In this article I have crafted a list of five things that you can do to make your website generate more business and also make your customer’s time on your website more fun and productive.

1. Make your website more accessible

With an increase in the number of people accessing the web via mobile device, having a mobile friendly website for your business is highly recommended. This site will provide information access to your customers wherever they are and whenever they want. They are likely to pass it on to their friends since they can bring up your website on their mobile and not necessarily a computer.

If provisioning a mobile friendly website affects your budget, then have a conversation with your developer and make sure they understand that you need this functionality in the website as soon as possible.

2. Offer Supplementary Information

It is important to understand that your users are always looking for information. They might browse your website for a purchase but before that they will like to check out what they are going to buy and perform any associated search. So make it a priority to provide supplementary information that boosts the primary content of the website.

Take the effort and time to provide the customers with product manuals, warranty information, contact details, videos etc. This is a direct way to emphasize that you care about your customers and make your site a gold mine for your visitors.

3. Make it easy to get help

Despite how much supplemental information or details about your product or service you provide, your customers might need more help. Make it easy for them to get help by providing FAQs’ (frequently asked questions) and by placing your company’s contact information prominently on your website. Provide an enquiry/contact form and help your customers get in touch with you.

4. Keep it organized

I have repeatedly mentioned about providing additional information, but at the same time make sure you avoid cluttering and information overload. You don’t want to drive your visitors away and hence it is important that you keep your website clean and well organized. Work with your designer to develop ways to keep information accessible, yet unobtrusive.

5.Optimise your website

Alright, you have your content right and your website looks pretty awesome as well, but what’s the point if you are not being found on the web. With more and more people searching information on the web, it becomes highly important that your website hits those top rankings on Google (and other search engines as well). Having a well optimised website and a proper search engine marketing strategy in place will help your website generate more traffic towards your website and ultimately generate more business.

So you have a retail store and you want to start selling online. Great! “Jason, I have a budget of $2,000, that should be enough shouldn’t it?”. No. Not even close. Think about how much you spent to set-up your retail store. You had to buy or lease a location, you had to design and build the look of your store, you had to buy computers and cash registers, it was a costly process. Imagine your online store as a second location for your business, only it’s open 24/7 and anyone from any where can buy from you. It’s a gold mine just sitting there. “But Jason, if I don’t have to buy any of the physical store items such as shelves why do I have to spend as much as my retail store?” You don’t, but you do need to spend on marketing your store in addition to getting the physical look and layout of your store working brilliantly.

Get the layout right.

Imagine you built your store, it looks okay, you had to skimp on the look a bit so it doesn’t look great, but it didn’t cost much. Then on your tight budget you couldn’t afford to have someone look at how the store was laid out so you just got a guy to lay it out, only in order to get to the cash register you have to jump over some desks and shelves. Your store would last long would it? Have you ever bought online and struggled to do buy items because the store was poorly built? I have many times. Don’t skimp on getting your store as user friendly as possible. Go to a web company that knows what they are doing and don’t be scared to pay for it. I’m not talking about $60,000 upwards, somewhere around the $20,000-$30,000 mark is appropriate to make sure your store looks great as well as functions well. It will mean you get a greater conversion rate and people will be more inclined to return to your store and purchase again. A great looking store will also assist with people believing the store is trustworthy so they will trust buying from you.

Market your store.

Once you’ve got a great store, you need to now continue your spend to get customers to visit the store. The more you spend, the more likely you are to make money. The more money you make, the more you can spend on marketing, the faster you can grow… It’s a pretty simple equation. Having said that make sure you’re hitting your target market. You could spend $50,000 but if you’re not hitting the right people the money is a waste. Speak to a marketing company such as ourselves and get a marketing plan put together. This will help you know what to spend, when and where to spend it. It’s about having the right marketing mix for your business.

Deliver on time, deliver the service.

This is very important and often forgotten. You need to deliver on time, by that I mean, give next day delivery. Don’t make your customer wait 6 weeks to get their item. People buy online for convenience, where as people go to stores if they want something urgently. This is all well and good, but if you provide convenience and speed you’ll blow the customer away and they will continue to buy from you even if they need something urgently. It’s all about the customer trusting your store for their purchases. On top of that, make sure you have timely service. If people enquire about an item they will generally only be looking at that item for a couple of hours. If you take too long they may have bought the item from a competitor or a retail outlet.

Conclusion.

You only get out, what you put in. Spend the money, get the store done right and you’ll give yourself the best chance at success. If you try to do it on the cheap you’ll never even give yourself an opportunity to succeed. Speak to the experts, get the right advice, invest where it’s needed most.