Tips for Establishing a Site That Will Grow With You

Even if you’re just starting out, you have to look at the big picture if you want to grow. As a small business, part of this means establishing your web presence early on and ensuring that your site has room to grow. Today, we share a few tips on how to make your website a success.

Choose the right host.

The host is the service that “houses” your website on the internet. Choose a hosting agency – RAMShard’s packages starting at just $1.50 per month – that offers the bandwidth, SSD storage, databases, and subdomains you need. If you think you’ll launch multiple sites in the future, you’ll want to upgrade to a silver or better package, which allows you three or more websites on the same host.

Ensure a smooth e-commerce transaction.

Although brick-and-mortar shopping will likely never go out of fashion, people today love the convenience of shopping online. Make sure that your E-commerce transactions are smooth and glitch-free. On the front end, this means being organized and making it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for. On the backend, you’ll need a payment system that uses an API to retrieve bank account balance before each transaction. This helps your customers by ensuring they don’t overdraw their accounts, and you won’t have to worry about credit card fees. Confirm with your payment processing company that clients can make payments online or through your app.

Integrate with your existing programs.

Speaking of your app, if you have one, you’ll want to make sure that your website integrates with it. For example, you will need to link those to your ERP software and CRM systems to ensure updated inventory and client information.

Make your site fast and user-friendly.

It is not enough to simply have a website with an online shop. Your site must also be user-friendly. The Intechnic blog explains that the most successful websites are customer-centric. They should be intuitive, easy to navigate, and full of content that your customers will find useful. The less time your customers have to spend clicking around to find the information they want, the more likely they are to stay on your site instead of jumping over to the competition.

Direct traffic to your site.

Content is just one way to keep your customers engaged. To draw more people to your website, write guest posts for other businesses, advertise, and send out a monthly newsletter. You can also link to your social media pages. Another important step toward making sure people can find your site is to claim all of your free listings. Start with your Google Business Profile, which allows you to control your map settings and other important aspects of your listing that, left unclaimed, may not get customers to you.

Update your products and services often.

Your website and e-commerce shop need continual review. If you have products that aren’t selling or that get more negative reviews than positive, it might be time to drop it altogether and replace it with something more in-demand. You also want to pay attention to your shipping speeds as slow shipping is one of the top reasons that people abandon their online shopping carts.

Your website is as important to your business as any other marketing or branding strategy. Perhaps even more so as we are living at the dawn of the digital age. Take steps now to ensure that it can grow with you. Remember, keeping up with technology is not optional, and you can bet your bottom line that the competition will look for ways to overtake you online at any chance they get.

RAMShard has been serving clients from its home base in Ann Arbor, Michigan since 2017.


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Updated on: 01/17/2024