If you want to turn your small business into a big one, at some point you’re going to need to go digital. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. retail ecommerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2017, adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes, was $119 billion, an increase of 3.2 percent from the third quarter of 2017.” There’s even more money to be had online, whether that’s from becoming a social influencer, turning online ads into brick-and-mortar sales or something else entirely.
But getting started can be tricky. You’re an expert in your business, but just because you know how to provide a great product or service doesn’t mean you know how to get strangers on the internet to buy it. What do you need to make a great website? Where should you focus your energy when developing your online presence?
In this article, we’ll walk you through three must-haves for any small business going digital: building a website, establishing the brand on social media and creating an email list. If you can do just those three things, you might not become the next online empire, but you’ll at least be off to a good start.
1. How to build a website
Making a website seems impossible for some, especially those who do not consider themselves tech-savvy. But you don’t need to be Mark Zuckerberg to create a landing pad for your customers or audience. Web builders such as WordPress or Squarespace can make it relatively simple.
That’s the key: stick to simple.
You might think that a simple webpage is boring, but look at the Entrepreneur page you’re reading right now: You don’t see a bunch of crazy flash objects or pop-ups. Instead, you see white space. You see images with 3:2 ratios (3 pixels in width for every 2 in height) and black text that’s easy to read.
This simple style allows us to create content easily, which keeps us consistent. Entrepreneur doesn’t post one article every couple of weeks — we write and publish new pieces every day, so the site is always fresh when you come to read it. In the same way, you don’t want to throw all of your resources into a single page that you’ll never be able to update or add to.
You need persistence and perseverance to create an online presence, just like you do to establish your business. But you’re only going to make it harder for yourself down the road if you try to do too much at the start.
Plus, be honest with yourself: You probably don’t enjoy going to websites that have a million cool features and none of them load on time. According to a 2017 Entrepreneur piece, consumers expect a page to load in two to three seconds. If the page doesn’t load quickly enough, many people will abandon the website before they ever see what you have to offer.
This advice goes double if you are selling a product or service on your website. Many entrepreneurs and small businesses like to be able to have an official site, where they can post links on social media or email. If you’re going to do…
