Why build a local business website on Drupal 8

If you have a local business — a restaurant, a bar, a dental clinic, a flower delivery service, a lawyer's office, or some other business — you will benefit immensely from a strong online presence. In this post, we will discuss why Drupal 8 is a great choice to build a local business website. Read on to see how numerous Drupal 8’s benefits will play in favor of your local business.

Some stats about why your local business needs a website

Local businesses once used to rely on word-of-mouth marketing. But the new digital era has changed the game. Customers widely use local Google search to find places, services, or products, they trust online customer reviews, and otherwise rely on the Internet for their decisions. 

So consider these stats about how things are going for local businesses in the digital world:

1. Users rely on search engines for finding local information. According to Google's study, 4 in 5 people do this.
2. Local searches are also very goal-oriented. The same Google’s study says that 50% of users who performed a local search on their smartphones visited the store within the next 24 hours. 
3. Mobile local searches are growing like crazy. According to Statista, the number of mobile local searches are forecast to reach 141.9 billion in 2019 compared to 66.5 billion in 2014. At the same time, the number of desktop searches will drop slightly (62.3 and 66.5 billion, respectively).
4. Smartphone shoppers love local search. Statista also shows that 82% of smartphone shoppers in the US have used their device for local search with the “near me” keyword as of 7/2018.
5. Customers read reviews for local businesses. According to the study by BrightLocal, 86% of people do this.

Reasons to build a local business website on Drupal 8

• SEO-friendliness with plenty of useful modules

First of all, local businesses shouldn’t miss their unique opportunity — they need to make the best of SEO. Google has special approaches to local search. When users search by adding a city name or the “near me” keyword, Google lists the best results near the top of the SERPs in a variety of rich ways. Among them:

1. the Knowledge Panel
2. locations on the Google Map
3. carousels with images, news, reviews, etc.

Moreover, users are able to get all the necessary information like your business hours, get your contacts, read a review, get direction, book an appointment, and so on, without even clicking to your website (zero-click SERPs).

How to get to these results? Among the recommendations are:

1. provide detailed information in Google My Business listing
2. have an optimized Knowledge Graph for your website
3. optimize content using local keywords
4. optimize content so it fits Google’s rich snippets
5. and, of course, follow overall general best SEO practices 

Here is where the Drupal 8 CMS can be your very helpful assistant. In addition to being SEO-friendly out-of-box, Drupal 8 has a wealth of useful SEO modules for various purposes. They include:

1. SEO Checklist
2. Metatag
3. XML sitemap
4. RobotsTxt
5. Real-time SEO
6. Pathauto
7. Redirect
8. Google Analytics

and many more.

• Content easy to manage

Unique and relevant content, regularly updated and optimized with local keywords is one of your most important local SEO secrets. The richer the content is, the richer it looks in Google local search results. In addition, trimming your content to fit Google’s rich snippets is the key to optimizing your website for voice search. 

In Drupal 8, it is easy to create, edit, and present content in attractive ways. Drupal 8 offers you:

1. quick edits directly on the page
2. the Media Library to easily enrich your content with images, videos, and audios
3. handy content previews
4. drag-and-drop page layouts with Layout Builder
5. Drupal Views grids, slideshows, and carousels for the attractive content presentation
6. content revision history
7. mobile-friendly admin interfaces
8. content moderation workflows

and much more.  
 

• Mobile optimization out of box

In addition to the above mobile statistics, we have a few more for you. The mobile share of organic search engine visits has reached 59% in 2019, versus 27% in 2013. So your successful local business absolutely needs a mobile-friendly website.

Here is where Drupal 8 wins hands down. It has been built around a mobile-first approach. The CMS features built-in modules for creating responsive web design — the Responsive Image and the Breakpoint. 

The responsive web design technique allows your website pages to adapt to any user’s screen by showing a different layout. The page elements resize, change their position, or disappear to provide the smoothest viewing experiences for everyone. 

• Multi-language to attract more guests

Let’s suppose you run local business in your country in your local language. Consider adding English as an international language or another language based on your touristic audience. See how you can attract your city guests as they use Google search.

Drupal 8 is the best option for multilingual websites and allows you to easily add as many languages as you wish. Drupal 8 supports a hundred of them out-of-the-box with the interface translations included. 

Thanks to Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative (D8MI), Drupal 8 has four powerful modules responsible for every aspect of translation. 

• High accessibility standards

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), 26% (1 in 4) adults in the US have some form of disability. This a quarter of your potential customers. Moreover, they are the ones who may need your local services more than others — for example, local delivery.

To be accessible to all users without barriers, your website should adhere to accessibility standards. Drupal 8 focusses on them and offers advanced accessibility features including the use of WAI-ARIA attributes, accessible inline form errors, aural alerts, obligatory ALT text for images, and much more.  

• Presence in multiple channels

Local businesses often benefit from the digital presence in multiple channels — imagine, for example, a pizza delivery mobile app connected to your website. 

Drupal 8 offers amazing opportunities to exchange your website’s data with third-party applications. It has five powerful built-in modules for creating REST APIs and sharing Drupal data in the JSON, XML, or other formats needed by the apps. 

• Easy social media integration

It’s no longer possible to successfully manage a business without a social media presence. Drupal 8 allows third-party integration with any systems, and social networks are not an exception. 

It is incredibly easy to add social media icons to your website pages, provide social share buttons for your content, embed social media feeds, and much more. Social media modules in Drupal 8 are very numerous and useful. 

Among them, Easy Social, AddToAny Share Buttons, Social media share, Social Media Links Block and Field, and many more. In addition, there are network-specific modules like Video Embed Instagram, Pinterest Hover button, Facebook Album, and plenty of others.

Social media posts can also be embedded in your content using the Drupal 8 core Media module as a basis. 

Build a local business website on Drupal 8 with us!

The above reasons to build a local business website on Drupal 8 are just a few of a thousand. Contact our Drupal team and let’s discuss in more detail how we can help your local business flourish!