All new businesses have one thing in common – tight purse strings. The thought of coughing up for professionals to set up the various aspects of an online business, from SEO advisor and marketing expert to accountant and website-builder, causes understandable worry.

This need not be the case. The web is chock-a-block full of free platforms and networks that cost nothing to use or maintain and can give small businesses the edge, right from the start.

LinkedIn is key to new businesses for its networking possibilities; Mailchimp provides an email platform with excellent design and tracking capabilities; and WooRank tells you how your website is communicating with search engines so you can improve your SEO. These ‘freemium’ services, where the product or service is provided free of charge, but an affordable premium is charged for advanced features, are a gift to budding business owners who only 20 years ago would have paid thousands of pounds for these types of services.

The same applies to website building which is the first major undertaking for most new businesses.

Every savvy business person knows the value of a good website, but most new business owners perceive web design as complex, technical and time consuming and so will usually take the decision to outsource this task. But it’s not always necessary to throw thousands of pounds at a professional web designer. Freemium services, like Wix, enable businesses to create their professional and dream website on a shoestring.

Here’s how you can retain complete ownership of your company’s web building process so you end up with a beautiful website with a minimal amount of hassle, as well as saving yourself lots of money and time.

Planning your website

Firstly, it’s important to think about what your website represents – is your brand fun, colourful, minimalistic? Spend time understanding who your brand is, how it speaks and what experience you would like visitors to have when using your site – this will help you choose and build the perfect look and feel for your site.

Then look into the different freemium website building platforms out there, of which Wix is one. This means your website is free to build and can look beautiful with the help of ready-made templates, which can easily be customised by someone who doesn’t have any design or coding skills. Whether you’re a consultant or a hairdresser you can choose from the hundreds of HTML5 customisable designs. The benefit of freemium model platforms is that you only pay for what you need.

What’s more, you’re not restricted to basic website building. There’s also the option to integrate apps that will boost your business’ marketing and social functionalities. Adding music, videos, contact forms, traffic generating apps, blogs, live chat and other business building apps can take your website to the next level of customisation and professionalism.

Starting up your business does not have to be a daunting prospect. Utilise the free tools that the web has to offer and when it comes to creating your online presence this is no different. Reflect on who your brand is, what feeling you’d like it to convey, how your website should function and then research into a freemium web publishing platform and create your dream website within your budget.

More on website building 

How can I promote my small business website? – We answer 5 common questions on how to grow and market your small business website, from understanding SEO to advertising on social media

The post Advice for small businesses on building a website on a shoestring appeared first on Small Business UK.

Now that you’ve chosen your domain name and created your website, it’s all about getting noticed.

We’ll guide you through the key principles of generating traffic as well as advertising and selling through social media and promoting yourself through other people’s websites.

How can I drive traffic to my website?

Where to start? First, you need to ensure that your small business website is regularly updated with fresh content, as this keeps Google interested. Remember, your website is a digital mouth to feed.

And what Google especially likes are hyperlinks within content: both to elsewhere within your own small business website and to other people’s websites, which helps you gain what’s called “page authority.”

• Create useful content that answers a question – which is how we all use the internet.
• Learn about search engine optimisation (SEO), which is how to angle content to generate the highest web traffic possible. Often, it’s just tweaks.
• Create content that people in turn want to link to.
• Structure your content with subheads, bullet points and tables — just like this article! (It helps Google’s algorithm find your website and promote it up the rankings.)
• If you’re selling products, sell via bigger affiliate networks which get a percentage of each sale made.

The importance of video

Google regularly updates its mysterious algorithm, pushing some sites up the rankings and some down. It never announces these updates in advance nor divulges its thinking. One thing we do know is that video is increasingly important for websites, as Google prefers websites with video embedded. So, unleash your inner Steven Spielberg and think video first.

Getting your business listed

If you have a physical premises, whether it’s a shop or a pub or restaurant, Google My Business allows you to link your website to a box that comes up whenever someone Googles your business including your opening hours, contact details, and a map of your location.

Think about influencer marketing

Influencer marketing involves endorsements by popular individuals or groups on social media. Influencers with a relevant audience can direct their followers to your website, making them a powerful recommendation tool.

As an SME, focusing on nano and micro-influencers (1,000 to 50,000 followers) can connect with an online audience genuinely interested in what you’re selling. influenceers with smaller audiences, micro-targeted at what you’re offering, charge more affordable rates, making them a great opportunity for SMEs with modest marketing budgets.

What’s more important – sales or getting sign-ups?

Personally, I would always take a signup over a sale. A sale is a one-time transaction if the customer doesn’t want their details remembered or they don’t sign up for your mailing list. A signup is the start of an ongoing relationship and opportunity to connect with email newsletters, special offers and other promotions. Email addresses are data gold and obtaining them can be a high hurdle, even more so since the EU introduced its GDPR data legislation.

The importance of email

An email address is still the most valuable tool in your marketing toolkit. Being able to message customers telling them about your new or revamped website is marketing gold. Some of us are squeamish about marketing but think of it as a service to your customers – how can you serve them if they can’t find you online?

However, make sure there’s a way for people to sign up through your website. Offer them something in exchange for their email address, such as a free gift or entry into a prize draw.

How to collect email addresses through your website

• Ensure that people can input their email address on your home page. Your connected email service collects addresses on your behalf. Remember, it’s effective to give something free in exchange for the email address, an offer of some kind. A prize draw or a discount on their next purchase often works.
• Or send email signups to a landing page. This is a simpler page on your website where you can send visitors from a social media ad. You can have as many landing pages on your website as you want as they are invisible to casual visitors and allow you to segment your mailing list.
• Popups and slide-ins are separate boxes that either pop up or slide in somewhere on your website to collect people’s email address. Yes, they can be irritating to some, but many websites say they are the most effective tool to collect email addresses.
• Gated content. This means you have to input your email address to finish reading a complete article or if you want to be emailed a report or whitepaper. Again, it’s something for something.
• Header bars that sit at the top of a homepage, again giving you the chance to input your email. No matter how far you scroll down the website, the header bar sits there.

Should I advertise on social media?

The answer is “of course” – with caveats. What people don’t like is being hit over the head with sales messages. Whether you post an ad for your site on Facebook or Instagram or tweet a link to it, your content has to be both engaging and arresting.

The beauty of social media is that instead of the reach you’d get on a billboard or on TV or in a newspaper, social media allows you to drill down exactly into your ideal customer. Whatever your ideal customer profile, Facebook can find suitable matches by interests, age, gender and geography.

Even better, if you feed your customer email database into Facebook, the social network will then find their actual Facebook profiles and create a “lookalike audience” based on their interests, amplifying your potential ad reach. Ideally, you need to have a thousand email addresses to feed into the algorithm before Facebook gets to work. Scary, huh?

How do I sell things from my site on social media?

Here’s a 5-point checklist for creating any social media ad:

• Decide what you want to sell
• Who do you want to sell it to? — Choose age/gender/interest/location
• Select an image — Make it arresting
• Write compelling copy — Keep it snappy and short
• Pull your ad after a fortnight – social ads age quickly, and your target audience is being served the same ad repeatedly. Don’t outstay your welcome.

Facebook

As we have seen, Facebook is brilliant at identifying potential customers in highly targeted ways. And you can add a “buy now” button to your Facebook ad. However, the social media giant is happy to gobble your money regardless of how many sales conversions you make.

Don’t think you can just promote your website to your existing Facebook followers: organic reach on Facebook has dropped to anything between 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent. Facebook has very much become a pay-to-play – or, more accurately, a pay-to-be-seen platform.

First, you need to set up a Facebook Page for your business in addition to your personal Facebook account. This page will only be seen by people who have “liked” your page — in effect, they’re giving you permission to advertise to them.

Once an ad has been running for a few days, you will see a “relevancy” score to calculate whether your ad is engaging its target audience.

There are four types of Facebook ads:

• Sponsored which feature in a box on the right of your Facebook newsfeed.
• Page posts that appear in people’s newsfeeds.
• Sponsored stories that are sent to your newsfeed if a Facebook friend has previously engaged with the brand
• Promoted posts that are regular newsfeed posts that have been boosted in order to increase reach.

Instagram

Showing a customer a photo of your product and having them tap to buy it instantly is a compelling sales platform. You can go from being inspired to making a purchase within a couple of taps.

When you see a shopping bag on an Instagram post, it means you can purchase by hovering your finger over the item. Items are marked with price tags.

Also, you can add hashtags to photos to help Instagrammers find your products such as #shoes #trainers #oldskool #hi-tops #basketball to get more reach.

As a service, shoppable Instagram is free — although you do need to connect it to your Facebook business page and create a catalogue. And although your catalogue is not connected directly to your website, you can link the two — and your inventory — through a third-party e-commerce platform such as Shopify.

As with other social media platforms, do not post boring white-background product shots on Instagram — you need to create interesting, engaging images. You don’t want your Instagram feed to be one continuous sales catalogue.

X/Twitter

Somebody who follows you on Twitter is 72pc more likely to make a purchase from you.

And, like Facebook, X/Twitter ads enable you to target users by interest, gender and geography.

The simplest way to get started is to pay for a promoted tweet, just like the ones which appear in your own timeline. Again, using X/Twitter to promote a prize draw in exchange for website signups is probably better use of your marketing shilling than selling directly.

Reddit

This is a good way to promote a consumer website, but it doest take time to cultivate. Before you begin promoting your website on Reddit, you’ll be expected to join in conversations on sub-reddits (specific interest forums) and only share links to your website where on an appropriate basis.

Can I promote my website on other people’s websites, blogs or podcasts?

Yes. In this media-savvy age, people understand that you offer something for something. Mentioning your small business website when being interviewed for a podcast is perfectly acceptable and often comes in the form of the interviewer’s wrap-up question, “So, where can people find you?”

Offering to write blog posts with a link to your small business website on other people’s more widely followed sites is again perfectly standard. However, this is a time-consuming way of promoting your site. On the other hand, having your weblink on an authoritative third-party website does help what’s called “page authority” and pushes your site up the Google rankings. (Which is why national newspapers almost never link out of their own sites.)

Learn how to achieve more online with free and trusted advice from the UK Domain. Browse articles, guides and more here.

Further reading

Get your business online with this 7-step action plan

The post How can I promote my small business website? appeared first on Small Business UK.

The number of independent sellers has ballooned since platforms like eBay, Amazon Marketplace and Facebook Marketplace came to the fore.

