BusinessHABManage your Business Website: Being a successful business owner in today’s marketplace requires establishing yourself digitally.
In other words, you need a website! Think of your website as your digital storefront.
It is an extension of your business and gives you credibility.
Starting a website can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.
There are plenty of tools to help you get started and maintain your website.
Whether you do it yourself or hire a company to build and manage it for you.
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. You can request publication of your article for publication by sending it to us via our Email below. Click here to start business now with businesshab.com
Manage your Business Website
Below are some things to consider before you get started:
› What will be the purpose of my website?
› Do I need to sell products online and receive payment information?
› Do I need to take reservations online?
› Do I need to offer online quotes?
› How much do I want to spend on my website?
Creating a website has been simplified over the years.
Such that you don’t even need to write a single line of code in order to get started.
If you require a simple website.
Try some sites that offer templates and hosting like GoDaddy, Vistaprint, and Weebly.
Or if you want something completely custom and extensive.
You can hire a web design firm to create and manage your site.
Whether you chose to spend hundreds or thousands on your website.
Manage your Business Website
Make sure to invest extra to optimize it for your needs.
One of the main reasons to get a website is to connect and offer your goods and services at their fingertips.
There are many services out there that enable your customers to connect with you.
Whatever your business may be.
What is great about this connection is that, through these services.
It can become a two-way channel of communication, both simplifying your life and your customers’ lives.
Even with 90 percent of all consumers using online reviews as a major source of trustworthiness.
Small businesses are still dragging their feet in regards to cultivating a strong foundation of positive ratings.
Manage your Business Website
According to a survey of 300 hundred of these smaller shops across the nation.
50 percent put a significant amount of stock in the importance of getting reviews.
Over half didn’t even have a plan in place to ask for reviews.
All in all, it seems a bleak future for many startups.
The serious issue with ignoring reviews is that it ruins your business’ ability.
To build a reliable reputation in the face of competition.
With almost all customers now relying on reviews from others.
Manage your Business Website
It makes sense to assume that a mediocre competitor across the street.
Will bring in more business with great reviews and your lack of customer input.
Without a solid review system, you lose business.
You lose potential profits and you end up having to waste more money in marketing through other means just to grab the amount of attention that is garnered by a collection of reviews.
Top priority
Focus on building your review base by reaching out to previous and current customers.
Make sure that you’ve created accounts for your business on all the major review sites.
Beyond shifting the focus of your marketing.
You’ll also need to shift your company’s current mindset.
Do you not trust them? Do you think current review site systems are unfair?
Do you think they’re trying to scam you?
While it is a fact that there are businesses that pay off review sites to push negative reviews to the bottom, the majority aren’t that questionable.
Manage your Business Website
The only reason it would be unfair is if you asked for reviews and then failed to monitor and respond to them.
Remember, reviews are your lifeblood.
And you need to see them as necessary before you’ll treat them seriously.
On that note, in addition to asking for them and seeing them in a different light.
There are needs to be a process in place that tracks the ideas.
Complaints and compliments expressed in the reviews.
Though someone’s one bad time can’t really be fixed.
They may note some aspects of the business that can and should change.
Manage your Business Website
Many times, the customers serve as some of your best.
Unbiased eyes when it comes to finding potentially fatal flaws.
Beyond this, make sure both good and bad comments are addressed with equal concern.
Even if it is a bad review, a mature response will do a lot to calm the fire and potentially transform the customer that was going to leave into one that stays.
As you make the switch to a review-based frame of mind, there will still be some bumps in the road.
Luckily, there are some things you can be made aware of now to otherwise offset the pitfalls while teaching you just how to flourish in such a competitive landscape.
Even so, they’re not something that should be ignored.
More so than the positive reviews, be on top of these at all times.
Track every single site where your business can be reviewed.
If you find a negative response, address it but do so in a way that avoids compensation if the negativity revolves around a misunderstanding.
If you can’t make amends through talk, they’ll usually back off with some form of recompense.
Finally, when you respond, do so with the intention of fixing the problem.
Only then will your company continue to grow.
See also: Top 50 Booming Business with Less Capital in Nigeria
2. Positive reviews
Though you can stop after thanking the reviewer.
Why not take it a step further and broadcast their approval to your customers?
