How well are you informed on the state of the economy? Being an entrepreneur in this day and age implies that you have to be up-to-date on these topics. While everyone is complaining and it is difficult to stay afloat, especially for small to medium businesses, we are here to help out with some tips to keep you in the game and maybe even get you to rank higher in your niche.
The way you look tonight
Looks do not matter, it is what’s on the inside that counts, right? Well, this is debatable, especially when it comes to online businesses. Even in life, you need looks for some initial attraction, some deeper traits will be the ones to determine whether you keep your interest or not, but initially, it is looks that brought you there. Similarly, we behave in the same pattern with online businesses. You will stumble upon a website, check out the UI. If you like what you see, you will probably dig deeper and check out what the website has to offer. However, if you do not like it, chances are you will be leaving without even knowing what the business is actually about.
So, your first task is to take of that UI and UX. Depending on the size of your business, you might already have a design team or you are a Jack of all trades and you dabble a bit with design. Regardless of the case, perhaps it is best to consult experts, particularly if you have a very specific niche of business. For instance, energy industry web design is very specific and by hiring pros you would be making sure that you have a top quality product regarding your UI without the hassle of doing a lot of research.
Pictures or it didn’t happen
Marketing is extremely important even if you may feel differently. Just imagine your brand new and shiny business ready for the world and the world not knowing about it. All the effort you put into redesigning you UI, upgrading content, image quality and the whole structure would be in vain if no one was there to see it. Promoting yourself or your business may feel a bit uncomfortable, whereas, it is is simply the way things are done nowadays. The sooner you accept it, the better.
If you do not already have a marketing department and all this is new for you, think about investing either in outsourcing a marketing team or hiring your own. Both approaches have their ups and downs. If you are new to the whole concept, it is better to outsource. That way you will know that your business would be handled by professionals. After a while, you could move on and hire your own people for the job.
Automation is the future
Being an entrepreneur implies that you have a lot of work to do. It also means that the work you would be doing covers a whole range of duties and job descriptions that cannot be put into one single role. This is especially visible in the beginning when there are not many employees and it is up to you to cover most of the work the whole company entails.
In time as your business grows, the number of employees should also grow, however, so does the list of duties. Unfortunately, you will find that the list of your own duties does not shrink. On the contrary, it always seems to be growing. There are two possible solutions for this issue – either hiring people to cover a part of your list or automating any task that can be automated.
So, you need to write down all the tasks you have in a month, for instance. After that, think about each task and whether it can be automated. The way to know this is to figure out whether a task could be done in an algorithmic way. For example, emails can be automated, i.e. any order confirmation, order update, registration and any similar activity. These are very easy to automate and they will save you some time. You could also add a FAQ section and a chat bot to help with customer support. It’s also a great time saver!
Short and sweet is key
Life is very fast and nobody has time for anything anymore. Do you know people that read books? Probably, but surely a decade ago people read more. The pace of life is too intense today to make time for reading. This is why all online content is getting shorter and more concise. If this is not already the case with yours, you have to change it as soon as possible.
This is not an expensive upgrade, but it is quite demanding in the manner of time. So, get your content writing team together and get cracking. You have to read through all your content, think of a new structure and write small paragraphs on each topic you wish to keep. Keep everything clean. Ideally, you would have one paragraph per topic and some white space between each paragraph. This makes it much easier for users to navigate your website and find what they are looking for with minimum waste of time. Once everything is done, you will have a brand new look and quality that will attract and keep a whole new crowd. Moreover, your regular users are bound to love it, too.
All in all, keeping up with trends is not always easy or possible, which is why it’s important to pick your battles. Not everything will be your cue to act. Sometimes, it is better to lay low and wait for the perfect moment. Entrepreneurship is about more than being constantly driven to upgrade your business. It is also about learning to be wise and acting on time. Once you learn to trust your gut, you would be ready and confident enough to proudly maintain your business without a shadow of a doubt.