They’re great for first-time and casual sellers with a ready-made market of customers searching for items that they’d struggle to find in the shops. However, you could be facing commission and listing fees, which will reduce your profits. You also have less room to customise your product description and how you present them. Bear in mind that they’re competitive selling platforms, especially for saturated markets like health and fitness.

Before you jump in, think about whether selling through your own website would be better for you.

Amanda Johnson, owner of Elsie’s Attic, talks about why she moved away from the big selling platforms.

What made you decide to go from eBay and Facebook to selling through your own website?

Selling on eBay is quite tricky as there are lots of hoops to jump through including fees and competition, so it can be quite tricky for a small business selling relatively low-value items to stand out.

Similarly, Facebook was great, but it meant I had to personally interact with every customer for a sale and issue invoices through PayPal. While it is always lovely to chat to customers, that model was simply not scalable and it was very difficult to take any time off, as I would worry we would miss messages and, by extension, sales.

Also, Facebook is going through a lot of changes, which means it is harder for businesses to have their content shown to potential customers. So, having our own website was the obvious answer. People could see all our items and shop with ease and confidence any time of the day or night.

What were the main challenges you faced?

When we started this business neither of us had any experience in the field, so we had no idea what to expect. There were just so many challenges. We had to have a crash course in how to manage and edit a website for starters.

Before our first site launched, I worked 27 hours without a break just to load all the products for the first launch! Now we are more experienced, we ensure our agency does this work prior to launch. After we launched our first website, it was more popular than we could have ever imagined and we were in no way prepared.

The site often experienced outages and the company that hosted us originally then refused to host us, as we were also taking down all their other sites. A nice problem to have, really!

What steps do you need to take to make the transition?

Finding someone that is used to dealing with e-commerce is a massive advantage.

The first person we used was great and we paid a very small fee, which certainly helped the business grow. However, our first web developer lacked e-commerce experience and was really only available to us during regular business hours, not usually the hours that people are shopping online. Our site regularly crashed on Sunday evenings due to the sheer volume of traffic and there was often no one available to help us.

“Finding a good agency or web developer that doesn’t cost the earth is the real key”

Finding a good agency or web developer that doesn’t cost the earth is the real key. As well as ensuring you have all the product information and images, there are lots of policies and basic information that you must display for visitors to be complaint – particularly following GDPR.

What advantages does selling on your own website have over eBay and Facebook?

The main advantage is that customers can browse our products 24/7 and we don’t have to be present to answer questions and issue invoices. All of that is done automatically through the site. People are able to view all of our products and necessary information in one place and we can also link sell.

For example, if a person purchases a dress, the site also suggests suitable petticoats, shoes and other items to go with the dress. We can also use our site as a platform for interacting with our lovely followers by posting blog entries.

Further, once a person has visited our site, they will hopefully sign up for our newsletter so it’s easier for us to make direct contact with them in the future.

Designing your website for improved customer retention

Here, Brenda Cresswell looks at three aspects of design that are some of the best ways to start moulding your visitors’ emotional responses.

For centuries, humans in western cultures have been lying to themselves. We have maintained the myth that we are rational beings, and that we can make logical decisions that are unaffected by emotion.

Recent efforts in neuroscience have shown this idea to be false. Scientist and business expert, Janet Crawford, described the stark reality of rational thought in an interview with Forbes: ‘The conscious intellectual brain steps in to provide a rational backstory to justify impulses generated in the murky corners of the unconscious mind’.

Crawford explains how our emotions are essentially shortcuts built into our brains to help us use our past experiences to respond to situations much more quickly than if we needed to work out a rational response.

This understanding of emotions is invaluable for web designers and business owners looking to convert more visitors into loyal customers. It tells us that building sites that trigger emotional responses in visitors is a much better way to persuade them to meet our goals than aiming for more intellectual stimulation, even if we’re using emotional subtext to push the visitor towards what they think is a rational decision.

Emotional focus in UX

User experience (UX) is an established part of web design. It refers to the entire experience of someone using your product (in this case, your website), and looks at aspects such as the accessibility and the value that the site adds to your visitor’s life.

While UX certainly has the scope to be improved by the understanding of emotions that neuroscience has given us, emotional experience (EX) has never quite had the impact that it could.

Some of the language around EX makes it sounds as if it is replacing UX, but EX at its best is a development of the existing discipline that builds on what has already made it a success, and keeps it in line with the best scientific insights from fields like neuromarketing.

Incorporating EX into your UX and user interface (UI – the aesthetic side of web design) means being more intentional in considering the emotional implications of different features on your website, and realising that visitors will attach emotional significance to elements of your design whether or not you want them to. A focus on EX means a commitment to taking control over the emotional implications of your site design choices, and using them to your advantage.

With that in mind, I want to take a look at three aspects of design that are, in my experience from 20 years in retail, some of the best ways to start moulding your visitors’ emotional responses.

Colour: the foundation of EX

Colour psychology is a well-trodden path in marketing, and its importance underpins much of EX. Colours are some of the simplest visual stimuli available to humans, and their appearance causes us to have a variety of emotional reactions.

At a basic level, warm colours like red and orange heighten our emotional arousal, making us more excited and passionate. Cooler colours, like blue and purple, tend to make us calmer and reduce obvious emotional responses (though this, in itself, is an emotional response).

Alongside those basic associations are extra associations that culture has created, sometimes building on basic natural instincts. For example, yellow has cautionary associations in cultures that use it in warning signs.

Being in retail, and managing a company that sells lingerie specifically, there are some associations that I can make use of. Red is a perfect colour for me, because it makes people more passionate and likely to make spontaneous purchases (which is why it’s normally used in sale signs), but it also has cultural associations with love, along with similar colours like pink. By incorporating red into my site, in elements like sale icons and the logo, I can benefit from these associations that make visitors more likely to make a snap decision to purchase my products.

In contrast, a service company like a law firm, along the lines of the one in this example, might use blue around their site to encourage a sense of calm in their visitors, and help them to evaluate their services with a clear head. Before deciding on colours, you need to think about your brand and products in order to make sure your choice supports the actions you want your visitors to accomplish.

A picture is worth a thousand words…or emotions

Images can create instant emotional responses that you just can’t replicate with words. Factors such as the subject matter, size and perceived proximity of your images will all have an emotional weighting.

Thanks to empathetic responses now believed by scientists to originate in specialised parts of the brain called mirror neurons, human brains respond when they see an image of someone performing an action that they are also capable of doing.

Let me break that down a bit. If you see someone looking happy wearing clothes from a certain brand, it’s easy to imagine yourself doing the same. If you see someone typing on a new keyboard, it’s easy to imagine yourself doing the same. As Dr Vittorio Gallese, a scientist at the university that first discovered mirror neurons in apes, says, ‘It seems we’re wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different. At the root, as humans we identify with the person we’re facing as someone like ourselves”. If you’re trying to sell a product, then showing your visitors images of people enjoying using that product is a great starting point.

You can also use images in a similar way to colours, choosing images where the subject matter and themes evoke responses of excitement, fun, or calm. Using visuals in this way is referred to as ‘priming’, and it works. A study on the phenomenon found that visitors to a car site would look at more expensive models if the background colour was green (like American money) and showed images of pennies.

Arrange your site’s layout for maximum effect

In high street retail, we know that arranging displays in the shop will make customers more likely to buy certain things, and the same principle applies for your online stores and websites.

If certain elements are more prominent than others, you can guide your visitors’ attention to the right places, and evoke the emotional responses that you’re looking for. Many sites already do this, with banners displaying featured products appearing large at the top of the page, or pop ups displaying your most important calls to action (CTAs) appearing in bold colours in the centre of the screen.

You may already be doing some of these techniques, but I would urge you to pay attention to the emotional content of each element. Is your CTA telling customers to shop in your sale in cool, calming colours rather than the more desirable hot colours? Or is your featured product banner devoid of any images that might encourage visitors to identify with people already using the product?

Humans naturally pick up on certain aspects of a scene and pay attention to them more than others, a phenomenon referred to in cognitive psychology as ‘prominence’, and you have the power to change what appears as prominent. If you don’t, your visitors’ attention might be dragged to other areas of the page that won’t lead to them becoming customers.

All of these features of EX that I’ve talked about are simple to implement in your design with a little bit of thought, and the principles can be applied to more than just these basics. In all that you do, think about how you want your customers to respond, and what you can do to make them respond in that way. You have nothing to lose by paying more attention to EX, and a lot that you could potentially gain.

Brenda Cresswell is founder of Bare Necessities.

Further reading on website design

Taking it to the next level: Remixing your digital presence – Stefano Maruzzi discusses the importance of your website sticking out from the pack

Building and designing your perfect website – In partnership with the UK Domain, we give you some handy tips to help you design and build a website for your small business

How to market your e-commerce website – How to get your small business website noticed. James Cooper of digital marketing solution Convoboss outlines all the tools you need to give your ecommerce website visibility

The post The pros and cons of selling through your own website appeared first on Small Business UK.

Entrepreneurs are generally aware of the positive effect that social media can have on their business, but sometimes lack a clear strategy to guide their output.

In this article, we’re going to look at social media strategies in a bit more detail, covering what a social media strategy is, why you need one and how to react and adjust your strategy depending on changes in your business.

Before we do so, and before you start creating your own social media plan, let’s establish how we – and your potential customers – use these platforms.

Statista cites that there are 45 million active social media users (67pc of the UK population) and 39 million active social media users on mobile (58pc of the population).

Statista cites that, as of January 2023, there were 57.1m active social media users (83 per cent of the UK population).

In 2023, Facebook is still the most widely used social platform in the UK – ambiguity surrounds whether WhatsApp is a social media platform so we won’t count it. Here are some key figures:

• A sizeable 66 per cent of all internet users in the UK use Facebook (Social Shepherd)
• Meanwhile, there are 30.6m Instagram users in the UK, which is about 46 per cent of the UK. (Social Films)
• 23.15m users are on X/Twitter (Statista)
• There were 38.1m LinkedIn users in the UK in June 2023 (Statista)

According to Meltwater, there are around 57.10m YouTube in 2023.

What is a social media strategy?

With statistics like the above, it’s no surprise that social media can help small businesses grow online. But to really get the most out of the channel, you need a social strategy. Why? We’ll answer that in a moment.

A social media strategy is a plan of how you’re going to handle your output over a set period of time – it could be a week, a month, a year or another suitable measure.