With most review sites integrated with social media.
There’s no excuse not to share great news through Facebook or Twitter.
Just remember to keep this relatively restricted as a flood of positive review tweets will soon overtake your brand.
Think of them more as highlighters than useful text.
Read also: Top 33 Internet Security Service Providers in Nigeria
3. Respond quickly
The top corporations of the world boast response times of mere seconds.
You, being a smaller company, don’t exactly have the capacity to perform such a feat.
Instead, work out a schedule that realistically fits the capabilities of those who monitor the reviews.
If you can get it under an hour, perfect.
If not, make it a goal to eventually get the response time down to that much during the working day.
Mobile customers find it flattering to know that their thoughts are being read in a timely fashion. It’s a way to show that you care.
See also: 16 Tips to Start Internet Security Services Business in Nigeria
4. Fake reviews
Sadly, there are those in the world that would stoop to the levels of creating fake accounts.
And then blasting your site with negative reviews.
If you suspect this is happening, the number one rule is to do a lot of research.
Though bad reviews aren’t fun, it can be a company killer to accuse a real poster of being a fake.
One of the biggest leads is a poster that has seriously cut into your business.
But then left an amazing review on a competitor’s site.
5. SERVICES TO ENHANCE PERFORMANCE
As a business person, consider joining a software service like Businesshab.com you to take reservations, acquire important customer data and flawlessly sync your business and the digital customer.
If you are a retailer and want to offer an e-commerce option, consider utilizing Shopify.
They offer an easy-to-use e-commerce software that you can purchase and use digitally and in your POS system.
Create your online store and open up your customer base exponentially.
Think about offering an appointment setting service on your website through Setster.com.
For your personal training business this can take all the hassle out of setting appointments yourself and keeping the proverbial books straight.
You can then access these appointments from your phone.
6. WEBSITE DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT TIPS
Keep it simple. The easier your webpage is to navigate the better.
People don’t want to spend time clicking around multiple times to find what they want.
On the main page of your website display your business name, logo, a photo and your contact information.
As we read from left to right it is best to keep this in mind when designing and inputting information.
Consider your name on the left and contact info in the upper right hand corner.
Business name, address and phone number are key to driving traffic to your physical storefront.
Display any sales or specials on your homepage and anything that makes you unique.
Use a bold, easy-to-read font and keep your paragraphs short and simple.
Content is king so be sure to map out the important points about your business and its story and make the customer feel comfortable and confident in your brand.
Since mobile technology is becoming more advanced, there is a good chance your website will be accessed on a phone or tablet.
Make sure your website is optimized for these platforms.
7. PROMOTING YOUR WEBSITE
In addition to just having a website you can update different websites that consumers often check when searching for you or your products.
These include but are not limited to, Yelp, Manta, Google pages, Facebook, and Linkedin.
By creating a presence on these websites you enable customers to find you more easily.
Provide reviews, include important information and ultimately lead them to your website or storefront.
Maintain a similar feel and look across all of these different sites to encourage brand synchronicity.
These sites enable you to engage with your customers in the digital space, you can post specials, respond to reviews, promote a sale or update changes in contact information.
You may want to consider purchasing advertising services for your website like SEO and SEM.
These are web based advertising platforms that enable customers to find your site easier and drive traffic to it
Manage your Business Website
SEO is short for search engine optimization.
It is a service that targets specific keywords on the back end of your site and pinpoints them in a search engine.
The more relevant your keywords are to the search, the higher your website will be listed in the organic results.
This usually requires a set monthly budget that can be adjusted based on your needs.
Manage your Business Website
SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing.
This is a pay-to-play space, so you will be charged a fee for each click that a consumer makes.
Depending on the keywords used and their popularity.
These can range from a couple of cents to hundreds of dollars.
This is based on choosing keywords that best represent your business.
And pushing the results to the top or side of the search page.
In a lightly shaded section above all organic results.
Conclusion:
Now that you have learned a little bit more about how to start and maintain your website you are ready to get started!
Remember that the most important thing about your website is that it reflect you and your business.
Have fun with it and know that anything about it can be changed simply with just a few clicks of the keyboard.
Don’t let yourself become part of 55% that doesn’t have a website, join the 45% and growing that do, and see your business flourish.
BusinessHAB