Startups in this day and age have a huge advantage over ones of previous decades due to the internet. Setting up a business is relatively easy and all the information is ready to hand. There are virtual mistakes waiting to be made, however. Today, most businesses are active online. Meaning you and your startup need to be too if you want to try for a chunk of the market share. Care is needed, and a proper thought process. Plan everything in advance, and assign cash reserves with back ups just in case. The internet is not something to ignore, even if you are primarily a physical business with an address. Here are some issues you need to mitigate as much as possible and mistakes you should try to avoid.
Failure To Plan The Website
It can be all too easy to give a developer a set of instructions and leave them too it. Only to get it back a week or so later completely different to how you envisaged. You need to plan everything out. Be a pest for the developer and ensure everything is going as it should be. Keep tabs and make sure you test everything as much as possible. You don’t want to launch the website with issues such as glitches or dead links. You also want it to be as easy to navigate as humanly possible. Otherwise, people will just browse for a moment or two before leaving the website in search of another site that is easy to navigate. Plan the website and do a few stress tests before it goes live. Make sure it works. Ask a few people for feedback so they can see how it works and how good it is, you can then act on their comments accordingly.
Failure To Optimise
You need to be sure to make sure your website is out there, that people can see it and know how to get onto it. This is especially the case if your website is the store extension of your business. If so, you may want to look into hiring a company specializing in e-commerce SEO. Just think, how many times have you taken a Google search to the second or third page? You need to ensure your search comes close to the top. It’s hard to do, but getting it there means far more sales. If people don’t know the website exists, they aren’t going to use it.
Failure To Write Good Product Description
As you add the catalogue of products or services to your website you also need to add good quality product descriptions. They need to entice people into purchasing them. If they aren’t compelling then people may just skip over them for something else, or worse, a different website. Spend time crafting good descriptions of what you require and when you get a few happy customers consider attaching testimonials to each product. Nothing says buy me more than good peer review. Just look at Amazon.
Failure To Use Social Media
All companies are on it these days. Make a business page and interact with the community. You can really make headway here and spread awareness about what you do. Post good articles and information that can be used by readers. In it, include links back to your website or even better to products on your website. Just be sure to make it appealing and not similar to clickbait because your reputation will take a hit if people think this is the case.
Failure To Keep Track Of Advertising
You may have had an advertising plan and as such have spend money on certain streams. But what is the point if you can’t focus on it and keep track of what works and what does not? Google analytics can help you out. It shows you the exact amount of traffic coming to your website and where it is coming from. From this you can work out what advertising is working and what is not. Enabling you to pull bad advertising and invest the extra cash in what you now know works. It also tells you from what country people are coming from, meaning you now where you opportunities lie. Being able to see this in such an easy way can make the whole process a lot more simply and contribute to your online business starting with a bang, simply because you can cut out what is not working with relative ease. There will be a learning curve and certain things won’t work, but at least you’ll know about it.