>See also: Social Media Metrics – It’s Time to Measure What Matters

It’ll typically include your goals and a content calendar of the posts that you’re going to publish and when they’ll be published.

Social strategies also tend to document the vital stats of your audience to keep who you’re targeting in check, which can help you separate your content types (videos, infographics, guides, etc.) and adjust your language according to what works for different demographics.

As well as your posts, a social strategy will help you set out time to respond to interactions, complaints and requests.

Ideally, you should be creating a social media strategy before you start posting but having experience with your audience has its advantages too. Use the knowhow you’ve gained already to sharpen your strategy.

If there are multiple people involved in your social media output, put the strategy in a shared file or programme so that you can all make adjustments to it.

When you’re getting started you can save yourself hours of needless work by finding a social media template – there are countless examples online.

>See also: 8 steps to creating a social media strategy for your small business

Why do I need a social media strategy?

Having a strategy makes your social management easier and more efficient.

It also means that people in your team aren’t just posting whatever pops into their heads. This protects you from saying something that might come across as offensive or harmful. What’s more, planning in advance evens out your posts to reduce the risk of spamming – or deserting – your followers.

At a base level, having a social media strategy helps you navigate the tangled world of web and social media. Experiment with different elements to see how they perform and track individual campaigns, rather than posting bits and pieces here and there.

A strategy also lets your relevant team see what’s happening on the social media front and gives them the chance to share their thoughts on upcoming posts. And for handovers and new staff, a written plan is much simpler to follow than verbal instructions.

Laying plans out clearly lets you know what’s going on in terms of competition as well as in your own social media performance. It could well act as an early indicator of market trends, giving you the advantage against your competitors.

Dealing with mishaps

Your social media strategy should include (or be paired with) information specifying what to do if something goes wrong. For instance, a member of your team might say something inappropriate or post from a different account by accident. Detail how to deal with customer and user complaints here too.

Remember to mention procedural bits like the protocol around creating passwords and how often you update them.

Changing your strategy

It’s vital that you regularly review your strategy to keep up with changes in your business, your products and your audience. If there’s a certain type of content that performs well or boosts sales, consider putting more focus on it.

Speaking of which, it’s a good time to consider adding sales features like Instagram shopping, if they’re relevant to your business and industry. Some companies have reported growth of hundreds of percentage points through social media shopping.

When thinking about your strategy, keep these 2023 stats – cited in Moneyzine – in mind. In the UK:

• 29 per cent of people use social media to research brands
• The average UK user spends one hour and 48 minutes every day on social media
• People in the UK use 6.3 social media platforms on average
• 73 per cent of people in the UK use Facebook or Instagram daily

An obvious marker for measuring success is your analytics and these will vary from platform to platform. Aside from specific analytics, keep track of how many followers you have, engagement, click-through rate and how quickly you’re responding to customer service enquiries. Let this shape what happens in the future of your social media planning.

It doesn’t solely have to be about changing your strategy: take the opportunity to purge fake accounts and followers, look at new scheduling platforms or purchase a programme to monitor your social media – anything relevant that needs attention, really.

Whatever your process, try and review your strategy every six months. This will keep you informed, motivated and inspired while helping your business to grow.

For more tips on your social media management, head over to The UK Domain and check out their social guides. You can also find more help and advice on social strategies in this online guide, complete with a checklist you can follow to create, execute and monitor your very own social media strategy in just eight steps.

This article was brought to you in partnership with the UK Domain.

Read more

How to create a social media strategy as a business leader

The post A guide to social media strategy for small business owners appeared first on Small Business UK.

Getting started on Instagram is fun and can be a great step into the world of social media for your small business. But you might find that you need advice further down the line – perhaps you struggle to grow, stagnating after a certain number of followers or likes per post.

All types and sizes of business can thrive on Instagram, though it is more crucial to certain small businesses, particularly the visually driven ones like restaurants, florists, hairdressers and clothing retailers.

We’ll show you how to get growing. To learn about getting started on Instagram, check out this step-by-step guide to creating an Instagram business profile.

1. Nail your marketing strategy

If you’ve been on the platform for a little while, it’s a fine idea to refresh and remind yourself why you’re using it.

While you’re there, remind yourself of your tone and personality. Shape them up if necessary – consistency with tone is as important as it is with the frequency of your posts.

Set out your goals. What do you want to achieve from Instagram? You may find your goals match some of Instagram’s ad objectives which you can then use to set up and track campaigns in the future. These include brand awareness, reach (to your website or to your app in the app store), app installs, engagement, video views and conversions. You can find out more about advertising on Instagram below.

Stories perform well so make sure they have a firm place in your marketing strategy, as they effectively skip to the front of the newsfeed queue. Instagram Live, which is a feature where you can broadcast a live video, is handy if you’re making a big announcement or your team are doing a charity event. Like Stories, it doesn’t affect the algorithm, but people can receive notifications when you’re live which helps drive engagement.

Scheduling is crucial. Map out your content in regular intervals – either day by day, week by week, month by month or year by year. Pencil in details of each post, remembering to include the date it’ll go out and the caption as well as any images/videos and hashtags. Take notice of the word count of the post, other accounts mentioned within the captions and your calls to action.

If you don’t use one already, consider a social media scheduler like Buffer or Hootsuite. They’ll let you compose posts in advance, and you can tailor each post to the individual platform.

Be prepared to change your strategy several times throughout the year according to algorithms, changes in your audience and changes as a result of your business growth.

When putting together your posts, leave time aside to create the initial posts as well as taking a couple of sessions a week to respond to comments and to like other people’s posts.

Assign a column to recording engagement, especially if that’s how you’re measuring performance (more on that later).

2. Learn the latest Instagram algorithms

Firstly, let’s get any ambiguity out of the way. An algorithm is a way of organising a user’s feed based on things it thinks they’d like to see. They often change, so make yourself aware of the latest algorithms where possible.

What these users see can be dependent on how they interact with you. If they never interact with your content, there’s an unfortunate chance they’ll never see your future posts.

Help your cause by posting consistently. It’s likely to drive more engagement with your audience and it lets Instagram know that you’re a legitimate account. But remember, a smaller number of posts with more engagement is better than more posts that have poor engagement. In fact, the latter could do damage to your reach.

Get friendly with other small businesses so that you can support each other. You’re more likely to be viewed as friends and family if you’re tagged in their posts, meaning that you can share audiences.

‘If users never interact with your content, there’s an unfortunate chance they’ll never see your future posts’

Finally, post when your followers are more likely to be online. Use Instagram Insights to get a sense of when your users are most engaged with your posts and encourage users to spend longer looking at your posts by incorporating videos or inviting them to comment and tag their friends.

3. Choose the right options for advertising

For a quick boost it’s worth considering advertising. Again, decide what you want from Instagram advertising.

It’s important to mention  that linking is more restrictive compared to other social networks as you can’t insert links into Instagram posts. Instead, you can put links in your Insta bio – you may have seen this before when a company posts and follows the caption with ‘link in the bio’.

You can post the link text into your post if you prefer, but fewer people are likely to engage as they’d have to copy and paste the link into a new tab on their web browser.

The exception to this rule is that you can put paid links in promoted posts and Stories.

Now, onto the types of ads. You can target ads based on users’ location, interests, demographics and behaviour as well as targeting custom audiences and lookalike audiences. Instagram uses Facebook’s demographic data which makes it easier for you to target your audience.

Sponsored post

The most common way to do this is a sponsored post in the form of a standard photo, video or carousel. Carousel is a series of scrollable images which are great for more visual businesses.

Stories

Alternatively, you can advertise as an Instagram Story which will appear in-between your friends’ Instagram Stories.

Explore

Place ads in Explore (Instagram’s search feature). This is the box grid that appears when you tap the search key in the bottom toolbar. It works to your advantage because users are looking for new content that is relevant to them anyway.

Reels

Record and edit short reels (up to 90 seconds) to highlight your products and services – or anything fun that’s in keeping with your brand’s tone of voice. Add music, voiceover, effects, stickers. You can even add a timer as a countdown to a sale or other event.

Collection

Collection ads are better for retailers as they showcase products from your store through photos, images or a combination of the two.

Influencers

The final possibility is affiliate marketing through influencers. To see if it’s worth your while, work out the engagement rate for each influencer. Do this by adding together the number of likes and comments the influencer has on their Instagram profile, divide by the total number of followers and divide that by number of posts. As this is a laborious process, there are online tools that can do this for you. An average engagement rate of 1 per cent to 3 per cent is considered good.

Of course, make sure the influencer you’re contacting has values that are aligned with your brand. Even a niche influencer with a small following could bring more customers and better returns than a less engaged larger audience.

If the influencer is suitable for your brand, get in touch and see if you can do a deal. You can learn more about influencer marketing and whether it’s a good fit for your brand here.

4. Monitor your performance for continual growth

You’ve got a few markers to track your performance. Here are some examples (which may vary depending on your objectives and goals for Instagram):

• Followers
• The number of likes and/or comments
• Video views (if Reels are part of your strategy)
• Engagement figures
• Website traffic

As ever, quality beats quantity here, especially for the number of followers. It’s still worth keeping track of follower numbers as you can gauge if there is a particular post or ad which has helped or damaged your brand.

It’s better to have fewer, more engaged followers. Engagement is an indicator of the types of content people want to see, measured as the number of likes or comments you get based on the number of followers you have.

You won’t be surprised to hear that Ads Manager will track your ad performance. It works on the same platform as Facebook Ads Manager, so it helps if you’re familiar with that already. It allows you to look at the metrics mentioned above for individual campaigns with the added ability to schedule and save reports.

Hopefully this has given you greater insight into the factors that can help you grow your Instagram account. For more on the topics discussed in this feature, read the following guides:

Instagram marketing for small businesses

Instagram Explore: everything you need to know

A small business guide to Instagram Live

Read more

Social Media Metrics – It’s Time To Measure What Matters

The post 4 steps to help your small business grow on Instagram appeared first on Small Business UK.

Whether it’s your SMB’s bank account or finance management app, money is mostly managed online these days. Technology has created a better framework to manage finances. However, it has also created vulnerabilities.

Every app and digital solution your SMB uses requires an email address or identifying information. This data is exposed to malicious actors if the app does not secure it well enough. While most apps do a great job with data security, we often neglect the most vulnerable portion of the security chain: ourselves.

