By Hank Ozzy
Whether you’ve been leading a small business for a few years or just starting your entrepreneurial adventure and don’t have a strong online presence yet, there are plenty of ways to modernize your online business without wasting a lot of resources
1 – Use Cloud-Based Software
Having a cloud-based architecture makes moving your business online much easier and more efficient. By doing so, you will be able to access essential elements of your business from any place and device.
2 – Solutions That Customize The Online Experience
In the vast online world, it seems extremely difficult to get to know each audience member personally. Still, several software solutions can help you in this constant relationship building. For example, suppose you have a restaurant and want to make your customer feel that they are interacting with your company. In that case, you can mobilize an online tool that offers a database where you explain what that same customer asked for on other occasions or when he visited your restaurant. This may allow you to customize future bookings and perhaps make you special offers (for example, on your birthday).
3 – Select Tools That Help You Streamline Time-Consuming Processes
When your business can automate aspects of operations that tend to be time-consuming, like invoicing or payments, you can focus on other activities to improve the business. At the same time, these tasks are efficiently carried out. Automation is one of the most beneficial aspects of the online world and allows you to focus on the human components of the business.
4 – Update Your Security Systems
Even a business that only exists offline has a significant base of information about customers, including their personal and financial details. To protect your business and customers, it’s essential to keep your security systems up to date by creating strategies that minimize the level of vulnerability – e.g., encryption or two-step checks.
5 – Create And Develop An Online Presence
Suppose you want to get to know your clientele online and present yourself as available to establish a relationship with them. In that case, you’ll even have to develop a presence on multiple social media platforms, using them regularly to interact with your audience. Having a Facebook or Instagram account is not enough: you have to be there every day, answering your questions, sharing relevant content. Like any relationship, your online social relationship needs attention to thrive.
6 – Leverage Your Application Programming Interfaces
The online environment puts you in contact with various tools and services like serviceminders amongst others that help to modernize the way you work with your customers and manage your business. Application Programming Interfaces allow you to use specific applications to increase functionality in any aspect of your business: marketing, sales, e-commerce, invoicing, project management, communication, and much more.
7– Hire Staff With Current Skills And Talents
It is better to admit it: you will hardly have the time or emotional availability to learn all the skills necessary to modernize your business, which is why it is essential to strategically hire some talent with digital knowledge (by outsourcing or freelancing, for example) that you can take carrying out some projects and processes that need immediate modernization. These skills can range from program to data analysis through social media marketing or mobile marketing.
