How to make sure the internet is working for you
As a small business technology consultant, I’ve seen many things that can impact the success of a small business. Today almost all businesses need to have an online presence usually in the form of a website and several social media pages (such as Yelp or Facebook etc.). This online presence is the front face of a business and often the first thing customers see.
However, the question is whether your website and social pages (or lack thereof) are helping or hurting your business. If customers or clients have a bad experience with your website or social media, they are not likely to engage your business. It is too often the case that small businesses have an online presence that is driving many potential and even existing customers away.
First let’s look at how your online presence can help your business and what that looks like.
An effective online presence
A businesses online presence rests on its website as the digital location for the business. For a website to be effective it needs to be well-designed, responsive, up to date and secure. Well-designed means that the look and feel should reflect your brand and give an impression of your business people will remember. The information you want to communicate should be presented clearly and drive visitors attention to the outcome you are intending.
Sites also need to be up to date so customers can find the information they need to engage your business quickly. None of this is of any value if your site is not well maintained meaning it is fast and free of glitches and secure from malware. Finally, it needs to be responsive meaning it works well and looks good across all types of devices and screen sizes.
For social profiles they should be linked from your website so people can find them with links back to your website from each one. In this way all your online pages are cross linked and support each other. All information should be kept up to date including location, contact info, hours of operation, closures and holidays and general business information visitors may be looking for.
If one has an online presence that follows these guidelines it will be of great benefit to your business and help improve reputation, customer satisfaction and retention.
How your online presence can hurt your business
Unfortunately, the reality is many small businesses do not have an effective online presence which hurts them in ways they might not be aware of. There are two primary ways your digital presence can hurt your business. One is website design and functionality and the other involves updates.
When I work with small businesses the most common issue I am hired to deal with is either building a website or redoing or updating an existing one. The reality is many businesses have websites that are literally detrimental to their success for the following reasons.
The biggest one is poor design meaning that the look and feel does not reflect the business and may not be aesthetically pleasing to visitors. A recent study found that 94% of web users consider design as a leading factor in their impression of a business from its website.
Design is more than just the aesthetics. It also involves layout in terms of the website being structured in a way that displays information leading to the outcome desired such as a customer coming to your business, buying a product on your store or contacting you about your services.
If visitors can’t easily find important information on your site, they are much less likely to engage your business. Things like broken navigation links, unfinished pages with no content and lack of business related information such as hours and contact info really look bad for potential customers and can frustrate them which is not the impression you want.
A website needs to work perfectly on any device as well. If it looks good on a laptop screen it needs to look just as good on a phone. Another study recently found that 57% of internet users are unlikely to recommend a business if it has a poorly designed mobile site.
The other key factor that needs to be considered is updates. Websites and social profiles are not static entities. They need to be regularly updated in several ways to remain effective.
In a basic sense updates involve simply keeping the information on your pages up to date. If your business hours change updating all your online resources to quickly reflect the change. This applies to location and contact information as well. A customer making a trip to come to your business only to find it closed when Yelp said it was open is not likely to remain a customer.
Updates are also an issue on the backend of a website. Security is an extremely critical issue these days. This means sites need to be kept secure by applying regular updates and having proper security in place. If visitors find your site insecure or if your site is hacked or becomes compromised, it will look very bad for your business and damage your reputation or worse.
Not updating sites not only results in security issues but also can affect functionality over time. Some functions may not work as expected such as a contact form or download button. When people find that a site is too slow, or its functionality does not work they are not likely to return.
Poor design or lack of updates can also affect performance making the site slow to load. Generally, if internet users today have to wait much more than 2 seconds for a site to load, they are likely to leave and not come back to it. People are not very patient when it comes to these things. Slow loading websites cost businesses approximately $2.6 billion annually in lost revenue.
In conclusion, a properly designed and maintained web presence can be an enormous benefit to any small business. Similarly social media pages can very effectively drive customers to your business if they are up to date and contain the information people are looking for.
Yet many small businesses struggle with these issues mainly because they don’t realize these things, don’t think they have the time to deal with them or don’t think they can afford to.
Well, if you are serious about the success of your business these things need to be dealt with. If you don’t have the time or know-how to create, manage and update your online presence it makes a lot of sense to hire someone to do it properly. It need not be cost prohibitive nor something that has to take too much of your time.
Colin is a small business technology consultant, developer and writer with over 25 years of experience in tech including corporate IT, non-profits and as a freelancer. His aim is to make technology effective and affordable for small business so that it becomes an enormous asset.
0 Comments