For all those with professional baking business do you find a website to be mandatory?
Mine is about $250 per year and I get maybe 1-2 people through it per month. All my business seems to come through my facebook page. I was thinking of giving up the website but I wanted to know what others thought about it?
You get 1-2 jobs from it per month or 1-2 people looking? If you're just breaking even on it you can let it go. If you are making a decent profit keep it. That's the bottom line.
For anyone with a professional baking business, a website is necessary for long-term control and success.
Today, Facebook is awesome and free. Tomorrow, and the day after that, we have no idea. Facebook is a business that constantly changes in their quest for higher revenue. It is not a reliable contact point for customer relations.
A website can be a hole you shovel money in or an asset. IF you have a website, it needs to be a) built well and b) constantly updated. Why do people visit your Facebook page and not your website? Have you asked yourself that question? And if so, what is your answer?
Your website should be the heart of your social presence. All your other accounts (Facebook, pinterest, youtube, instagram, blog etc etc need to be linked to your website. Every post should be linked to your website (f.e. read more here...). Any contact customers make with you in those other pages should be answered from your website. And most importantly your website needs to be informative and interactive. Newsletters, surveys, games, how tos, specials...do them on Facebook but LINK them to your website.
These days people check their Facebook accounts hourly or at least daily. Give them a reason to come to your website. It's so much easier to display prices, terms and conditions, list of flavours, make people fill forms etc. Why going through the pain and hassle replying to every Facebook message where people ask the same questions over and over again when they can get all the answers on a (good) website?
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