Many businesses have learned to adopt an online presence to retain sales even if events such as the 2019-2020 pandemic effectively forces them to shut down physical locations. Going online means that your company can stay alive, even in the most trying of times.
To take your business online, you’ll need to follow a series of steps, including:
- Purchase a domain name
- Build a that adequately represents your business
- Develop and maintain an email list
- Figure out a method for attracting customers to your website
- Optimize your process
Building an online website for your business can seem like a daunting task, but by following these ten steps, you’ll find that it’s easier than it looks.
10 Steps to Taking Your Small Business Online
While it may seem like a lot to keep in mind, making your business go digital is quite simple. Here’s a list of steps to follow for when you decide to take your products and services online:
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Purchase a Domain Name and Hosting
You need a domain name, or a website name. You also need to acquire hosting for your domain as well. Without these two items, you’ll never be able to take your business online, let alone make money from it.
A domain name is the address of your website that people type into the search bar. It’s how people on the internet end up finding your business directly because your website has an “address.” Without that address, technically, the “location” of your online business doesn’t exist, which means customers aren’t going to have any idea as to how to find your store or services.
Your domain name should be the title of your business name. It should be relatively brief and easy to type in, so there’s no need to use excessive numbers or symbols in it. You want it to be easy to find and approachable for customers to interact with, so when choosing your domain name, keep the simplicity of it in mind. Anything too hard to type in will turn off people from finding your address.
Think about what people are likely to type in when searching for your website. These would be called keywords; by figuring out what keywords would be associated with your business, you can use those keywords in your domain name so that your business is even more likely to be found.
Hosting is the platform on which you will have your website. Think of it as a service that allows you to display your website online. Examples of web hosts include Bluehost or HostGator. Note: Keep in mind that many web builder companies, such as WordPress, offer this service by default.
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Plan Your Website
Websites shouldn’t just exist. Every website, from the moment a user or potential customer visits, logs on, or just curiously stumbles into, should always have a purpose. The website should be doing something to accomplish a goal.
That purpose can be to generate email leads, it can be to sell a particular product to a very specific category of people, or it can simply be to inform. But being clear on what it is exactly that you want to use your website for before starting with your online endeavors can save you heaps of time and frustration in accomplishing your goals.
If you’re taking your business online, then you’re going to want to consider planning and designing your website with the intention to sell and to represent your business authentically. You should also want to maximize your sales in the digital climate of the internet.
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Design Your Website
Since you already have your domain name at this point, it’s essential that you design your website from here on out. We recommend that you build your website using a website developing platform such as WordPress. You can choose one of their themes, or, if you’re especially serious about the quality of your store, you can go with more professional, but costly themes such as elegant themes.
Elegant Themes are high-quality themes that do all the designing for you. You can pick a theme in the category of commerce that you’re particularly interested in working in. If not, don’t hesitate to hire a professional website builder. Building a website on your own can feel like a very confusing process. The code that’s sometimes involved isn’t exactly user friendly. Hiring a professional can save you the headache and while giving you the confidence of a beautifully designed store.
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Make Sure That Your Website is Mobile Friendly
Just about half of the users on the internet are using mobile devices. If your website doesn’t cater to mobile users, then you’re losing out on a significant percentage of potential customers that you could have easily had access to. So make sure that your website is easy to read and navigate on a mobile device.
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Have—at Minimum—Standard Site Content
If you’re taking your business online, then you’re going to want some standard website content. You want your customer to interact with your business as they would offline. You can add a human element to your store so that it’s personable for visitors. That way, they are more inclined to purchase from you.
Depending on the type of service you deliver, you’re going to want to include various pages on your website. If you’re providing a service, it will help to have a service or contact page that customers/clients can fill out to get ahold of you.
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Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
There are two ways to expand an online business and attract people to your website. That’s by either having quality content on your website or by having a fantastic offer. You can take a look at the beginner’s guide to online small business marketing on our page to learn ways to market your business.
A huge component of online websites is getting people to your website in the first place. For the sake of promoting your business, you should consider writing blogs for your website or hiring a freelance blog writer who is familiar with your niche and business archetype to write good content for.