Phishing is a disturbingly common way of stealing money these days and it leverages our lack of knowledge and awareness. Phishing is much more than a malicious email in your employees’ inboxes. Thanks to advanced security measures, social engineering attacks are becoming common.

Here are three ways you can protect your SMB from phishing and other malware attacks and avoid exposing sensitive data.

Educate your employees

Education is the first step to combatting phishing. Malicious attackers rely on their victims lacking the knowledge to spot a suspicious email. For instance, they might think the average phishing communication has poor spelling or mistyped email addresses. While these forms of communication exist, they aren’t the only ones to worry about.

Attacks that impersonate banks or demand one-time passwords are far more common. For instance, an employee might visit a familiar-looking malicious website that they believe belongs to your SMB’s bank and call customer service. The person on the line might then ask your employee for an email address to send them password reset options.

Upon clicking that link, your employee will either install spyware on their computer or enter their current password, giving the attacker a way to log in to the bank account. Phishing attacks usually begin long before a suspicious email lands in that inbox.

To combat this, read the data storage and communication policies your bank and finance apps conduct. Most banks and apps rarely ask for personal information over the phone or request one-time authentication passwords. As such, every email communication from these sources should be treated as suspicious.

If such an email is received, call or communicate with a designated person in the organisation, especially your bank, to verify the contents of the email. These measures will go a long way toward preventing a data breach.

Rethink your employees’ passwords

Passwords remain central to cybersecurity despite the many advances we’ve made over the past decade. In many ways, passwords are archaic, but most apps do not have a better solution. Therefore, your employees must review how they create and store passwords.

These days, people can use password managers to store and change passwords. However, some apps block this software from accessing them for security reasons. Thus, your employees will have to eventually store and remember their passwords.

When creating passwords, the obvious step is to avoid including personal information like name, birthday, account information, or the word ‘password’ in them. Also, avoid using the same password across several accounts. Attackers usually try breaching associated accounts when stealing one password. This measure will prevent the spread.

Ultimately, there is no fool-proof solution to protecting your employees’ passwords. If someone on your team is having trouble remembering them or cannot devise a pattern, ask them to memorise them or write them down on a piece of paper. This might seem callous, but it’s a decent solution.

For starters, cybercriminals cannot hack a piece of paper. However, your employee must secure this document from those around them, and this can create complications. One solution is to list passwords in a code or abbreviations so that only your employee can understand them.

Note that while paper prevents software hacks, it does not guarantee safety. Your employee might lose the document or damage it by mistake. There is no ‘best’ solution here. Create a pattern that makes sense to your employee, avoid including personal information and store passwords in a code they understand.

Put together, these measures will prevent attackers from stealing sensitive information.

Use multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication, or MFA, is a great way of reducing the odds of suffering a data breach. MFA is simple to install and understand. The idea is to secure your employees’ accounts with more than just a password (another ‘factor.’) This second factor is usually a one-time password delivered to their personal device via an app or a message.

MFA is tough for most attackers to breach because their odds of accessing both your employees’ password and temporary access code are low. However, MFA doesn’t eliminate all threats. As detailed in the previous section, attackers can impersonate trusted sources to get your employees to divulge personal information.

Cybersecurity is essential

The practices listed in this article go a long way toward preventing breaches. However, there is no single fool-proof solution. Educate your staff and take steps to secure your SMB accounts.

Read more on phishing

How to provide cybersecurity training for your home workers

The post SMB security: preventing phishing attempts appeared first on Small Business UK.

If there was ever a case for creating an online business, it is the rising percentage of online retail transactions. Recent figures from Statista show that e-commerce revenue in the UK has reached £110bn, accounting for 38 per cent of total retail spend. The UK also has 60 million e-commerce users. 

Having an online presence is therefore essential. The internet offers a platform for a business to be found, be competitive, to gain credibility and ultimately provide great returns. 

A 2018 survey of over 2,000 small and micro-businesses by website provider 123-Reg found that online businesses were 51 per cent more likely to grow than those without a website.  

Together with the fact websites are now a vital element of consumer pre-purchase research, it is more necessary than ever for your business to stand out from the crowd with a .uk domain.  

The good news for those on a budget is that an effective online operation does not have to break the bank. From inexpensive domain name registration to achieving market visibility through strong SEO and social media utilisation, a flourishing online business can be created on a shoestring.  

This guide in association with the UK Domain by Nominet will cover the process getting online, what to consider and how others have found success online. 

Small Business Pro is the ideal tool for you when you’re starting your business. It will help with the heavy lifting of managing customers, taking payments, insurance, finance and HR, plus you’ll get a host of personal wellbeing benefits.

You can find out more about Small Business Pro here.

Maximising online success  

Helen Tomes, from the UK Domain by Nominet, discusses the key areas for maximising success when doing business online. 

The internet has transformed virtually all aspects of life. Setting up and running a business is no exception. Having an online presence has never been so essential for small businesses, and those that fail to recognise the importance and opportunities are being left behind.  

Three quarters (76 per cent) of UK consumers look online for information before hitting the high street and it’s no secret that customers are now becoming more reliant on using the internet to search and shop for products and services. 

If your business isn’t online, it’s not visible to most of your potential customers. It also means you can’t compete effectively, as your competitors are likely to be online already and will be displayed when customers search for similar products and services to your own.  

Customers expect to find businesses online 

In an era when people can order a product at 10pm and still get next-day delivery, customers expect to find businesses online. Businesses that have yet to adopt an online presence also risk being perceived in the minds of some customers as less trustworthy and credible. 

This also means that customers now expect to be able to shop, anytime, anywhere, 24/7. Even if you run a business from a physical space, such as a retail shop, being online is an easy and effective way to tell customers where your business is, what times you’re open and what products or services you offer.  

These reasons are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the importance of being online. Not only will you improve your business’s visibility but you’ll also have some great opportunities to talk to all your customers. Got some new products? Received some great feedback from a customer? Being online gives you a great platform to shout about your business through a variety of channels, tools and techniques, not all of which require a hefty budget. 

Getting a website 

Starting and building a website is the essential step towards getting your business online and, despite what you might think, it doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. 

Securing a great domain name (the string of letters or words that identify websites online) is the best way to own your brand online, and those who sell them (registrars) often have low-priced special offers available.  

“Businesses that have yet to adopt an online presence risk being perceived as less trustworthy and credible” 

Once you have a domain name, the next step is to build your website. Most registrars offer easy-to-use web-building packages that require no technical knowledge to get started with and only require a small monthly or annual fee. 

Optimising for search engines 

You may have already heard of search engine optimisation (SEO), the practice of trying to get a website to climb higher in search engine results in to earn more clicks from people searching. SEO can seem an advanced topic, requiring the expertise of a professional, but there are some simple (and free) things you can do to improve the visibility of your website, with the most crucial being to include lots of quality content on your website. Anticipate the questions your customers are likely to ask and ensure your content answers them. 

>See also: On the first day of Christmas, my SEO said to me… festive search guide 

Engaging on social media 

Social media is a great tool to raise brand awareness and engage with customers and getting set up is free – you’ll only need a budget if you venture into advertising. 

Social media isn’t just a customer service tool: you can use it to drive more traffic to your website, gain valuable insight into your customers, share great content, gain customer feedback and improve loyalty to your brand.  

Paid promotion with advertising 

A little budget can go a long way when it comes to advertising online, if you’re smart about it. From targeting customers on Facebook to showing banner adverts on popular websites, there are plenty of great opportunities you can investigate for your business. You don’t need a big budget but you do need to be very clear about what you want to achieve. That’s a key point to take away throughout this guide: have a plan with clear goals and minimise the risk of wasting money. 

Business name and domain: Getting it right 

When starting any business on a budget, some expenditures will be greater than others. Sorting out your business name and registering a domain is a low-cost activity, but careful thought must be put into it. 

Coming up with a name for your business might not sound like a huge challenge but trying to find something that is unique, memorable and not already being used by another business can be tricky. It requires a lot of thought and careful consideration, as your business name is the first impression consumers will get of your company. 

When you have your name decided on, you have to register it. Nominet is the official registry for all UK domain names. The UK Domain by Nominet provides free expert advice helping businesses to achieve more online. The domain search and domain name comparison tools will help you to check that your chosen .uk domain is available, then present you with a selection of accredited registrars to choose from, giving you information on each so that you can make an informed decision to buy a domain with confidence. 

Getting a .uk domain sends an important message about your business. For Chris Evans, founder of Blighty Commonwealth Cafes, having a .co.uk domain is central to his brand. ‘It was just the right fit for our business – Blighty says UK, and it’s important for us to emphasise that local message,’ he says.  

Choosing and registering a domain: Essential tips 

Traditional or abstract? A traditional name tells potential customers what your business does at a glance, while a quirky domain name can pique the curiosity of visitors.  

Search for it on Google first. If your name is too similar to another existing business, it could create confusion for your potential customers or worse – legal issues. Use the ‘Find a domain’ search tool, which will tell you if the domain name is available. 

Make sure it’s easy to spell. Your name is going to be typed a lot – this needs to be easy for your visitors to do. 

Make it memorable. Keep it short and steer clear of hyphens and digits if you can. 

Once you’ve decided, register it straight away. Don’t risk losing your domain to someone else. 

Consider which .uk domain is best for you: 

• A .uk still carries the trust and authority of being a UK domain, while being snappier and more modern. 
• .co.uk is one of the most established and popular domains in the world, perfect for UK business and enterprise. 
• .org.uk is the domain to champion a cause and community. 
• .me.uk – the domain for individuals – is perfect for personal blogs, portfolios or any website where you’re building your own unique online presence. 

Register multiple domains. If you’ve thought of a few potential domain names, it makes sense to get them all registered as soon as you can. 

>See also: 9 best practices for branding your small business with a domain name 

Case study: How I managed my domain 

Althea Blake, founder of ROOTS POD, discusses how she went about securing the domain name for her business consultancy.  

I had a business to launch, and to validate that I was offering a professional service I needed to have an online presence and be contacted via an email address that reflected my business name and not my personal account; a professional website and email address was essential to have. 

“To register a domain name, I researched special offers among a list of providers” 

I have always loved a bargain and enjoy shopping around for the best deals before committing to a purchase. Over the years, I have negotiated with suppliers for the best prices and services for my clients. Now, I had to do it for my own business. As a small start-up, funds were initially low – and at times non-existent – so committing to long-term contracts was not always practical. 

