The challenge these days is establishing an online presence for your business to reach more customers in this age of connectivity.
Since early 2020, Covid-19 lockdown regulations coupled with store closures resulted in thousands of consumers turning to online shopping for essential products and services.
As a result, the adoption of e-commerce has been exponentially accelerated, making it essential for businesses to have an online presence.
“Your business’s online presence could encompass several factors including a company website to drive e-commerce or online sales, social media marketing, email marketing, social media and a blog,” said Andiswa Bata, FNB co-head of SME.
“A business website is usually the first port of call. You can use a website developer or you can use free online tools to create a simple website. Remember to keep your design user-friendly and visually appealing.
“As much as you may want to share all the details of your business, less is more and a pleasing layout is more likely to keep visitors on the page for longer.
“Once you have a website established, you want to look at search engine optimization (SEO).
“It may sound intimidating but SEO is really just about improving the traffic to your website by improving your search engine results,” said Bata.
“For example, if you run a plumbing service in Germiston, you want to know that when a potential client types ‘plumber’ and ‘Germiston’ into their search bar, your company will come up as one of the top hits,” said Bata .
“While having an online presence is key, businesses need to find a way to manage deliveries and return purchases. It is also important for businesses to have as many payment mechanisms as possible like EFT and many more so that customers are not inconvenienced,” she said.
“However, you need to carefully consider which social media platforms you want to be active on and the audience you are trying to reach. Instagram, for example, has become quite popular among South African entrepreneurs looking to start their businesses. Start by defining your target market by looking at who already buys from you.
“Once you have social media business accounts in place, make use of the analytics services. Monitor who is visiting your pages and what interactions are resulting.
“Establishing an online presence in today’s society could even be the first step towards starting your business. Take it seriously, put in the time and the research so that you can reap the results,” said Bata.
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