Tips for small businesses moving into the digital landscape

Whether you’ve been adapting to the coronavirus pandemic, or you’re simply looking to expand, going digital is a big goal for many small businesses. Taking your business operations online - whether that’s setting up your website or your own ecommerce store - is a big step. Especially if you started your business offline, it can be tricky to know where to start.

There are lots of exciting decisions to be made, and plenty of development to undertake, but a push in the right direction is sure to improve your confidence. Though moving your services online can seem a little daunting, we’ve put together a list of tips that are sure to help you on your way.

Build your brand

Before you take your business online, make sure you have a solid vision of your brand. Where possible, you want potential and existing customers to see your activity online, and immediately be able to attribute it back to your business. Simply put, you need an identifiable and consistent look and feel to your online presence. It’s an important aspect of building trust, recognition, and visibility over on the digital landscape.

This might sound complicated at first; deciding on your brand’s personality is no easy feat once you get into the nitty gritty. Start small – if you haven’t already, think about colours you can use consistently online, a logo that represents your business well, or tag lines that fit your company’s ethos. As you naturally start to develop your brand, you’ll find it easier to make the more technical decisions, like packaging designs or “tone of voice” in communications.

Create a website you’re proud of

One of the most important factors of online success is a well put-together website. You’ll need to use a lot of your branding here – make sure you incorporate your logo and brand colours, but opt for a design that’s clean and professional. You might be tempted to add all the bells and whistles, but you should aim to keep your site as easy for the user to navigate as possible.

There are plenty of helpful sites and templates out there to help even the most technophobic of businesses make a start – so don’t worry if you don’t have prior experience. Just ensure you go for something that showcases your work or products, and be sure to fill it with useful, well-written information about your service. You can create an online shop on your website, or simply link to wherever you do sell your goods. If you’d like, you can even commission a web developer to do the hard work for you.

Stay legally informed

As with physical business, you’ll need to make sure your licensing and legalities are in order. Many of the same regulations apply, such as obtaining a business license and respecting copyrights, but there are some unique laws and regulations you’ll need to comply with.

If you already work with a legal professional, it’s likely you’ll be advised as usual. But if you’re doing independent research, here are some common e-commerce legalities to familiarise yourself with, if you’re planning to sell your services or products online:

Business license
DBA license
Copyright, trademarks and patents
Tax obligations
Data privacy & GDPR
PCI compliance
Shipping restrictions

Offer secure payments

If you’re selling services or products online, it’s your responsibility to provide a safe, secure payment method for your customers to use. While most third-party platforms have this covered already, it’s something you’ll need to think about if you’re setting up your own online store.

Luckily, there’s plenty of tools you can use to implement secure payments in just a few clicks. Services like Shopify, PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay are great places to start, as they allow your customers to pay safely from a choice of payment methods. You can also build your own secure payments, but it’s usually simpler, safer and less of a risk to go with a well-known service like those already mentioned.

Choose suitable platforms

Alongside your own website, you might want to consider cross-platform business. Whatever your sector, you’re sure to find a third-party platform ready to put you in front of a new customer base. For example, many beauty professionals offer bookings via apps like Treatwell, while clothing sites might also sell their goods on platforms like Depop.

As an already established business, we’re sure you already have a good idea of your target audience. It may feel like an obvious point, but the platforms you choose for your business should always enable you access to this audience above all.

For example, you might choose to sell your handmade jewellery on eBay, because the selling functions are easy to use, and the platform is overwhelmingly popular across age groups. However, with a little more digging, you might find people with a specific interest in hand-crafted jewellery are more likely to shop on Etsy, potentially leading to more sales and engagement.

Adapt your customer service

When shopping online, customers don’t get to visit your premises and chat with you face to face. With that in mind, you’ll need to put some extra thought into how you deliver excellent customer service. Try to add a human touch to your online process, be it with a kind, personal order confirmation, or a handwritten thank you card to show your appreciation.

You’ll also need to get familiar with how to deal with customers virtually – it’s harder to catch the nuances of a conversation without being able to see the other person. If you’re too direct, your emails and messages can easily be misconstrued as rude. If you’re too casual, you might seem unbothered. Take some time to think about how it’s best to approach customer service issues when you’re operating online.

Get active on social media

Social media is one of the easiest, most effective ways to reach a larger audience online. Here, you can truly shape your brand – you can post about your business, its values, your products and upcoming events. You can also interact with customers, and even other businesses for collaborative projects.

If you’re really looking to get going online, sponsored posts and influencer marketing are great ways to give your online presence a boost. You’ll need a budget to fund these marketing activities, but they’re definitely worth it for well-targeted campaigns and promotions.

Improve your SEO knowledge

A huge part of online success is visibility. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, can help your website climb the ranks. Search engines, like Bing and Google, apply a number of complex algorithms to pages online. This is done to identify good, authoritative and trusted websites – and the websites that fit these criteria are more likely to be shown as top results.

If you’re not familiar with it, SEO might seem a little technical at first. But don’t worry, you can improve your SEO in plenty of uncomplicated ways. One great way is to include lots of useful information on your website, making to sure to answer common questions and including popular terms related to your industry.

Actively improve and encourage reviews

Never underestimate the power of reviews. Many shoppers use reviews to assess the reliability of a business, and bad reviews can often be a deal breaker. Whether it’s reviews of your business or your products, make sure to encourage both on-site reviews and third-party reviews.

Popular third-party review sites include Trustpilot and Google Reviews, but there are many to choose from. You’ll often need to validate your business with these websites, but once you do, all of your customers can share their great feedback. To shout about it, there’s a number of plug-ins you can add to your own site, so new customers feel confident making an order with you.

Don’t overcomplicate it

Lastly, remember to keep it simple. As a new business in the online sphere, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the range of available options and routes to take. Take it one step at a time, and don’t feel as though you need to be doing everything at once. Whether you choose to work on your website first, or grow a social media following, remember to give the focus required to achieve your goals one at a time.

What next?

For more helpful advice and information for small businesses, make sure to take advantage of the other articles and resources available on the ThoughtHub. Our friendly team is always happy to help, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with further questions.