Small businesses are booming today thanks largely in part to the recent growths in eCommerce. Today, within a couple of months, the typical eCommerce store can stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
It all depends on if the small business plays their cards right. And there’s no better way to tap into these rich online shopping markets then building a stellar online presence.
Why is that?
There are an overwhelmingly amount of people online around the world today. Almost half the entire global population is linked to the internet somehow, whether it’s through email, social media, casual browsing, etc.
With so many potential customers waiting on you, here’s how you can meet them best with an exceptional online presence:
Building a Professional Online Presence for Your Small Business
An online presence is basically the accumulation of everything digital or online about your business. Your presence is determined by everything from your customer following to your internet marketing choices.
Company and product reviews, service pages, blogs, social media posts–these all contribute to your online presence. You’ve got to balance them all out and keep up a positive image to reach customers in the digital age.
If you’re looking for a place to start, it’s right here.
Know Your Target Market Better than Anyone
This is the be-all-end-all to the success of your small business. The target market is the whole reason you got into the business in the first place (reaching the people that will buy your product).
The trick to setting up an incredible online presence is to know your audience better than anyone and how to reach them best.
Do you know how old they are, or where they are? Do you know what trends they follow and what sites they visit online? Do you understand their spending budgets and shopping preferences?
You should.
Before you do anything else, you’ve got to narrow down your market to a very specific group. Understanding this market will determine how you reach them, what design choices to make, where to meet them online and more.
Create An Incredible Website That’s User-Friendly
A website acts as your digital storefront to online visitors. Here, they can feel the company out, shop for interesting products or services, and leave without making a single purchase. It’s up to you to rope them in while they’re here.
An “incredible website” won’t look the same for every company. The most attractive and successful music store website won’t look or function the same way as a top-notch lawyer office’s. But it will have some similar pages, including:
- An attractive Homepage
- A straightforward Contact Us page
- An informative blog
- Product or service pages
Once you have a visitor (or customer) to your website, you’ll want them to stay as long as they can and return on occasion. One of the best ways to do this is to make your website extremely easy to use.
Navigational bars that keep pages in a nice, orderly fashion will help visitors move between pages with ease. Avoiding long blocks of text will also encourage visitors to keep reading. An attractive design will make them want to keep looking around.
You might want the help of design professionals to pull off a great website. If so, you can learn more about stellar design from companies like Higgens Media.
Optimize Content and Follow Best SEO Practices
Your online content (whether it be blogs, landing pages, campaigns or something else) has to be optimized to maximize results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing content to return higher up on search results.
Google crawlers scour the internet looking for resourceful information that matches up with what people are searching for. Searchability and how the crawlers index your site certainly affects your online presence.
If no one can find you or your product when they need it, how will they ever make a purchase?
Optimize your content by implementing keywords and phrases in your content and following best SEO practices. (A quick Google search will teach you more).
Get Involved with Social Media
Social media has connected people with people and people with products like nothing else in the digital age. Keeping up with friends and family is simple; sharing ideas is even simpler. And many people frequent social media every day.
This is an excellent opportunity, then, for you to meet your audience and convert them into loyal customers.
Investing in sidebar ads and creating a business profile where you post regular content will help drive up sales and enhance your online presence.
Each social media platform requires something different to impress users. Leverage this by doing a little market research and seeing how people use these platforms.
Track Progress and Always Look for Ways to Improve
The internet is changing dramatically every year, so you have to keep up with evolving trends to be successful. Whether that’s tapping into viral videos or working on your own series of memes, your online presence should keep up with the times.
Track your progress from the beginning so you can detect subtle changes that make all the differences in sales. Which of your landing pages are most visited by users? What social media posts have the most likes?
You should also consider A/B testing on landing pages and other marketing material. This essentially means running two similar campaigns and figuring out which choices resonate the most with your audience.
Online auditing tools or website auditing walkthroughs that help you pick apart your website are excellent resources for improvement.
Also, don’t forget to look at your competition and use their work and success or failure to better your own small business.
Resources for Your Every Professional Need
Perfecting your online presence isn’t a simple task, and it takes a lot of time and dedication to get right. Keep up with the evolving online trends and keep an open line of communication with your customers for best results.
Looking for more insightful articles from the industry professionals? Check out the other articles and resources in the Find A Business That blog!