4 mistakes all businesses should avoid online

When it comes to getting seen and being readily accessible to your target audience, your online presence could be what makes or breaks your business. To ensure continued success, having a website it is crucial. But, only by having a flawless website can you truly soar to ever greater heights. It is your digital shop front and, just like a physical one, must have the same level of care and attention bestowed upon to it. Yet, despite the necessity many SMEs are not using their online presence effectively and are continuing to make serious errors, causing great harm to their business.

To get you out of this conundrum, the experts at Rangewell have put together a list of some of the most common mistakes business owners make online and how to correct them before calamity strikes. Let’s get started!

1) Ignoring your SEO

The absolute number one thing you cannot, and absolutely shall not do, is ignore SEO. Optimising your website for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essential for getting your website to the top of search engines like Google. Your customers, the very audience you seek to attract in abundance, are all judging you.  How can they see what your business is all about and what makes you so special if they can’t see you? To sort this out you need to focus on a couple of aspects:

• Verify your Google My Business listing:

This makes it much easier for you to connect with your customers, ensuring that the contact details that they see are up to date and relevant. You can also ply your business in the right categories and provide a detailed description of your business.

• Embed a Google Map into your website:

Another great feature provided by Google that you absolutely must take advantage of is Google Maps. By linking your business to Google Maps your customers and desired audience can find your much easier when conducting a search.

• Optimise meta tags and page content for local keywords:

Keywords and meta tags directly affect the visibility of your content and it’s ability to lure customers to your website. Keywords or phrases are popular terms typed into search engines by your customers. So when you put these into your written content it increases the likelihood of them being seen in Google search listings.

Meta tags are like that juicy worm at the end of a hook. They are a description or sample of your website’s content and highlights the relevant keywords used within. By looking at this, customers can better judge whether your website offers the products and services they want, increasing your click-through rate and boosting your overall ratings on search engines.

• Use consistent contact information across your online profiles:

Providing the right information to your customers is an absolute must and needs to be consistent no matter where you write it. If it differs across a number platforms it’s going to cause a lot of confusion and annoyance amongst your customers. It’s such an obvious and easy-to-correct mistake that, if you haven’t done it already, you should really be asking yourself why!

2) Not having an accessible site for the modern connected user

Your customers are impatient. If your website doesn’t load up fast they’ll soon get annoyed and move on. That’s lost business that’s likely been snapped up by your competitors. Unless you provide them with a loading screen, customers will only wait a maximum of 3 seconds before clicking back onto search engine results.

To boost the speed of your website, Google has released Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). As the name entails these are much faster to load up on smart device like mobiles and tablets. If your website has not already been made compatible with AMP, you really must get it sorted as soon as possible.

3) Not communicating with their customers

Part of being online is being able to communicate with your customers. You can now send newsletters, event invites, reminders, updates, terms and conditions changes, and promotions directly to your customers.

However, they are able to communicate with you in turn and offer you crucial reviews. If you get a genuinely negative review, try not to take it to heart. Instead, learn from it and improve your products and services accordingly. Because your customers can now leave you reviews it makes it even easier for you to spot issues sooner and prevent them from causing real harm to your business. Talk to your customers!

4) Not joining up their data between online, offline and mobile

Your customers are now able to browse the internet across a multitude of smart devices such as phones, tablets, flat-screen T.V.s and smart mirrors (Yes, smart mirrors really do exist!). However, due to the size of their screens, your website must be compatible with mobile technology. If it isn’t, it shows up like a massive cluster, looking completely squashed and disorganised. The result, as you know by now, is they get annoyed and go to your competitors instead. If you can’t adapt your current website then I’m afraid you must create a separate site dedicated to supporting mobile technology and develop a system where users are redirected to the most relevant site for their device.

Naturally, making these changes can amass a hefty pile of costs. However, in order to ensure success and generate further sales, these must all be carried out despite this. But that said, you do not need the carry the costs alone. The business finance experts at Rangewell can help source the perfect finance solution to suit your business’s exacting needs. With our knowledge and experience in a number of sectors, you can gain access to an extensive array of packages including Business Loans, Invoice Finance, Revolving Credit, Merchant Cash Advance and much, much, more!

Our values are simple – We’re on your side

At Rangewell, our services are clear and transparent. We support a wide range of SME businesses of every shape and size, for finding every type of finance. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for business tips and tricks, and feel free to call us on 0203 637 2340 if you’d like to chat about what we can do for you.