You may be surprised to hear that small businesses missed out on huge dollar amounts last year. In fact, half of small businesses missed out on a potential $250 billion last year simply for not having a website. How could a lack of a website account for this massive of a number?

There are over 28 million small businesses and those with a website brought in over $250 billion in the first three quarters of 2015 due to having a website. This is shown through the fact that ecommerce sales in the US last year came out to this dollar amount which means businesses without a website couldn’t sell e-commerce products.

If you don’t want to miss out on profits like these again this year, make sure you get your piece of the pie by finally setting up that company website. With all of the time you spend online, you may as well use some of that representing your company on a website and social media. Take a look at how this could affect profits for 2016.

How websites are making small businesses money

While websites are great for e-commerce efforts, websites can also make company’s extra money by functioning as a marketing tool for new customers, helping to retain clients through blogging, and can increase sales by offering special promotions or online-only offers.

Setting up your products online for selling as e-commerce isn’t hard to do and it beats selling your items on auction sites or sites like Etsy. You can choose the design of the website, feature the best products first, and customize the whole experience for the buyers.

Why you may have avoided a website in the past

It’s important to look at why you may have skipped out on having a website in the past. Was it because you thought it was going to be too hard to set up or you didn’t really know how to run it? Perhaps you were concerned about the expense behind it.

Luckily, it’s not only easy to start and run, but it doesn’t cost much of anything. You’ll need to put in the time and energy, plus a small cost for things like domain names and hosting, but the return would be huge. Today’s technology allows you to use sites like WordPress to give you free themes, user support, and tons of great features to choose what you need depending on your industry.

When you run a blog on your website, you can share your content with your social media followers, giving your brand an online presence and a higher chance of finding new customers. Your current customers will remember you better and look at you as an industry authority, wanting to purchase from you in the future.

Packages for new websites

When you join a site that you will use as a blogging and website platform, you can get packages that make it really simple to get started. First, you’ll get your domain name which you need to create to make sense to your brand and to be easy to remember. You’ll need to buy website hosting and many packages may include this.

You’ll usually get website building software and support. You can get a customized email address too. Once you’ve done all of this setup, you can start working on adding different sections, like the “contact,” “about us,” and “FAQs” to make sure your customers can find everything they need. Update your blog posts once or twice per week and set up social media accounts to share them with followers.

You don’t want to miss out on potential profits this year just from neglecting to start a website. Set it up and once you get it done, you can start maintaining it by marketing to your target audience, writing great blog posts, and sharing with the world what your company is working on. Feature your new products and promotions and get the word out there so that your target customer base can find you. Before you know it, you’ll be improving your brand’s image, increasing sales, and gaining a larger customer base.