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Growing Your Small Business Online
Growing Your Small Business Online
More and more consumers are going online to research and purchase goods and services. From booking accommodation, researching travel destinations, buying music and clothing to ordering flowers and finding real-estate, the internet is fast becoming a mainstream destination for consumers. This trend represents a world of opportunity to generate new revenue, grow your business online and capture new customers.
Build an effective website
Your website is your online business shop-front and one of the most valuable business and marketing tools available to you as a business owner. Your website should be professional in appearance, clearly communicate your business and brand values and offer a user-friendly experience to your website visitors.
Things to consider:
- Usability. Ensure your business website is easy to navigate. Content and information should be organised in a logical manner and easily accessible from the home page.
- Look and feel. Your website directly reflects on your business and brand image. Ensure that your website has a professional appearance and accurately represents your business and brand personality.
What to do:
- Research other online businesses
Analyse other successful internet businesses and websites, including your competitors. Identify the key characteristics that make them effective and easy to use.
- Engage web professionals
Harness the expertise of professional web developers and designers. Brief them on your online business objectives, brand values and customer attributes.
Engage site visitors
Generally speaking, you have less than 3 seconds to capture the interest of a visitor to your business website which means your website must be visually interesting with compelling, well-written copy that is both enticing and easy to read.
Things to consider:
- Dynamic content – consider integrating video, animation or other dynamic content into your homepage design to capture interest.
- Copy – copy should be concise and engaging. Use strategies to break up text including sub-headings and bullet points.
- Calls to action – provide clear ‘calls to action’ to direct and motivate visitors. For example, ask site visitors to sign up for your e-newsletter, ‘buy now and save’ or click to view your online catalogue.
What to do:
- Identify key communication objectives for your website
What do you want your visitors and customers to do? How do you want them to feel about your business?
- Write compelling web copy
Write compelling copy that serves your core communications objectives and motivates site visitors to ‘act’ in some way.
- Engage an online marketing expert
An online marketing specialist can help you with strategies to capture customers when they visit your website.
Optimise your website for search engines
Optimising your business website for search engines like Yahoo! and Google is an essential online marketing strategy to drive prospective customers to your site. If your business website is optimised for search engines, it simply means that when a prospective customer searches for particular key words relating to your business, your website will be ranked higher in their search results.
Things to consider:
- Key words - integrate key words and phrases in the text of your website that your potential visitors might search for online. Repeat keywords and phrases several times throughout your web pages.
E.g. If your internet business is an online babysitting service based in Sydney , your business website should include terms such as “babysitting” “babysitting service” and “Sydney babysitters”. These key words should also be embedded in the meta tags for each page on your website.
- Content updates - Major search engines use complex algorithms to rank the popularity of websites and one of the ranking criteria is based on the frequency of new content updates. To boost your search engine rankings, add new content and regularly update existing content on your web pages.
What to do:
- Engage a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) expert
A Search Engine Optimisation professional will be able to help you identify the most effective key words and phrases to ensure your site is optimised for major search engines.
- Integrate key words and phrases
Once you’ve identified the most relevant key words and phrases, integrate them into the text for each of your web pages.
- Host a BLOG
Like an online diary, a BLOG allows you to post brief entries on a regular basis which will help you boost your ranking with search engines.
- Integrate other dynamic content
Post current news or events to your website, add articles of interest, new press releases, or other timely content to your website to improve your search engine ranking.
Publish an e-newsletter
Publishing an e-newsletter is a cost-effective way to reach your target market. An e-newsletter allows you to get repeat exposure with your customer base, announce new products, promotions, services or events, and help to build brand loyalty over time.
What to do:
- Offer an incentive to subscribe
To boost subscription to your e-newsletter, offer a discount, competition entry or other benefit as an incentive for customers and prospects to sign up.
- Provide links to your website
Provide embedded links to relevant sections of your website or online catalogue from your e-newsletter to drive traffic back to your website and stimulate e-business.
Utilise pay per click
One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and boost business is through a pay-per-click campaign.
Pay-per-click essentially allows you to bid for top placement in search engines results and pay a fee for each click through to your site. Bids start as low as ten cents per click and can be as high as several dollars for popular keyword terms.
What to do:
Find out more information about pay-per-click campaigns with the major search engines.
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