To register a domain name, I researched special offers among a list of providers recommended by friends and colleagues from their own experience. I opted for a three-year deal, so if my income was limited or non-existent, potential clients would always be able to contact me through email or my website and not get the dreaded ‘404 page not found’ error when visiting my site or an ‘undeliverable’ email message. 

My domain is set and paid for over the next three years, saving approximately 35 per cent. Paying upfront means one less expenditure on my list of monthly outgoings, which equals one less headache for me. That alone is priceless. 

Hosting, building, and introducing a CMS 

Hosting 

Most hosting providers come in at a similar low price point – often from just £1 a month – so business owners should look at online reviews and go for quality of support, says Alex Price, founder of 93digital.co.uk. ‘You need to know you can get in touch with your hosting provider quickly and easily, at any hour, if your website goes down,’ he adds. 

Getting the best web hosting package is key for your website to work smoothly and problem free, says James Blackman, founder of website design and digital marketing agency Cocoonfxmedia. ‘When we set up our business, there weren’t many hosting options out there; however, the golden rule we stuck to was rock-solid customer support and UK-based servers,’ he says. 

The key factor to consider for web hosting is the service-level agreement and the hardware, he adds. ‘RAM and CPU is a good start. The higher the numbers the better, and cloud is often a wise choice. 

‘Hosting should not be seen as the cheapest element; however, you don’t need to spend a fortune,’ he adds. 

Implementing a CMS 

With a background in digital marketing, Caroline Taylor, founder of Taylor’d Bundles, took the decision to design and build her own CMS using Drupal – saving money. ‘Their plug-ins and updates are straightforward and allowed me to build a site that worked well for me,’ she says.  

‘I have a very good friend who programmed, tested and helped me support the site as and when I needed it. I’m very fortunate but made it a priority to fully understand and learn what the site was capable of so I can manage most of it myself.’ 

Taylor works with up-and-coming designers and asks as many as possible to link to her site to help with link building and add her URL to as many posts as possible to help increase SEO visibility. ‘It was also really important for my site to be mobile optimised, so we built the site to appear perfectly on the top 15 mobile operators – I now use analytics to see what the site is being viewed on and optimise accordingly.’ 

Case study: How I built my website 

Deepak Ravindran, co-founder of food delivery service OddBox, explains how he structured the backend of his website. 

OddBox is a food delivery service that rescues misshaped vegetables from local growers and delivers them straight to the customer’s door at a discount. 

We are a subscription-based solution, and we have two parts to our online experience. For our front end, we use a solution which we pay just $20 a month for. We also needed to integrate a subscription management system. For this second element, we use a subscription marketplace which helps us with managing our database, sending out emails to users and onboarding them, and for this we pay $40 a month. 

A seamless customer experience 

Having a setup like this means a customer will be able to use the front end to browse our products, with the actual purchase happening on the subscription marketplace. 

I’m not a technical person, and literally anyone can use the templates provided for today’s front-end solutions. There are also simple tutorials available for these products, and they are economical; we just pay the monthly subscription with no other costs to consider. 

“Having a user-friendly, attractive website that was cost effective to implement and run was key” 

Having a user-friendly, attractive website that was cost effective to implement and run was key. We are an online company through and through, and we have to communicate our brand message on the website through engaging content and imagery, as well as ensure we deliver a high standard of functionality for our customers. By using a reasonably-priced front end and subscription marketplace we feel we’ve been able to achieve this.  

SEO tricks on a budget 

Here, Matt Shaw, digital marketing manager at agency Blue Digital, shares his tips for small businesses to make SEO gains on a modest budget. 

Online marketing is becoming more important for all businesses, no matter their size. But it is often difficult for small businesses to compete with big brands for online exposure, especially when the variations in SEO and advertising budgets are so large. 

This doesn’t mean that SEO on a smaller scale isn’t possible – there are different tactics that small businesses can utilise if they have the right amount of time.   

Local SEO 

One of the best ways to improve search engine visibility for small businesses is to target local searches. This is a proven way small businesses can get ahead of some of the bigger brands within their local areas. At Blue Digital, we have utilised this tactic ourselves; as a small agency in Leeds we are competing against much larger digital marketing agencies, but through well-optimised local targeting we are managing to compete. 

Tips to be successful in SEO: 

• Ensure your business is set up with Google My Business, a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses to manage their online presence across Google and which is optimised for your industry 

• Create uniformed brand citations (company name, address, phone number and website) across reputable directories such as Yell, Thomson Local and Yellow Pages 
• Look at local papers for PR opportunities 
• Create bespoke content pages about specific locations to increase relevancy for those areas 

>See also: Does SEO matter? A close look at the impact of SEO on business website rankings 

Thought leaders 

Although small businesses may have fewer people, they still have experts within their given industries/fields, and one way to get ahead of larger businesses is to share more of their knowledge. Think about commonly asked questions within the industry and utilise in-house experts to answer them and put them on the website. 

With companies of all sizes looking to appear in search engines for high-demand search terms, it is important to pick your battles wisely. So instead of trying to compete for one of your products or services – for example, digital marketing agency – look at targeting the users that are earlier in their purchasing cycle – eg ‘What is digital marketing?’ 

What you need to do: 

• Utilise customer-facing people (or SEO-based keyword research) to find out frequently asked questions 

• Use in-house expertise to answer the questions in detail 
• Share via social media channels and email marketing 

Research and strategy 

If you do only have a small budget, utilise that to get SEO experts to do the technical aspects, including research and strategy creation. This will mean that as a small business your online presence will have the right foundations, and all that will be required from you is the time and effort to implement the strategy.  

SEO can be broken down into several areas and more often than not the implementation can be carried out by people within the business. To do this, the business should look at: 

• Sourcing a reputable SEO/digital marketing agency, not one that says they can do SEO for £20 per month. Mid-level SEO can cost around £1,000 a month 
• An SEO/digital marketing company to carry out technical website audit and keyword research 
• A web company or SEO/digital marketing agency to fix technical issues 
• An SEO/digital marketing company to create a strategy based upon research 

• Small business to implement strategy 
• SEO/digital marketing agency to review performance and update strategy accordingly 
• As long as the initial technical phase and research is performed well, a strategy implemented by the small business should have positive impacts on the online visibility 

Conquering social media on a shoestring 

Here, Lee Cullen, co-founder of marketing agency No Brainer, discusses how a small company should navigate the intricacies of social media promotion. 

As a small business, the thought of launching your fledgling company into the world of social media can be overwhelming. With so many channels to choose from, the challenge of posting good content regularly and the constant risk of negative comments or complaints, it’s easy to see why keeping the floodgates shut can seem like the best option. 

The only problem with that mindset is that – whatever sector you work in – your customers are already there. By ignoring the potential of social media, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to engage with existing and prospective customers, promote your brand and ultimately hit those all-important business objectives. 

The good news is that, with a bit of upfront thought into your strategy, you can go on to achieve amazing things for your brand in social. Even if you’re working with a shoestring budget, follow some of these simple tips to really boost your chances of social success. 

Set goals and objectives 

The only way you’ll ever know if your social media strategy is working is if you take the time to set some goals and objectives from the start. Far too often, businesses simply dive into posting content without really thinking through why, and nine times out of ten it’s these brands that end up quickly losing heart or running out of ideas. Take the time to set some goals focused on things such as increasing brand awareness, driving engagement, creating conversations and delivering an uplift in website traffic. 

Think about your target audience 

If you sell baby clothes from a small city centre shop in London, your target customers will likely be very different from a company selling cloud-based software to SMEs in the UK. The key thing is to define who your products or services are for. How old are they? What are they interested in? Where do they live? Armed with that knowledge, you can really start to develop a solid content strategy. 

If you’re struggling to answer these questions, running small surveys or focus groups with your customers is a great way to develop ideas. Offer a small incentive to get a good range of feedback, which could be one of your products or some of your time to help keep costs low. 

Choose your channels 

A common social media pitfall is making your brand active across too many platforms. Think strategically about what channels your customers use the most and start with them. You can always add more later. 

Craft a strategy that really works 

Developing a strategy to engage with your audience and keep them coming back for more is the key to long-term social success. The three core elements to bear in mind are frequency of posts, timing and the type of content you publish. 

With frequency, it all depends on the channel. Facebook and Twitter are generally hungrier for posts than LinkedIn, for example. Try to post a few times a week on Facebook and Twitter in the early stages of going live and a couple of times a week on LinkedIn. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself – quality over quantity wins every time. 

Timing is a little trickier, as there’s no hard and fast rules to stick to. The goal posts shift between sectors and platforms but try to think about the typical routines of your target market and post when you think they’re most likely to be online. The key is to test and learn which posts perform best and align your timing to that. Use a free tool like Hootsuite to make the process of scheduling posts a bit easier too. 

The third element of the strategy is the type of post you go for. If you’ve got long-form content in the shape of reports or e-books you can draw upon, create mini campaigns around them and publish quotes or key stats over a number of days with links to your website. It’s absolutely fine to post about the same thing more than once, but don’t forget to use trackable links to check what posts work best. 

Blogging is another great way to inject fresh content into your strategy. A few hundred words is perfect, and topics could include news about your business, customer case studies, product launches and milestones. 

You also need to be thinking multimedia. The picture quality on a smartphone is so good these days that there’s no excuse for you not to be sharing good-quality imagery, and if you want to get creative with your pictures, check out another free tool called Canva, which allows you to create everything from Facebook banners to infographics. 

Video is also getting more popular in social, so in time, think about how you can integrate short clips into your content. 

There’s no time like the present 

Dedicate some time to really thinking about how social media can work for you, and before you know it, you’ll feel ready to get going. Make sure you start small and build out new ideas or platforms as your confidence grows. 

Whatever sector you operate in, social media gives you the opportunity to connect with customers like never before. Now all you have to do is reach out and take it. 

Advertising in a cost-effective way 

Advertising on a small budget can be dauntingly expensive for small businesses, but here we look at the methods you can use to maximise a modest spend. 

For a small business on a modest budget, advertising must be cost effective, as the price can be prohibitive. ‘Businesses looking to take on advertising must weigh up their ROI,’ says James Blackman of CocoonFX Media. ‘If, for example, you’re considering an advert for £1,000 in a magazine with 12,000 readers, ensure that magazine is very much your target audience.’   

