Creating Your E-Commerce Store: A Guide

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

The internet has democratized who can start a business because now all it takes is a website to get your company up and running. An e-commerce store is simply a website with added payment functionality to enable web users to make sales through your website. This is a very simple piece of code that will work in harmony with a pre-existing layout, helping you shift your goods without a physical store. There are, however, additional risks and considerations to make in relation to your e-commerce store. But don’t worry, this simple guide will take you through every element that needs to be considered.

Security

Your clients will be submitting their data to your website in order to make purchases online, therefore it is essential that you invest in the best protection for your site. There are many ways to improve your website security and to ensure that its SQL is not violated in any way. An unsecured site can be damaging for your business should it be found in breach of data regulation.Continue reading

4 Ways To Keep In Touch With Your Customers

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

It is said that around 80 percent of your business will come from just 20 percent of your customers – that means it’s easier, and more cost effective to keep your current customers happy, contented, and loyal than it is to try and find more customers. Keeping in touch with your customers is a great way to ensure loyalty and good feelings, but how can a business do that successfully? Here are some ideas.

Newsletters

Having a newsletter that your customers can sign up to (or one that they are automatically signed up to) is a fantastic way to keep your company and your products and services in the mind of the people who will hopefully spend money with you. Keep them in touch with what is going on with your business, run competitions, give them discount codes for loyalty and so on. As long as you send out your newsletter regularly (perhaps once a month), then your company will easily stick in their mind.Continue reading

4 Top Tips for Improving Your Online Presence

Contributed article in our small business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Every business must develop a strong online presence to boost their brand awareness, encourage engagement, improve industry authority and increase sales. To maximize your success, we are providing four top tips for improving your online presence.

Website Optimization

Only 51% of small businesses currently have a website. This is despite 97% of consumers routinely searching for both products and services online. Any company hoping to boost their brand and sales must strive to create an aesthetically-pleasing, easy-to-use website that promotes their products, services, history and contact information.Continue reading

5 Ways Email Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

Email marketing remains one of the most common marketing methods out there. It is a low cost way to market to customers with a high rate of return. Here are five ways email marketing can help you grow your business. All of them are within easy reach of every business utilizing email marketing, and none of them involve spamming your potential and current customers.

Use Email Marketing to Enhance Local Outreach

When someone talks about local outreach to potential customers via digital marketing, they initially think about local search engine optimization or sending messages to those customers in your marketing database and local area. However, you can use email marketing to improve local outreach. Continue reading

The Best Ways to Market Your Small Business on a Budget

Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly

When starting your own small business, marketing is exceptionally important. You can have the best products or service in the world but that isn’t enough to make your business a success. You need to make sure people know about it. Big businesses have a huge budget to employ a marketing team to do it all for them. You might not have the resources to do this in the beginning. Fortunately, there are many great marketing strategies you can implement yourself.

Image Ref: Creative Commons CC0

 

Social Media

Social media is absolutely massive. As well as the main platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, there are 100’s more you could use. Continue reading