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Coronavirus has changed the world we live in and many businesses have moved online to continue operations. The pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital spaces for many businesses. In Singapore alone, many traditional food and beverage businesses, and hawkers have gone online to expand their business reach in response to the circuit breaker. We’re living in the new digital era where the advance of technology and the internet has sparked the e-commerce revolution which changed things in the digital landscape.
With more people online, it’s important to ensure that your digital presence is well established so as to not get drowned out by the competition. A business with a good digital presence will find it easier to gain new customers and also make it easier for your current customers to look up your business online. How should your business then go about auditing and updating your digital platforms to boost your presence online? Here are some tips to help you out!
Having a website is essential for your business, as studies show that 88% of consumers will research product information before they make a purchase online or in the store. This is a common consumer behaviour as most people want to make sure they’re getting the best deal they possibly can by comparing across different competitors. Consumers are likely to Google search a product and the result that appears at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS) has a higher chance of being selected. It is therefore important to optimise your website and landing pages to make the user interface and experience better.
First things first, ensure your website is mobile-friendly. This is because the majority of people use their smartphones more often these days and having a website that works only on desktop can make navigating hard. Mobile technology ownership is growing rapidly with estimates suggesting that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. Hence, making your website mobile-friendly can really help with getting users to stay longer on your page and explore your site.
Next, ensure you have the basic information and details about your business on your page. If you’re selling products, find the best way to display your goods, if you’re offering a service, showcase your works. It really boils down to you putting yourself in the shoes of a consumer and adding essential information that you think customers will want to seek out. Ensure you update your website’s information regularly so your customers, old or new, are up to date with the latest information about your business.
Next up, you’ll want your website to appear and rank well on the SERP. It’s best to make sure your page organically appears on the first page of the SERP as on the first page alone, the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%. SEO simply put, is the process of optimising your online content so that a search engine shows it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword. You can do this through researching for relevant keywords related to your business. Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and from there you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. This is especially helpful if your business also runs a business blog as it helps in figuring out what content your audience is seeking. Consider running a business blog as it also helps in raising awareness about your business and also boosts your online presence.
Back to keyword research, after identifying the relevant topics, you’ll need to think about relevant keyword phrases that people may search in relation to that topic. Make a list and compile all the phrases you think may work. Look into relevant related search terms as well to see what else you should consider. For example, a person searching about “web optimisation” may also be looking for “website optimisation guide/tips/strategies”. Once you have an almost final list, you still will need to narrow down your keywords through using tools like the AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Trends to help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are worth your focus.
A social media audit is a hard look at the data from all your social accounts, the social conversation about your brand and your competitors. Auditing your social media helps determine what are the strengths and weaknesses of your current social media strategies and how you can better develop or adjust your strategy to meet your business goals.
To conduct your audit, you’ll need to pull the data from all your different social media platforms and examine the channel’s metrics. Record all this data (best done through using an Excel sheet) and from there you can work on measuring the data.
What should you be measuring or looking out for in this audit? There are of course a long list of things you should be checking for and each audit will likely differ from channel to channel but here are a few important points:
The audit can help you develop new benchmarks and KPIs your business should be aiming for in future, help you understand the kind of content you should be creating, and also reach out to your customers more. Figuring out the best approach to your social media efforts will take some trial and error and this audit can aid with helping you formulate that approach.
To wrap it up, there are many things you can do to improve your digital presence online and ways you can optimise your content. Optimising your digital presence will also help your business in the long run as once you have established your presence online, it’ll be easier to work on it from that point forward. We hope you’re able to utilise these tips for your business to help you stay afloat during this pandemic.
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