9 Common Mistakes That May Kill Your Business Online
Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
Cloud, social networking, mobile friendly and big data are the new digital trends that are going to shape businesses, big and small, over the next decade.
Being ‘digital ready’ is an equalizer that allows local brands and businesses to compete in the 21st Century. As an online business owner, are you struggling to manage your digital presence?
Below are common online business mistakes that small businesses may be making, which could potentially kill business.
1. Not Having a Customer Database to Communicate via Email
If you don’t bother to maintain a customer database, you not only lose out on potential customers, but also fail to lend a personal touch when dealing with your existing clients. For example, you may have interested customers taking the time out to browse your site and signup by giving an email address.
But once they leave, there’s no follow-up.
One of the best ways to keep your customers engaged is by capturing their email addresses and mobile numbers (if provided) for your database and sending them regular updates about your store and fabulous discounts/offers you may have.
Keep track of your ‘return customers’ who are good indicators of the quality of service that you provide for your business.
2. Not Being Able to Funnel Active Sales Leads via Social Media
If you are spending a lot of time promoting via social media network and not having the right sales funnel to capture email lists, then you probably are losing a lot of valuable customers.
When you engage in a business network on platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+ by sharing your products, offers or sharing free resources, you must connect with an email collection system.
3. Not Able to Create Digital Content for Generating Leads
Rapid creation of social media content is critical to any business success.
The traditional model of creating digital content is either by hiring agencies or using a dedicated in-house resource. This requires time and money making it difficult to create professional looking content rapidly for digital campaigns.
By investing dollars in creating content either by using design templates or hiring an agency, businesses can consistently attract customers via social media, organic search and paid media activities.
If a business focuses on developing content, then they are on their way to generating consistent leads online.
4. Not Being Able to Provide Convenience to Shop with You
If you are still relying on the phone to connect with customers or have a website for business purposes but not an eCommerce store, you are not meeting the needs of most of your potential customers. You need a bigger space.
Your customers need convenience to shop with you. Having an eCommerce store to view products and services will encourage your customers to come back to you consistently.
5. Not Getting Referrals from Your Community
Are you dealing with the same set of clients for more than six months?
Your mistake is that you’re not interacting with customers or spreading the word in the community to get more referrals.
You need to do some manual work here. Send emails in your circle asking for referrals for your business.
You can do the same with indirect marketing on social media. Another good way to get referrals is to offer a discount to your customers when they refer a friend. This way your business will get some attention and credibility.
6. Not Being Able to Protect My Computer Data
You might think, ‘Duh! … I don’t do this!’
But the fact is, at times we save important information about our business like account figures, customer database and product lists on the computer but do not backup the files.
You never know when bad luck strikes and you lose precious data. Always store your data in more than one place and protect by installing anti-virus software on your computer.
7. Not Able to be Discovered Online
So you have a website, but are you getting found by the right people?
Optimizing your website, content titles, descriptions, images are ongoing. As a business you need to actively participate in online communities, build your Google+ page and create relevant content to attract the right people to your website.
The mantra is to optimize your digital presence.
8. Not Going Mobile-Friendly with Your Website
Google has said it wants consumers to “find content that’s not only relevant and timely, but also easy to read and interact with on smaller mobile screens.”
According to a survey, 61 percent of consumers are not willing to visit a website that is not mobile-friendly due to slow navigation and difficulty in reading.
Adding to this, TechCrunch found that 44 percent of the Fortune 500 companies failed the mobile friendly test! It sufficiently hints at the nature of risk of having a ‘mobile-unfriendly’ website.
Google has provided a new free tool to conduct a ‘Mobile-Friendly Test’ that tells you how mobile-compatible your websites are and what is needed to prepare for the new search algorithm.
9. Being Invisible on Google and Bing
If your business is ranked way lower on Google search, it means your online business is not going great and that you have miles to go before you reach the top.
Being invisible on Google puts a question mark on the credibility of your company and reduces the potential to attract customers via organic search. Optimize the content titles, descriptions and layout of your website and incorporate the latest SEO strategies to move up the search ranking ladder.
Now that you’re aware of these common online business mistakes, can you identify one that may be impacting your business’s growth?