When potential customers search up keywords related to your website and therefore associated with your blog’s content, they’ll be directed to your website. This is a chance for you to get interested people in front of the product or service that you’re selling.
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Optimize Your Site’s SEO
SEO, or otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization, is a term used to refer to optimizing language on your website so that it attracts the largest quantity of people. Optimizing your SEO is your chance at getting your website discovered; it’s how anyone on the internet finds anything.
By optimizing your website, you’ll be engaging in the process of getting organic visitors to your website, without paying for a spot on the first page of Google. You can do this by making sure that your page content is relevant to your business and by having keywords in your website that people are actually frequently using.
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Point Traffic to Your Site
Without content on your website, customers will primarily be staring at an unengaging screen. In the 21st century, the best way to succeed online is to capture a person’s attention for long enough.
Attention is the most valuable resource on the internet, and to be successful in the business of getting your targeted audience’s attention, you’re going to need some eye-catching content on your website to give potential customers a reason to come to your website and buy things.
This can look like entertaining videos advertising your products, high-quality blogs that relate to your business, or even well-done animations. The point is to have content that people can only find on your website. You need to give customers a reason for coming to your site.
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Use Social Media to Build Your Customer Base
It can’t be understated the usefulness of using social media to propel the success of your business. The majority of the money that you earn online is going to be by people who are interested in whatever you’re selling, and the people who’re interested in whatever you’re selling tend to be the same people who’ve already purchased your product once before.
In other words, by using social media, you’re creating “leads” that will come back and purchase more from you. You can do this by, for example, using email marketing. Ideally, people who were interested in your product(s) have already signed up for your daily or weekly or monthly emails. You can foster a group of loyal customers by sending them emails every so often.
The goal is to eventually build up enough credibility so that your emails are opened despite the number of other spam and emails that your customers get. You want your emails to be something that your email list enjoys opening because of its quality content. This can then lead to you promoting offers that people are more likely to go for.
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Optimize Your Online Business
The last step is to optimize. Keep a record of your website’s performance. How efficient is it at bringing in visitors? How many of those visitors purchase something from your website? How can you bring those numbers up?
Is your website content current? At what rate are your emails being opened? Perhaps it’s time to change up your marketing campaign after a while.
You need to stay on top of your site’s performance and continuously assess how you can scale your business online.
How Do I Start an Online Business for Free?
When starting your very own online business for free, you want to consider what assets you already possess and build your business with those in mind. Think about what talents, skills, and potential services you can offer right now, and then create a website with those attributes in mind.
Do some SEO research and figure out how many people are interested in what you have to offer, or at least a variation of what you have to offer that you can provide as well. Follow the above steps and build your website in mind to cater to the needs of a group of people interested in your product or service.
You can use platforms such as Etsy to sell a product or design a service-based website with WordPress. If you’re creating your website for free, then you’ll still have the logo of whatever host you’re using in your domain name, so keep that in mind. Eventually, you may want to consider upgrading to get rid of it.
What Business is Good for Beginners?
The best businesses for beginners are probably blogging and eCommerce. Both require relatively little to start up and have the potential to earn you lots of money over time. Both blogging and eCommerce are easy to start, typically only requiring you some time to design a website.
After the initial phase, then you can work on monetization. For blogging and eCommerce, it takes time to seriously get going. They’re like investments: slow to start, but worthwhile after a while. Neither are get rich quick schemes, but their reward can be fruitful if you stick with them and put in due diligence.
Conclusion
Taking your business online can be done successfully by following a series of steps. You’re going to need to first and foremost, get yourself a domain name and hosting to give your business a digital address on the internet. After that, you’ll have to decide on the direction of your business and build your site around that.
Make sure to have useful and engaging content on your website so that you attract potential customers. Over time, you can turn those customers into repeating leads that drive most of your sales. Optimize your SEO and website, and you’ll eventually have a successful online business. Like everything, don’t expect immediate results; this is a patient but rewarding process.
In conclusion, it can feel as though there are a lot of steps to get your website and business up and running, and they do take some time, but by following the above guide, you’ll be in good shape for making sales.