While you made your dream of opening a small business a reality, you likely encountered some unanticipated obstacles. For instance, perhaps you didn’t realize how much time it takes to build and update a website. Use these timesaving tips to tend to your company’s online home and take care of customers.
Work With Professionals
Depending on your industry, you may not be the most tech-savvy entrepreneur. While it’s a good idea to learn the basics of website maintenance and development, leave the heavy lifting to the professionals. Hire experienced developers to help with site security, hosting, themes, speed testing, and plugins. It’s better to get these right the first time rather than risk a disastrous trial-and-error period.
Embrace Automation Tools
Automating tasks quickly becomes a business owner’s best friend. You can save a lot of time and still complete essential tasks. This frees up the time and energy you can devote to other areas of your business. Look into automating tasks such as marketing tasks, content idea generation, metric and analytic monitoring, website tasks, and developing media ideas. Consider your budget, automation tool reviews, and return on investment when deciding which tools to use.
Team-Up With an SEO Consultant
To make your business website easier for your target audience to find, you must place high on search engine results. Small business owners cannot afford to neglect search engine optimization and all the benefits it brings. Other than implementing keywords and phrases throughout your business site, a blog subscription service may help you climb up the search engine ranks.
If your budget allows, consider working with an SEO consultant. These professionals keep up with the latest SEO strategies you can implement on your site. SEO consultants can also run audits on your commercial site. That insight lets you know when your SERP position, search engine rankings, and search engine traffic flow change.
Build a Content Strategy
It’s not enough to list your products or services on your site, you need great content, too. You and your SEO consultant can develop a content strategy. You need to let your target customer know you’re knowledgeable about your industry and can offer them value.
With a strong content strategy, you know what articles, blog posts, and images to share on your site. You can also create a schedule for your content, so your audience has a reason to come back to your site. One critical reason to develop a content schedule is so you can automate it as much as possible. While you tend to other aspects of your business, you don’t have to worry about publishing blog posts or social media posts regularly.
Use Chatbots
Rather than personally respond to every customer service request, use chatbots to automate responses. Customers may ask the same question several times. Rather than give the same answer time and time again, implement a chatbot to field common questions for you. Customers can ask questions right on your site, and you don’t have to pick up the phone.
Get Proactive About Potential Issues
When you get reports about your site’s performance, look over them carefully for problem areas. Sluggish pages, broken images, and baffling design elements can quickly scare site visitors away. Neglecting site maintenance could send once-loyal customers into your competitor’s arms.
While you could repair broken and poor website elements, it’s better to prevent these issues from happening. Focus on fast page loading speeds, professional site design, and regularly updated page elements to head trouble off at the pass.
Think smarter rather than work harder on your small business site. The right tips help you realize and fulfill your potential as a business owner.