Blackman believes social media advertising is the most cost-effective form of advertising for small companies. ‘You can spend as little as £200 and reach 50,000 people instantly, but more importantly you can automatically track the leads and sales,’ he adds.  

Google AdWords, when set up correctly, can transform a business rapidly, but you must expect to spend some money to start with before you get the returns, Blackman advises. He adds that buying banner ads on websites can be a good idea, but only if you’re going for brand recognition. 

‘If you’re starting out, I would always say stay with social media; you can reach more people more quickly and ensure your message is very targeted. 

‘You also have complete control over the budget and the actual statistics.’ 

“What are the pages they might like on Facebook? What kind of interests do they have?” 

Price of 93digital.co.uk says companies should make sure they define their target audience and who they’re marketing to. ‘If you set up a Facebook ad campaign for anyone between 20 and 30 in the centre of London, you’re not going to get value for money, so it’s about defining those personas,’ he says. ‘What are the pages they might like on Facebook? What kind of interests do they have? Make sure you target that advertising in as much detail as possible.’ 

If you have £500 a month to spend on Facebook ads, it may be cost effective to spend an extra £300 on getting an expert to use it for you, he adds. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have good-value ad options, so explore a range of them to find the best fit for your business. 

‘Facebook retargeting has been effective for us: when people go on our site, we can drop a cookie on their browser, and if they go on Facebook we can remarket an advert to them. Retargeting means you know the people are qualified, and you don’t pay unless they click on your ads, so you aren’t spending lots of money waiting for random clicks – it’s more focused. 

‘We’ve had people see our retargeted ads, click on our site and fill in our contact form; it’s a useful technique to use.’ 

Case study: Online advertising: How I promoted my small veterinary centre 

Andrew Monchar, founder of Two By Two Veterinary Centre, discusses the directories that brought him success. 

I took out an advert on Yell.com for £17 + VAT per month, and now I’m listed at number two for the Yell search ‘Vets in Finchley’.  

I realised I wasn’t going to have time to approach every online directory to get my company listed, so now I also Yell Connect, which is separate from the advert that I’ve put up and costs £25 a month. They create directory listings for your company in all the directories they have access to, and every day their computer system checks it to make sure that nothing’s changed; Google favours companies who have no discrepancy between their listings online.  

More on running an online business

Can your website keep up with your business growth? 

The post Your guide to starting an online business appeared first on Small Business UK.

Though Black Friday (which falls on November 25) is expected to attract fewer shoppers this year, website traffic is still expected to increase beyond the normal range.

A well planned and executed Black Friday campaign can have many benefits for your business. As well as driving more sales via a range of discounts and deals, it also provides opportunities to extend your audience base and re-engage lapsed customers too.

However, if you fail to prepare properly for the increase in website traffic that comes from a great Black Friday campaign, you could end up with hundreds of unhappy customers who are unable to buy the products you’re offering. A website will typically crash when it is overloaded and cannot respond quickly enough.

Here, we share our tips to help you prepare your website for Black Friday by improving load speeds and using external services to keep the pressure off your servers – resulting in a better user experience for your visitors.

The importance of a good impression

Where household names will probably be able to shrug off any negative PR around Black Friday activities, it is not so simple for the majority of smaller businesses that are looking to attract and retain new customers. A new customer struggling to use your site on Black Friday may decide that it’s not worth it and spend their money elsewhere.

One of the most important things you can do in these last few days before Friday is make sure that your website is prepared to withstand the traffic that your marketing team is gunning for.

There are several things that you can do to improve your site’s performance in such a way that it can cope with Black Friday traffic and continue to perform well in the months afterwards. The broader tasks include speeding up your existing site, separation of concerns and improving your hosting setup.

Making your existing site faster

The speed at which your website loads plays an important role in how well it is ranked by major search engines and on the experience users have on it.

Google suggests that pages with a load speed of under half a second perform very well commercially.

Software caching is a common feature offered by most content management systems – if it’s not in the core code, you’ll be able to get a third party plugin that offers it. It basically means elements of each page, such as images, are saved so they can be shown immediately to the user rather than having to load it afresh if they’ve visited before.

Full page caching is a level up from software caching, and involves the server storing whole pages that it can display to the user almost instantly. Implementing this where you can will go a long way towards improving the user experience of your site.

The size of files that have to be loaded on your website has a huge impact on its load speed.

If you have images on your website, it’s important you make sure they are resized to be appropriate for the web before you upload them. Even if you use your content management system to make the image smaller once you’ve uploaded it, the site still needs to load the larger image first then make it smaller, which slows your load speed. Resize images before upload.

Also, take advantage of your web server’s ability to zip files up. All modern web browsers support a variety of compression protocols, so there is no reason not to use these when sending files online to reduce the amount of time they take to load.

Separation of concerns

Web servers have to work hard, often having to build pages on the go, execute database commands, and serve up all kinds of style sheets and JavaScript files, as well as any other media the site might feature. That’s why it’s worth getting rid of any unused scripts or styles to streamline the running of your site ahead of the big day.

When demand on the server increases, it makes it more and more difficult for your website to be loaded efficiently. That’s where we get these outages.

Separating out these tasks into different servers and services will allow your web server to cope better with the additional traffic that Black Friday will bring.

There are a range of different content delivery networks around, but the basic principle is always the same: some website elements will be delivered by a group of always-on global servers.

Ecommerce sites can ease the pressure on their web servers by allowing content delivery networks to provide product imagery, for example. This simply means your images are stored away from your own server, making it less likely to buckle under the Black Friday pressure.

With cached pages, you can afford a bit of extra time to bring in another server to handle your database.

DBaaS (Database as a Service) is becoming more common, allowing you to use separate databases to handle different elements of your website. Using these solutions allows your web server to handle connections and sending files.

Minimise redirects

Redirects are where shoppers go to one webpage and get forwarded to a different webpage. This could be redirecting to the secure version of the site (https://), a webpage with an updated URL or redirecting to the non-‘www.’ version of the site. These add anything from a few fractions of a second to whole seconds on to your page loading time which, again, might drive shoppers to a competitor. Sometimes you can’t avoid them, but they should be used sparingly.

You can achieve this by never linking to a webpage which has a redirect on it as it will lead to multiple redirects. Plugins can also lead to unnecessary redirects, so clear out any that you don’t need. While you’re there, scan redirects to pages that you’ve already deleted. It’s a good idea to do this after you’ve had major content changes or a site redesign.

Improving your hosting setup

Cloud computing is a common English term now, and it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Cloud computing simply means using entities outside of your owned technology to improve processes or reduce load on your servers, for example.

With your files and databases hosted elsewhere (with a separation of concerns as talked about above), then you can use the cloud to store the the executable files that run your site and replicate them across numerous machines in the cloud, making your site more scalable.

This works by using a ‘load balancer’ to use the best/fastest available server.

A firewall ensures that the traffic your website is receiving is the traffic that you want, i.e. real people.

A firewall blocks any unwelcome visitors such as bots or virtual crawlers. This will prevent your website from collapsing under the strain of additional visitors that aren’t even shoppers.

Firewalls can be installed on your server or you can use external services. Using an external firewall is normally the best option, as your server’s central processing unit (CPU) will never have to handle the extra traffic in any form.

Don’t make assumptions

You should test your website well ahead of Black Friday to make sure it’s not going to suffer from outages or issues.

Free tools like Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Insights will help you to see how quickly your website loads, and give you an idea of the improvements you could make.

There are also both free and paid services for testing how well your site handles hundreds of simultaneous visitors. This is essential if you’re preparing for a Black Friday rush.

Tracking

The purpose of improving your site’s speed and ability to handle traffic is to make more money for your business on Black Friday weekend and in the long term. Be sure to track all of your Black Friday marketing campaigns and use tools like Google Analytics to see how your site is performing.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the techniques listed here, talk to your web developer; they will be able to advise you based on your specific website setup.

Aaron Dicks is the managing director of Impression.

Further reading on website management

• How to build a website for free

The post How to prepare your website for Black Friday traffic appeared first on Small Business UK.

Setting up and optimising a website for your small business is one of the most important things you can do as an owner.

However, paying a professional developer to build you a complex website from scratch can cost thousands of pounds upfront.

But the internet can be a difficult place to navigate alone. There is coding to understand as well as negotiating and bidding on Google AdWords and graphic design considerations to make.

Here, we’ll take you through the step-by-step process of setting up a website for your small business using a website builder. You don’t even need the tech know-how.

>See also: Top social media tips for small businesses

How do I get a domain name?

Once you have the name of your business, you’ll need to buy a domain name. This is your website name and it should be the same name as your business.

Once you are clear what business name you are going to use, search on 123reg.com, Go Daddy or fasthosts.com to see if your name has been taken. If it has, don’t fret.

Both the UK domain (.co.uk and .uk) and Verisign (.com) have widgets for choosing domain names.

>See also: Top five online businesses you can start today

You may have your heart set on a .com or .co.uk domain name but if this isn’t available or is too expensive you can always use a less common domain like .uk for UK-based firms.

Google UK gives more prominence to UK domains, so it could potentially rank higher than one with a .com domain.

If you’re launching a blog or portfolio website, using .me.uk works well too.

>See also: Your guide to starting an online business 

How much do domain names cost?

There’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to domain names; they vary in cost from 79p to thousands of pounds a year. They will tend to also be much cheaper for the first year and then increase in price as it auto-renews.

The price will depend on whether it’s a brand-new domain name or one that’s been registered for a while. It’ll also depend on the registrar (company host) and the top-level domain (TLD).

How to choose a name for my business

Make sure your domain name is straightforward and reflects what you do. Closely match your domain name to the name of your business because that’s what potential customers will search for.

That said, remember that Google isn’t the only way your website will be found. It could be through word of mouth or on a business card; they’d have to type the address into their browser either way.

The name should be easy to recall, say or type. Avoid numbers, long words, words that are difficult to spell, contain more than two or three words and include hyphens.

Domain names have become a key consideration when choosing a business. Some entrepreneurs have gone as far as making up words altogether for their names – think Häagen-Dazs and Google. Having a unique username also gives you a better chance in search engine rankings.

Some opt for tweaking an existing word to make it unique – taking some of the letters out, for example. This has worked in the case of Flowerbx and Flickr.

Talking of SEO, include relevant keywords to your product or market in your name. This is especially true of pre-existing businesses.

Is the name future-proof? There are also SEO issues involved in changing it, so it’s best to make sure that it is before you decide.

