Whether you have a brand-new, baby business or a long-established business, your website is a powerful tool for introducing yourself to prospective customers.

The old go-tos for advertising are still effective but aren’t nearly what they used to be.

Thanks to streaming, fewer people are listening to the radio or watching cable or local-access television. Fewer people are also looking at phone books, reading newspapers and magazines or, thanks to COVID-19, even going to the movies.

To put it simply, things have changed.

It’s time to put less of an emphasis on these old-fashioned marketing strategies and find something that will work today. And, your website will be the crux of that strategy.

Regardless of if someone finds your small business on Facebook, Google or Yelp, they’re going to visit your website to learn more about your business.

It’s the central hub of everything you do to spread the word about your business online.

There are very few small businesses out there that can afford to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or that would even want to.

Small business owners are incredibly busy as it is. And, for every additional hour their business is open, it’s one less hour of sleep they’ll get or quality time spent with their family.

But, with the right website, your business can run (at least partially) all the time, whether you’re there or not. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about any expensive overtime!

Modern websites (like the ones you can build with the Websites 360® website builder) can do a lot more than you might think.

With the right website, your customers can:

• Schedule an appointment
• Find answers to their questions on your FAQ page
• Shop on your online store
• Register for a class
• Learn about your products or services
• Check out your class or event schedule
• Request assistance
• Sign up for your newsletter
• Pay their bill
• And more

Your website may never be able to fully replace you or your team. But, it can do a lot more than you might think, and it never rests or needs a sick day.

At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, a lot of businesses were facing very strict operating restrictions that forced some to either change the way they operate or close their doors altogether.

Some of the changes businesses have made in order to meet their customers’ changing needs and comply with restrictions have included:

• Reducing or changing hours
• Offering curbside pickup
• Offering delivery
• Making house calls
• Selling products online
• Offering digital services, like Zoom consultations or online classes

No matter what you’ve done to stay nimble and meet the moment, you need to a way to get the word out to your customers, and that’s where your website comes in handy.

Updating your website is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your customers are in the know about exactly what’s going on with your business.

COVID has had an impact on almost every aspect of operations for retailers across the country, from supply chain management to staffing and sales, forcing many to completely change the way they do business.

However, even though in-person retail has seen a sharp decline in sales during the pandemic, the silver lining is absolutely online sales.

E-commerce sales shot up during the pandemic and have continued to grow for the last nine months at the highest-recorded rate for that period in more than two decades.

With rising COVID cases throughout the country, it may still be a while before in-person business picks up to pre-pandemic rates. But, thanks to your website, you can keep making sales regardless.

For a lot of small businesses, the way they operate now doesn’t look a whole lot like the way they operated before the pandemic. Some have had to make small changes; while, others have had to completely change their business model in order to survive.

And, for many of those small businesses, their websites have played an integral role in making those changes possible.

Take a small restaurant, for example, that has had to close for in-person dining. Thanks to online ordering on their website, they don’t have to have someone solely dedicated to answering the phone, and they never miss an order due to a busy line.

A local gym may not have nearly as many regular members coming in, but they’ve stayed in business by renting out equipment, which members can reserve on their website, offering online classes and offering virtual personal training sessions.

Having a small business website has been a key piece of success for years, but for some small businesses, the right website has been a lifeline for survival during the pandemic.