Why Should You Take Your Business Online?
“Google it” has moved from being just a catchy phrase to becoming part of human instinct whenever we want to learn anything about anything. Whether you should take your business online is no longer the question. When and how you decide to go digital are the issues that today’s businesses and entrepreneurs face.
Here are my three tips and things to consider when decide to take your business online.
1. Be awesome. 
First impressions count. How your website looks and performs will affect how people perceive your business. An easy to use, fast and visually engaging website is now the new normal that everybody expects when online. So take your time and plan it out. Form a flow of how you envision your audience using your site. Then, create a solid brand image you want to present to your users and be consistent throughout your site build.
You may choose to build your site yourself with a platform like Wordpress, which eliminates much of the hardcore technical coding. However, functions of your website will be limited to available themes and your technical capabilities. For more customized websites with added functions like e-commerce or data collection, as well as better performance such as load times or user experience, you can hire a professional web development firm or a freelance web designer. Freelancers can be cheaper, but their skills may be limited. Digital firms will have a team of developers will a more varied skill set.
2. Get found. 
Hooray! You’ve built your site, now traffic, leads and sales should just start rolling in. Ermm… No… Building your site is just the start. Once it’s out there on the web, you need to get it found amongst the hundreds of millions of other websites online. Look up the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s a mouthful of a term, but there are some basic steps you can take to make your website more searchable. How deep you want to dive into SEO will depend on your tech savviness and willingness to learn the techy stuff. A benefit of working with a digital firm is that SEO (either basic or in-depth) will most likely be part of the package they offer when developing your website.
3. Be relevant.
Here research is key. You need to be relevant to your audience and put out content that they want to see and share. The more engaging, useful and targeted your content is, the more likely you are to succeed in getting people interested and talking about you online. Find out likes and interests of your target market, where they hang out online (social media, forums, etc) and who influences them. Start with an educated guess and from there, start digging. Do your homework, research and read up on how to connect with your target audience, and you should have enough ammo to develop a strategy to get heard.
But still, this is just the tip of the iceberg when you take your business online, and these are just 3 tips to get the ball rolling in the right direction. There is a whole lot more to digital strategy, truly take advantage of technology and growing competitively online.
For more tips on creating content for your website, web design and SEO, check out our blog. To see some of our work and what we do, feel free to browse through our portfolio. At Project Assistant, we focus on making it easy for any business to create an online presence that stands out.