If you’re still stuck, put a keyword related to your business into a search site like AnswerThePublic or Chrome plug-in Keywords Everywhere (KE) and they’ll give you some ideas. For example, a search for ‘vegan food UK’ gives you real-time related searches that people are making, including businesses. They could be the ticket to a strong and memorable business name.

Once you’ve decided on the name, try and buy the variants of your domain name like .org.uk or.com to prevent confusion.

>See also: Advantages of a merchant account for your e-commerce business

Website functionality

Once you’ve sorted this, it’s important you have a clear idea in your mind of what your website should do. Think about the layout, colours and fonts that you want to use. Then decide who you want to sell to and what the key selling business points are.

It’s worth writing a page or two about your brand and what your vision for the website is and how you will achieve it.

Decide how you are going to draw people into your site: it could be through striking images, a video, a customer testimonial or something completely different.

Look at three or four of your industry peers that have a website you like and suss out what it is that you like about them. Having a clear idea of this first will make the process of building a website much easier in the long run.

Website builders and CMS

There are a wide range of website builders available for small business owners. These are:

Wix

• Gives you template pages, SEO support, logo support and storage from £4 – £21 a month
• There are extra plug-ins available like payments from providers such as Stripe and PayPal
• Wix has a Trustpilot Score of 4.5 based 7,258 reviews. However, it doesn’t have any Google reviews

Overall, Wix is your best bet if you want a flexible website builder with lots of apps to plug into your website. One example of a small business that uses the platform is wedding cake firm, Cotton and Crumbs. 

Squarespace

• Squarespace offers you bandwidth and storage, up to 1,000 pages, encrypted security and 24/7 customer support from £12 – £35 a month
• It has around 200 plug-ins
• It has a Trustpilot score of 1.5 based on 709 reviews. Again, it doesn’t have any Google reviews

Squarespace is a good option if you want a good-looking site, perhaps for a fashion or trendy food and drink product.

Examples of small businesses that use Squarespace:

VR training business, InSilico

Beauty brand, Lauren Napier Beauty

Chocolate brand, Ocelot Chocolate

All these site builders provide drag and drop website templates for your website and tend to work well for simpler websites.

Website builders may work well for e-commerce sites but can struggle to provide value for some tradespeople. As well as having their own website, it’s wise to use a search tool like Trust A Trader when it comes to marketing their services.

Emanuel Tomozei, co-founder of InSilico and Squarespace customer says that if you really want to make your website in your own unique style you need to learn to code. ‘Squarespace is fine if you’re happy with their templates, a lot of which are really nice.

‘But if you want to customise the templates yourself, for example, creating images that move as you scroll up and down the page this can be problematic. For me, it worked well for desktop but didn’t look right for mobile.’

GoDaddy

• It has a variety of website building packages from basic (£4.99 a month), standard (£7.99 a month, premium (£11.99 a month) to e-commerce (£13.99 a month)
• The builder has functions to optimise your website for search engines, create email marketing campaigns and have a business listing on Google
• GoDaddy has a Trustpilot score of 4.7 based on 55,145 reviews

GoDaddy is a good one for beginners as it’s easy to use and the websites look great on mobile.

Examples of websites that use GoDaddy:

MOT, servicing and bodyworks firm, Motaworx Service

Physiotherapist, Focus Muscle Therapy

Mettrr

• Mettrr will build and help maintain a website for you for £20 a month
• If you don’t want to commit to an annual fee, you can pay quarterly for £30 a month or monthly for £40 a month.
• It has a Trustpilot score of 4.8 based on 277 reviews

This is a good site for people with limited tech skills and limited time who just want someone else to design and populate their site for them. It’s worth knowing that if you want to make a change to your site, you must call Mettrr and they will make the change for you.

An example of a small business that uses Mettrr is garden landscape firm, M Buck & Son.

Others website builders include Weebly which offers unlimited storage, site analytics, video and SSL security for £18 a month (when paid annually). It has a Trustpilot score of 1.7 based on 612 reviews.

And then you have Mobirise which has a Trustpilot score of 4, but it’s only based on 25 reviews.

Domain provider 123 reg also offers website building services.

All of the mentioned website builders allow you to create a mobile optimised site.

WordPress

Originally used by bloggers, content management system WordPress can be a good solution for you if you have moderate tech skills and want to create a fairly complex website. It has thousands of free plug-ins, including ones for e-commerce.

It now powers 30 per cent of the world’s websites, according to Venture Beat.

An entrepreneur and freelancer account costs £7 a month and a business account will set you back £20 a month, which gives you access to Google Analytics as well as storage and theme templates.

How to create an online payments section for your website

Of course, if you’re selling online you will be dealing with debit and credit cards.

However, as a small business, not everyone will have heard of you. It’s vital to show your customers that you can be trusted when it comes to online payments as well as being able to create content.

The website builders also allow you to integrate the most popular payment methods into your e-commerce site.

Online payment provider Stripe, integrated into Squarespace and Wix, allows you to reach most of the credit/debit cards that people have in the UK and Europe.

PayPal is also a useful payment tool to have on your site because as a small business not everyone will know your name and may not trust you completely (yet). To prevent the customer pausing and potentially abandoning your site, PayPal encrypts user payments and gives them extra safety when dealing with you.

This means that small businesses get paid straight away but customers don’t pay for the item until they’ve received it. There’s a 14-day allowance for this.

“PayPal is a useful payment tool because as a small business not everyone will know your name and may not trust you completely”

Providers like WorldPay and Sage can also process your payments for you.

Whichever way you decide to design your website for your small business, be honest with yourself of how tech-savvy you are and also consider how much control you want to give over to website builders.

Once you know this, as well as your brand vision, you should have a good idea of how you are going to build your website.

E-commerce website builders

If you’d prefer to go for an e-commerce platform, you have a few options. Here are two of the most popular:

Shopify

• Shopify has an app store where you can add features and functionality – it has over 2,200 apps that integrate directly with Shopify
• Shopify experts are on hand to help you set up and run your site
• It is rated 1.4 on TrustPilot based on 631 reviews

Shopify is a good call if you’re interested in launching an e-commerce site. You can find a business name, buy a domain and create a brand. Explore different ways to sell and different marketing campaigns.

Examples of websites that use Shopify:

Natural baby products and gifts, naturalbabyshower.co.uk

Printed accessories and stationery, nikkistrange.co.uk

Textile designer, lauraspring.co.uk

EKM

• EKM is UK-based
• It allows free migration from Shopify
• It has a 4.6 Trustpilot rating based on 2,715 reviews

EKM is a desirable alternative to Shopify for people who want a platform based in the UK.

Examples of websites that use EKM:

Online whiskey vendor, Whiskey Vault

Luxury watch shop, KC Watches

More on website building

What’s the best website builder for my small business?

Small business SEO: 6 easy wins to boost your website ranking

The post How do I build a website for my small business? appeared first on Small Business UK.

It has been estimated that the cost to any business that doesn’t have a website averages at £173,769 per year in lost revenue, despite the average monthly running cost of a website being less than £18.

If creating a website for your business can boost your profits by nearly £200,000 a year, the only question left to ask is…

What’s the best website builder for my small business?

Below are capsule reviews of seven of the most popular off-the-shelf e-commerce platforms in Britain to help you choose the best website builder.

Until a few years ago, you had to hire a website designer if you wanted to sell off the internet. Today, you can rent a bells ‘n’ whistles e-commerce platform from a Weebly, a Squarespace or a Shopify.

Related: How do I build a website for my small business?

Small Business has tried to compare entry-level e-commerce packages aimed at small businesses that want to sell through the internet. Several of the providers below offer more powerful packages, so it is difficult to compare them directly. Some bundle more features than others (see table), so it’s like comparing apples and oranges.

However, each of these website builders have their own strengths and target markets, which should help you decide.

>See also: Top social media tips for small businesses

Overview

Over 150 million people worldwide choose Wix to create a website and manage their business online.

Wix is a classic drag ‘n’ drop template website builder. You can choose from over 500 industry-specific templates using its drag-and-drop editor.

However, like GoDaddy and Site123, Wix also offers artificial-intelligence-powered design, which takes most of the decision making out of your hands.

Themes

You could compare Wix to a prefabricated building: the shape of the house is there and cannot be changed. However, you can repaint the walls and use its 280-strong app store – both free and paid-for – to customise the interior.

Wix’s site pages are also optimised for mobile, which means they look good on smartphones.

Overall

Easy to use and well designed, its AI-powered design help means you can build a great looking site without knowing how to code.

If you want to sell more than 50 product lines, you might be better off with a specialist e-commerce platform such as Shopify.

Pros

• Excellent for smaller websites (not more than 30 pages).
• Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI).
• Extremely intuitive and quick to get to grips with.

Cons

• With so much choice (500+ templates), Wix can feel overwhelming.
• Once you have picked your template, you cannot switch to a new one.
• No live chat support.
• Its e-commerce functions are not as powerful as Shopify’s.

Price: £16pm for the Wix Business Unlimited plan

Overview

Site123 is built for businesses that need a website up fast with as little fuss as possible.

Like GoDaddy and Wix, it uses artificial intelligence in design. Site123 asks you a couple of questions about the kind of website you want to build, generating you a template with relevant features.

Site123 is incredibly intuitive and timesaving.

Themes

First, you can choose from a range of templates designed for different business types. The process is intuitive and flexible offering a professional-looking parallax scroll.

Templates are well-designed and their apps easy to integrate, enabling you to sell products through your website.

E-commerce

All premium plans offer e-commerce functionality, with advanced e-commerce features on the “Professional” and “Gold” plans. These advanced features allow you to sell digital products and add coupons. That said, Site123 is reportedly investing in improving its e-commerce features.

Overall

Site123 is the best website builder for a small businesses that want to showcase their company info and contact details, or if they want to sell a few products.

If you’re a retailer who wants to scale up your business fast however, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Pros

• Good option for basic business sites and those that want to sell a few products.
• Good support, especially through live chat.
• Templates are optimised for mobile.
• Easy to use app market.
• It’s basic package is free

Cons

• You cannot change templates once your site has gone live.
• Not much creative freedom or flexibility.
• Lacks real financial e-commerce tools – such as automatic invoicing and payment tracking – making it difficult to sell products on a large scale.
• If you want something more substantial, you’ll want a more powerful solution like Shopify.

Price: Free rising to £11 per month.

