Growing an online business does not require spending thousands of dollars. Many aspiring entrepreneurs have limited budgets that make it difficult for their companies to invest heavily in advertising or recruit expert professionals.
The top 10 ways to skyrocket your online business are explained below.
- Select the Right Platform For Your Business
Always select the right platform for your business’ website. The recommended solution for small businesses is WordPress.org that is entirely free and has multiple plugins to expand its functionality. Selecting the wrong platform will make things complicated, and you may need to spend a lot of time maintaining your account rather than taking care of other aspects of your business. If your enterprise has more resources, you can recruit a web designer to build and support your custom website.
- Provide Multiple Options for Customers to Contact You
Providing multiple communication options such as mail and direct messaging to your clients is critical for growing your online business. Perceived customer service quality is essential for building a loyal consumer base. It is also recommended to add the communication channels that are getting popular in the market, such as Slack and Facebook Messenger.
- Focus on SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) remains one of the most effective ways to bring first-time visitors to a website. Focus on building a good SEO strategy from the first day of starting your online business. Unlike advertising, this method is cheaper and yields good results with minimal investments. The SEO strategy should also be scalable and work well when combined with other digital marketing tools such as email marketing and social media marketing.
- Build an Email List
Converting your first-time visitors to loyal customers can be very difficult at times. The most cost-effective way to achieve this goal is to build an email list. Physical mail was effective for gaining the attention of customers even before the advent of the internet. Many industry experts suggest that its electronic variant will continue to remain the preferred way for businesses to communicate with customers shortly. Start using email marketing aggressively and set up an account with some marketing automation service provider such as MailChimp to effectively maintain your mailing lists.
- Offer Multiple Options to Make Payments
When your consumers set their minds upon any product or service on your website, they must be able to purchase it with maximal convenience instantly. Offering multiple payment options such as PayPal and credit cards is crucial for growing your online business. Suppose you have many customers from the developing world. In that case, you should also offer such payment options as mobile wallets and ‘Cash on Delivery’ popular with buyers from developing countries, including China and Nigeria.
- Develop a Data-Driven Growth Strategy
The growth strategy of your online business should be data-driven and use free analytics tools such as Google Analytics to produce customer-related insights. Modern machine learning algorithms should also be deployed on your website. This way, you can check what works best for your marketing campaigns and monitor how your consumer database preferences and composition change with time.
- Develop Outstanding Content for Your Website
Content on your website should educate customers and make them aware of your products and services’ practical advantages. Post useful materials on your platform and update the associated blog regularly. A website that regularly posts new and quality content also has a better chance of being listed higher on search engines.
- Become Active in Online Communities
Online communities, including forums and Q&A websites, are the places consumers often visit to get answers to their product-related queries. Becoming active in popular online communities and answering the questions posed by potential customers will help you build trust towards your company and drive quality traffic to your website.
- Use Social Media Judiciously
Despite the current bad publicity surrounding social media, it remains a powerful tool for internet marketing. The judicious use of this instrument will help you create a buzz around your products and stay in touch with your customers. Unlike email marketing, social media facilitates two-way communication with your audiences. You can easily collect consumer feedback about your products and use it to grow your business.
- Optimize Your Website Performance
For many online businesses, their website is the only point of contact with customers. Hence, it must be continuously optimized in terms of speed, uptime, and user experience. Try to create a simple design for your platform that is easy for customers to navigate and make it more user-friendly. If you have a larger budget, choose the best provider possible and a managed hosting service to delegate the burden of maintaining your website to people with professional expertise.
Innovative thinking and careful planning can help you grow your online business phenomenally. When followed closely, the tips provided in this article will allow you to achieve these results while being on a shoestring budget, which may be crucial when you are just starting a small online business.
Anna Clarke is the owner of an online writing company, 15 Writers. She has over 20 years of experience in freelancing and academic writing consulting, specializing in Business, Economics, Finance, Marketing, and Management.
