When creating a website online for your business, you open up several opportunities for yourself and your business so you can grow and be seen by a wide range of individuals outside your local area. Your expertise will be noticed by more individuals over time when they search under a certain search term your website is listed under. At this point, your online presence will grow and become more popular on search engines.
Search Advertising
When trying to sell a certain product or service to a client or individual, you want to hit a certain target audience for your business to expand and become more popular online.
When it comes to search advertising, you can change the ads to specifically target a specific part of your business/ service so an individual is shown the exact results for a specific search term they have typed into the search engine. For example, ‘Mechanic Engineer Portsmouth’.
You can also use Analytics to check and monitor if an individual has clicked on your ad and website and has looked at the information and videos you have added to your website.
Reason for Wanting an Online Presence
Before starting online, you need to ask yourself why you would like to move your business online, just like you would when planning to physically grow your business, as you are essentially opening a new storefront.
The first step you may want to take when taking your business online is to stay local and add your business to local online directories under the category your business relates to or the services your business provides to individuals. At this point, when someone searches for a company, if this was for a mechanic for example online, this will show on the search engines or online maps.
Once your business is visible after adding it to a local online directory, you may want to build a website where more information about your company is accessible to an individual. This can include details such as your opening hours, pricing of the service you provide, your locations and photos and videos of the work or service you have produced or provided so people have a visible example of what you have previously developed for previous clients.
To make your website stand out to an individual, you could add extra details such as a reviews page where people’s opinions of your service can be seen, an appointments page where someone can easily book an appointment with you and a notification will be sent to you.
Analytics
When creating a website, you need to make sure you are monitoring and meeting the goals and objectives you have set out for yourself from the start to make sure progression is being made over time.
When using analytics, you can see how customers you wish to target are finding your website and what they are searching to get there. Once you can see the actions of customers when visiting your site, you can whether investing in certain areas on your website is worthwhile.
Furthermore, if any changes are made to your business such as a location change, new service, or different pricing, you need to make sure your website is changed so it is up to date and customers are aware of this.
Conclusion
To summarise the above points, and to make sure your online business is as successful as possible, you need to be confident that you have the correct priorities in place to make it a success, you need to make a plan to follow so you stay organised. Firstly, you need to set the goals you want to achieve whilst moving your business online for customers to see and view, and the expectations you set need to be realistic. Secondly, you need to use analytics to keep track and work out whether the amendments you have put into place are working. Finally, always keep your website updated with any new services, products or new changes you have made.
