10 Steps to Take Your Small Business Online

An online business presence is something that’s becoming more and more important, but getting set up online can be a daunting step. If you’re looking to take your small business online, then it can be a great movie, but there are some important steps you need to follow. 

Here are ten steps to help you take your small business online. 

Planning 

Whether you’re starting a new online business or bringing an existing business online, it’s best to have a clearly defined plan of what you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. 

Taking your online business online can be an important step, but you’ve got to understand why you’re doing it and the goals you have for it. If you don’t do this basic planning, then you have no way of judging your success, making the project more difficult. 

Understand Your Target Audience 

What does your target audience want to see from your online presence?

If you have an existing customer base, you should have plenty of data to answer this question. What you need to understand is how your online presence can better serve your target audience, specifically, how it can solve pain points and answer the most pressing questions people have. 

When you understand your target audience, you’ve got a good idea of what your website wants to achieve. 

Look at What Your Competitors are Doing 

Taking a look at what your competitors are doing with their websites can give you some great insights. 

Remember, your competitors in the online world aren’t necessarily the same ones as in the physical world, so make sure to do some research in this area. Using software such as Moz, AhRefs, or SEMrush, you can scan your competitors’ websites and understand what’s making them successful. 

Once you’re armed with this information, you can take what you’ve learned and incorporate it into your own site. Looking at your competitors’ sites is a great way to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t, particularly when it comes to content. 

Choose Your Platform 

There are lots of different platforms you can build your website on, and each has its own benefits. 

The decision you make here will depend on the type of business you have, and what you’re looking to achieve, so it’s well worth researching which platform is right for you. It’s not a decision that’s going to make or break your website, but it will help you provide the right user experience for your customers. 

Think About Security 

Whenever you create a new website, particularly for your business, it’s important to think about security. 

It’s not just your own security you have to think about, but also every person that interacts with your site. Getting this wrong can have huge consequences for your business, and it can happen to any company. 

What’s important is that you’re taking this threat seriously and thinking about your security. Issues such as cross-site scripting can be a big problem for business, so make sure you’re actively taking steps. 

Build Your Site Out with Great Content

If your website is going to grow and reach more and more people, then you’ve got to invest in your content. Creating the basic infrastructure of your site is one thing, but to truly be successful, it’s got to have substance to it, and the way you create this is through great content. 

Content is an amazing way to engage with your target audience, establishing yourself as an authority, and building relationships with people that turn into repeat business. You see many businesses dabble with this, but if you’re going to create content, then it’s important you focus on quality. 

Everything on your website speaks to the quality of your brand, so you’ve got to make sure you’re maintaining high standards with everything you do. 

Sort Your SEO

You want to be showing up in the search engines for keywords that are important for your business, and there’s no reason this shouldn’t be the case. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) might seem daunting, but you can gain a huge amount of exposure for your site by following a few basic principles. It’s much easier if you’re aware of this from the start, though, so again, it’s something that’s well worth researching. 

Good SEO doesn’t just help you rank in the search engines, it also helps you provide a good experience for your users, and this is going to improve the success of your website. 

Market Your Website 

One of the great things about having a website is the variety of ways you can market it. Digital marketing is a huge field, and you’ll want to experiment and find the techniques that work best for your business. 

With email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, and many more options, you’ve got so many different ways to reach your audience. Make the most of this and learn how to optimize your promotions. 

Remember the Customer Experience 

When you’re creating a website, it’s easy to be focused on the needs of your business and sometimes forget about the customer until the last minute. 

However, your customers are the most important part of this equation, so you’ve got to make sure you’re catering to them. Think about how your website fits into your business as a whole and how it can improve the customer experience. 

If you’re getting the customer experience right, then it’s going to result in people coming back to you time after time, and this is always a great thing to have. 

Perseverance is Important 

Success tends not to happen overnight. 

Instead, it’s the result of hard work and perseverance, and this is certainly true for websites. If you’re following all the right steps, success will come, but sometimes it can be frustrating to wait for it. 

You’ve got to remember, though, that you’re investing in your future success with everything you do, and eventually, it will pay off.