A 5-Step Plan to Grow Your Business Online
The great thing about doing business online is that there are so many people online. The challenge of growing your business is that there are so many people online. How do you cut through the noise and set yourself apart? If you are ready to turn your business into a functioning online store, take a look at these five steps to help make it happen.
1. Break ground
The first, and painfully obvious step, is to build your website. If you have a website and domain already up and running, you need to make sure it can support the functionality of an online store. This includes having enough capacity to run commerce applications and plugins quickly and reliably. No one wants to shop on a site that stalls or crashes during transactions. Your web hosting provider will offer packages sufficient for your needs.
2. Get people’s attention
Once you have a website and the capacity you need to operate it, it’s time to get more customers. Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to growing your business. You have products or services to offer, and you need people to know about them. By building into your site the keywords that people will use to find the types of products and services you offer, you are more likely to land near the top of their searches.
3. Make a name for yourself
Marketing will be your focus from now until, well, forever. In addition to making yourself easy to find online, you need to find customers yourself. Email campaigns, strategic online advertising, and social media networking are key to building awareness of your brand.
4. Service, service, service
Have you ever gone to a store, gotten horrible service, and kept coming back for more? Me neither. It sounds so simple, but it is fundamentally important. By adding as many personal, human touches to your online store, you will win and retain customers. Follow up with emails, offer stellar customer support, seek out customer feedback, and you will set yourself apart from so many other online businesses.
5. Deliver the goods
The final key step is making sure that when people buy from your online store, they get what they buy quickly, reliably, and smoothly. To help you manage the process, you should consider an online fulfillment service. Top online fulfillment services, like Elite Ops, a Utah Distribution Company, combine the human touch you want with the reliability of an automated system. With strong transportation links in the state, a Utah logistics service provider can help you reach clients from the West Coast to the Heartland and beyond.
