How To Use Your Website To Expand Your Business
You are a company primed for growth. You dot all your ‘i’s, cross all your ‘t’s and delight every customer or client who finds you. But if you’re looking to expand, you need more than a killer business plan and excellent customer service. You also need a user-friendly and well-functioning website.
Smart business owners know that a high performing website is critical to long-term success. You can use your website to expand your business by pivoting to online sales, testing new offers, improving your online presence, and more.
Below are some of the ways that you can leverage your website to help expand and grow your business.
Use Your Website to Expand Your Business By Pivoting To Online Sales
The pandemic has changed our lives in so many ways, some of which will likely be permanent. And the almost overnight shift to online shopping is showing no signs of slowing down. There’s no doubt that online shopping is here to stay.
And there’s also no doubt that having an online store is a great way to future-proof your business. Studies show that the average B.C. household spends $3,368 on online shopping each year – and that was before the pandemic. In today’s economy and with the amount of time people now spend online, having an ecommerce store on your website is a no-brainer.
Thankfully, if you’ve built your website on WordPress and/or if you’re working with a responsive website designer, adding ecommerce to your website might be easier than you think.
Expand Into New Locations
Adding an ecommerce store to your website is also a great way to expand into new locations, without the risk and costs of opening a new, physical store. Remember, your online store is open 24/7. With smart SEO and a good marketing campaign, you can use your website to expand into new markets without ever having to pick up a hammer.
Test New Offers
If you have a well-functioning website and a team that helps you manage it, you can also use it to test new offers. In tech speak, you can use your website for ‘A/B testing.’ Like the name suggests, you can test new products against each other (A vs B), using specialized landing pages. It’s a great way to see where your customers’ interests lie without having to invest too many resources.
Promote & Advertise
Don’t think of your website as just another one-and-done expense, like getting a sign made for your front window. Your website is a living, breathing thing, and you can actively use to promote and advertise your company.
Expand Your Online Presence
Our world is rapidly moving online. In fact, 30.9 million Canadians are active internet users. If you want to stay competitive, an online presence is no longer a ‘nice-to-have.’ It’s a necessity.
That means that if you don’t show up in Google searches, but your competition does, then your competition is going to beat you, almost every time. And if you want to show up in Google, your website needs to be ‘search engine optimized,’ or SEO (find some tips on how to improve your SEO here).
Couple that with the fact that 56% of people say they wouldn’t trust a business without a website, and with the fact that 71% of new customers will go on your website before visiting your store, and you start to get the picture: any company that wants to grow and stay competitive needs a high performing website.
Automate Mundane Tasks
With apps and cloud software and browser extensions, there are so many options out there for small business owners who are looking to automate mundane tasks. Your website is another tool to make life easier in this way.
For example, you can use your website to capture leads and email signups, by automatically offering users free content like an eBook or coupon.
There are also many ways to use your website to automate your ecommerce store and your customer service, as well as to automatically update your social media accounts, backup your data, prevent spam, and even help with content creation.
Looking for some design help?
If you’re feeling inspired to automate your website, finally get to that refresh you’ve been putting off, or build a brand new, seo-optimized website from scratch, our husband-and-wife team can help. We offer website design and online marketing solutions for small to medium-sized businesses and start-ups. Contact us at info@svice.ca to learn more.