Don’t Put Your Eggs All in One Site

On October 4, 2021, time stood still. 

Well, not quite.

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down, taking much of us with them. It was the longest outage since 2008, and it seemed like it was never going to end. But it did. And our lives went back to normal, filled with mindless scrolling and posting our pumpkin spice lattes as autumn creeps on. 

What if it was worse? What if those sites never came back? Would your small business survive?

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Site

We talk a lot about different social media sites as tools for your small business, but they are just that; one tool in your arsenal. When you rely solely on one of your tools, you are missing out on potential success elsewhere. 

When Facebook went down, were customers able to still find you online? NBC News reported of a small business owner in Burnsville, Mississippi, who frantically printed 250 flyers to post all over town just to keep his farm store and nutrition club going during the six-hour outage. Bay Area small business owner and full-time college student Cassidy Cunha saw a full day of profits of around $300 disappear because she couldn’t rely on Facebook and Instagram on Monday. Jewelry designer Alex Rankin typically sells around 25 handmade rings on a busy day, but on Monday, October 4, 2021, she sold zero. 

Those are just three examples of people without websites who saw significant loss and total panic because two major social media platforms went down for a quarter of a single day. 

Don’t Lose Money You’ve Worked Hard For

Without an accurate and up-to-date website for your business, you are leaving money on the table every single day. We’ve talked about this in the past, yet we still see so many small businesses in Southeast Missouri without a website, leaving them vulnerable to outages and misinformation. 

You’ve already put in hours, months, even years of hard work building your small business and watching it grow. By not having a website, you’re basically taking all of your work and stating it’s not important enough to share with the world. Additionally, having a website that isn’t optimized for search engines or has incorrect data on it is almost like not having one at all. 

Don’t Worry About the Investment

Having a website for your small business is just as important as having a phone number or a product/service to sell. As with anything, there’s a cost for a website— through both time and money. The good news is that you get to decide how much time and money you want to invest in your website because there are so many options out there. 

Options 1: You could go with a template-based website, which might be lower in initial cost but likely higher in your time spent building, designing, writing, optimizing and hosting all while only having certain elements to work with and sparse customer service. 

Options 2: You could go with a custom website that is higher in initial cost but lower in your time spent because you don’t actually do the building, designing, writing, optimizing and hosting, all while having complete control on the look and functionality. You also have a sales team to work with as well as a design team, development team, copywriters and SEO experts working to ensure your website shows up even when Facebook doesn’t. 

The decision is yours, just as was the decision to start your own business. Our team at Rooted Web takes the time to learn about the wants and needs of each client we take on, bringing our extensive knowledge and expertise to the table. Who we are isn’t as important as what we do. And what we do is create beautiful, unique websites for those hard-working small business owners who know the difference between Option 1 and Option 2. Let’s chat!