest and most reliable web hosting companies. While the internet has thousands of web hosting companies, Bluehost is one of the top 20 largest web hosts by number of customers.
In fact, more than 2 million domains are hosted on Bluehost’s servers. That’s a lot!
Here are some of the services offered by Bluehost:
— Shared hosting
— WordPress hosting
— VPS hosting
— Cloud hosting
— Dedicated hosting
— WooCommerce hosting
— Domain services
As you can see, no matter which type of hosting your small business needs, Bluehost has you covered!
A Quick Look at the Competition…
I’ve dealt with a lot of hosting companies. From SETT, to HostGator, to WPEngine and finally Bluehost. Out of these four companies Bluehost has been by far my favorite. Here’s why.
Every other platform has a big flaw. A glaring weakness. Bluehost doesn’t.
SETT Web Hosting Review
Was definitely the most unique web host I’ve used. It has a great founder, and other friendly bloggers on its platform. Unfortunately, it’s just not popular enough.
This combines the with the fact that SETT hosting uses the SETT blogging platform. Because of SETT’s incompatibility with WordPress, that means you’re missing out on most of the Internet’s customizability and most powerful tools for your website.
Translation for non-techies: SETT is 100% usable for hobbyist bloggers, but it’s not powerful enough to be a TOP web host for small businesses.
WP Engine Hosting Review
Offers excellent support, and rapid response times. This can be great if you’re a newbie blogger or your small business doesn’t have anyone with good tech skills.
Unfortunately, WP Engine costs quite a lot for the performance it offers. The cheapest plan starts at $35/month. That’s 5x-10x what you’d pay for comparable performance from other companies.
Do quicker response times from your chats with support really warrant that increase?
If you’re a big corporation making thousands of dollars from your website each month — Yes.
If you’re a running a small flower shop downtown — Maybe not.
HostGator Web Hosting Review
Hostgator is almost as good as Bluehost. The only annoying thing about Hostgator is that they jack up all the prices after you’ve hosted with them for a few years! Gotta love rewarding customer loyalty! 😉
Unfortunately… this is standard industry practice. Many hosting companies, with HostGator being a notable example, offer you a cheap introductory plan for a year or two to lure you in.
After your first plan expires, they basically double the price because they think you’ll be too lazy to move from one host to another. Going from $5/month to $10/month isn’t the end of the world…
But, neither is transferring your website from one host to another. It’s just a small inconvenience.
After my first two years on HostGator came to an end, I decided having my web hosting plan expire would be a good opportunity to try a new web host. While I’ve never personally had any problems with Hostgator, a friend told me about a web host that was similar to Hostgator, but that would provide my site with better security.
That brings us to the…
Bluehost Web Hosting Review
For 1.5 years I’ve used Bluehost to host cameronchardukian.com as well as another website for one of my other businesses. During that time, I can’t think of a single thing to complain about.
Bluehost has reliably kept cameronchardukian.com online since I installed it. Well, almost… My site had a little bit of downtime when I switched from Hostgator to Bluehost, but that’s typical when you transfer a website from one web host to another.
Since then, my site has performed well. It’s FAST, and I’ve yet to see it go down. With Bluehost, I’m confident that if my site has any problems, their support will help me solve my problems quickly.
Plus, let’s not forget…
If you’re a small business or solopreneur, every penny counts! Fortunately, Bluehost’s web hosting packages are very affordable. In fact, I got three years of web hosting for this very website for just $99.
While, they’ll bump up my monthly payment a little bit after these three years, it’ll still be very cheap. For the performance I’ve gotten for my website, I couldn’t have asked for a better ROI on web hosting with Bluehost.
While I didn’t need it, another nice thing about Bluehost is that they’ll also give you a free domain (the name of your website) along with your purchase of your web hosting plan.
Sounds like a good deal?
It is. I purchased web hosting from Bluehost in 2017 for this blog, 2018 for another website, and in 2019 I’ll use Bluehost again if I choose to startup a 3rd website.
If your small business needs a reliable web host, check out Bluehost’s web hosting packages out here. Don’t waste your time searching any more. This is as straightforward of a decision as it gets.
If you are working for a big corporation that is sitting on endless piles of money, go for WP Engine.
Anything else?
Go Bluehost. You won’t regret it.
P.S. Bluehost includes a free domain (website name) with your hosting package.
If you already have web hosting, however, and you just need a domain, I recommend using Namecheap. to register your domain (website name). Namecheap is the safest, most reliable source I’ve found for domain names at a reliable price.