subject: 7 Ways To Improve Your Small Business Online Outlook [print this page] 7 Ways To Improve Your Small Business Online Outlook
The budget might be tight for your small businessbut that's certainly no excuse to ensure that your website shines like the beacon it should be. Investing in your online homethe only home of a business that many will ever seecan make or break your small biz. And the best part? Well, it doesn't necessarily have to break the bank. Here are 7 ways to improve your small business online outlook.
One. Measure your traffic analytics. Make note of how many visitors you are receiving and where they tend to originate from (using free Google Analytics is a great way to get an in-depth view). The first part of improving anything is taking a baseline measurement and understanding what needs improving.
Two. With point number one in mind, the next thing you can do is figure out a plan on how you can improve different areas of your site. For example, if your bounce rate is very high (as reported by Analytics), then you need to work on improving the visitors' initial first-impression experience with your site. Getting them there is half the battleyou definitely don't want to lose the visitor as soon as they land on your site.
Three. Set specific, measurable, and attainable goals for improvement. Looking at the numbers, if you've been averaging 250 unique visitors per week to your site, then one example goal would be to double that number of visitors by the next quarter to 500 unique visitors per week. Without specific goals in the crosshairs, it's hard to actually make progress sometimes.
Four. Start driving more traffic. You've set the goal to essentially double your traffic in the next 3 months. How will you accomplish this goal? Wellfor starters, organic search optimization works extremely well. 3 months might be a tough timeline with SEO, but it's doable at the visitor counts mentioned above. Plus, there are other ways you can grow your traffic base.
Five. Try traffic-boosting social media. If this sounds like a broken record, it's because it's a tune you need to keep hearing. Social media is not going away anytime soonand the raw traffic it can produce when used effectively is pretty remarkable. With a good catchy campaign, doubling visitors from 250 per week to 500 per week is very do-able with just social media alone.
Six. Create more content. If you haven't updated or expanded the content on your website since the last design overhaul, chances are good that you're being left behind in the dust. Search engines and visitors alike demand fresh new content on a regular basis. By all meansgive them what they want; it's not that difficult to do. Plus, adding more and more to your site's base of content tends to have an exponentially growing snowball effect long term.
Seven. Ask for professional help. Sometimes it's downright impossible to do it all yourself. Just not enough time, for starters. Well, even if you do have the time, it never hurts to ask for a professional opinion on how you can make your site shine. Just give us a call here at San Jose-based WSpiderwe'll be happy to share a few complimentary pointers with you.
So, what are you waiting for? Make a plan to revitalize your small business website. It's easy to improve the outlook, and you'll definitely be glad you did!