Overview

Weebly currently powers more than 40 million websites, which works out at roughly 2 per cent (and growing) of all websites on the internet.

It is probably the easiest to use of all the non-AI powered website builders being reviewed. Its intuitive website builder has bolt-ons that you buy through its app store to migrate your site to an e-commerce platform.

However, unlike Wix, Site123 and GoDaddy, there is no ADI design option, where artificial intelligence uses your selections to automatically create a site for you, saving you having to think.

What Weebly is though is a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) website builder. This means you can click and edit, as well as drag ‘n’ drop media, without needing to know any code or, unlike WordPress, flick back and forth from the backend to what the site will eventually look like.

One of Weebly’s simplest and most effective features in editor mode is that it dims the rest of the website you’re working on so you can concentrate on the element in hand.

Themes

Weebly offers around 70 “themes” – website templates – covering everything from clothing to travel and luxury goods – which you can use as a template for your own website. The volume is around the same as Shopify but far fewer than Wix’s 500 plus.

E-commerce

Like Site123 and Wix, you add e-commerce functionality through buying apps in Weebly’s app centre. Weebly offers over 300 apps, more than 50 of which are free. This way, Weebly’s core website builder is kept simple and not bloated with code. Most paid-for apps have free trial periods, so you can give them a test drive without having to commit any cash.

In addition to grouping apps by function, such as sales, traffic and social media, Weebly recommends apps which would improve the functionality of your site.

And because Weebly was bought by payments provider Square in 2018, its e-commerce functionality is as good specialist e-commerce platform Shopify. E-commerce features that Weebly supports include gift cards, adding customer accounts, dealing with abandoned shopping carts and enabling in-store collection.

Overall

Weebly is great for small businesses, making it a strong choice for entrepreneurs, start-up companies, and small online stores.

Pros

• Easy to use
• WYSIWYG functionality in its editor function.
• Handpicked themes so you are not overwhelmed with choice.

Cons

• No artificial intelligence ADI design option.

Price: £18 per month

Overview

Need to get your e-commerce store up quickly? Then GoDaddy is the e-commerce solution for you, mainly because of its use of ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), which helps steer your design based on a few questions.

Themes

Unlike Squarespace and Shopify, GoDaddy does not have a library of pre-designed themes. Rather, it’s ADI means it can support over 1,500 different types of businesses. That said, its ADI also prevents you from fiddling too much with its templates. However, unlike Wix and Site123, you can junk your existing theme for a new one, and GoDaddy will import all your elements.

Overall

Probably the simplest to use, given its ADI support which takes website building out of your hands, based on a few questions.

However, if you’re selling more than a few product lines, you might be better off with a more scalable platform, such as Shopify.

Pros

• ADI makes website creation easy.
• Strong email campaigns.
• In-depth reporting tools.

Cons

• ADI limits your options when it comes to customising your website.
• Some of its features are clunky compared to rivals.
• Unlike Shopify and Squarespace, you cannot sell directly to social channels such as Facebook or Instagram.

Price: £13.99 for the GoDaddy online store

Overview

Squarespace is best for more design-led websites and for those who have a little website-building knowledge. It’s especially aimed at creatives such as photographers, musicians and designers, and its celebrity endorsers include Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and John Malkovich. It is not as easy or beginner friendly as either Wix, Weebly or GoDaddy.

Like Weebly, Squarespace is another What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. With some platforms, such as WordPress, you make changes and edits in the backend, and only see what it will look like live when you preview it.

Squarespace’s editor interface is more polished and flexible compared to Wix and Weebly.

Themes

Squarespace’s templates are all beautifully designed, as if you’d spent thousands on getting in a professional designer to code it to you.

Templates include online stores, restaurants and the generic “business”, and all templates are mobile responsive, so your website looks strong on any smartphone.

Once you have chosen a template, you layer in images and content using their design. The templates themselves are malleable. Or you can create your own website from scratch. Unique to Squarespace, you can customise your own URL. And the live preview function allows you to see what your unpublished website is going to look like.

And, unlike Wix and Site123, you can switch templates even after you have gone live.

Squarespace has just 60 themed templates compared to Wix’s 500 plus and Weebly’s 70.

E-commerce

Enabling other users to help manage your website is crucial, especially if you are selling goods online. Squarespace gives you the option to manage accounts with different access levels.

The £20 per month online store basic plan is the cheapest option for selling through the internet. It removes transaction fees from lower-level plans and adds extra e-commerce features, including inventory management and label printing.

Overall

Squarespace is the best website builder for anyone who has an eye for design, who wants a unique and visually impressive website, and is happy putting a little time into building their pages.

However, spending time in understanding how this product works is recommended before onboarding. If you want a website live within a couple of hours, then Squarespace isn’t for you – try Site123.

Pros

• Beautiful, design-led templates.
• Lots of functionality.
• You can switch templates, even if you have gone live.

Cons

• Requires some effort to get best use out of it.
• Some design knowledge helpful.

Price: £28pm for the Squarespace online store basic plan. Squarespace offers a 14-day free trail before you to decide whether you want to upgrade to paid-for.

Overview

According to Shopify, the platform has over one million users running 800,000 online stores which have generated over $100bn in sales.

One Wall Street analyst predicts Shopify’s share of the e-commerce market will triple to about 9pc within five years.

A big differentiator between Shopify and rival website builders is that Shopify has its own physical point-of-sale hardware you buy with barcode readers, tills and receipt printers. It’s an all-in-one system for anyone with a physical shop.

The first thing you see on Shopify is an easy-to-understand dashboard overview.

Uploading products is easy for anybody used to a WordPress-style CMS.

You can add new plugins for your site, including a range of 1,200 apps which sync offering shipping, accounting, social media and advanced reporting. However, the sheer number of apps can be overwhelming and a black mark in Shopify’s book for not including more basic functionality in its packages.

Themes

Shopify offers just 10 free e-commerce templates or “themes” that you can use. However, there are another 60 paid-for themes. Like Squarespace, the themes are beautifully designed and offer whizzy features like parallax scrolling and video backgrounds.

One niggle is that Shopify does not automatically resize uploaded photographs, so if you have product shots in different aspect ratios, you must edit in Photoshop before uploading to your website.

E-commerce

Shopify integrates with Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest and Manager for easy sales though social media.

The platform recently unveiled an “impressive array of product launches” to enhance e-commerce, according to US analyst Josh Beck of KeyBanc, including “complex” shipping automation capabilities, multi-currency features and improved developer tools.

One downside with Shopify is that, unlike Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, Shopify does charge 2.2pc on each credit card transaction plus an additional 20p.

Overall

Shopify is the best website builder for businesses that have a physical shop but also want to sell online.

Pros

• Best for shops with a physical outlet who also want to sell online.
• Well-designed themes.
• Easy to use.

Cons

• Transaction fees for those using a third-party payment gateway can get pricy.
• Number of bolt-on plugins can be overwhelming.
• Often you have to download an app to add basic functionality that is bundled with other e-commerce offers.

Price: £19pm for the Basic Shopify plan. Shopify offers a free 14-day trial.

Overview

IONOS is the largest hosting platform in Europe managing 12 million domains with contracts with eight million customers worldwide.

However, it also has its own easy-to-use website builder with affordable plans for creating basic websites and online e-commerce stores. All sites are mobile friendly with SEO and analytics functionality.

Themes

The IONOS website builder has you choose from pre-designed templates and insert text and images where you want. What this means is that there are no individual elements you can move around, but rather, full-width page sections you can move up and down.

There are only 18 templates to choose from, including:

• Wedding
• CV
• Restaurant
• Business
• Travel
• Real estate
• Photography
• Children’s hospital
• NGO
• Bakery
• Interior design
• Law firm
• Tattoo artist
• Digital agency

Still, templates can be useful, especially if you want to launch your site quickly.

IONOS also makes it easy to set up an ecommerce store – all you have to do is add a store page to your site. If you already have your products listed in a spreadsheet, you can import a CSV to populate your storefront.

Overall

Overall, this website builder is a decent option if you want to launch a professional-looking website quickly and cheaply, and don’t mind giving up some creative control along the way.

Pros

– Inexpensive ecommerce plans
– Sites look very professional
– Sell across multiple channels

Cons

– Only 18 templates
– Limited customisation options

Price: Basic website plans start at just £9 a month plus VAT and ecommerce plans start at £19 a month plus VAT

Further reading

Top five online businesses you can start today – Ground-breaking companies have been founded in garages, dorm rooms and home offices. Here are five online business ideas for inspiration

Your guide to starting an online business  – A survey of small and micro-businesses found businesses with a website were 51 per cent more likely to grow than those without

Advantages of a merchant account for your e-commerce business – A merchant account acts as the buffer between your customer and your business account. Think of it as a holding pen where your money is parked while your e-commerce sale is validated

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A merchant account is a type of bank account that allows a company to accept credit or debit card payments. Think of your merchant account like escrow for your e-commerce business while the payment is validated.

A merchant account is essential if you want your business to start processing e-commerce card payments.

Without a merchant account your business will not be able to process card payments.

We look at some of the main advantages of merchant accounts for your e-commerce business.

>See also: Is your business a good candidate for a merchant cash advance?

Do you need a merchant account for e-commerce?

Giving the customers the option to select from different payment methods is likely to increase your online sales volume. This is an important advantage to take into consideration when deciding to set up a merchant account for an e-commerce business.

What is an e-commerce merchant account?

The merchant account is essentially an agreement between the business (the seller) and the bank where the account is opened. The actual payment transactions are handled via a payment processor. Stability, security, and expeditiousness are other features of a merchant account.

Merchant accounts automatically process your card transactions, charge a small processing fee, then deposit the remaining earnings from your e-commerce sale into your bank account.

Every time you make a sale, the money doesn’t pass straight into your business bank account – it first needs to be authorised (by your customer’s bank) and processed (by your merchant account).

>See also: What’s the best website builder for my small business?

The transaction only appears in your merchant account once your payment processor has done some fraud checks and makes sure there are enough funds to pay you.

Expect a short settlement time for the funds to appear in your own bank account – usually between one to three working days – although with PayPal it can be almost instant.

You can get a merchant account from a major bank or bundled with some online payment processors (see below), and you do not have to choose the bank you use for business banking to provide your merchant account.

Merchant accounts for e-commerce businesses are not the same as those for physical shops. There are three different categories:

Offshore: an international merchant account outside your home country

Local: a merchant account within your home country

Direct: when you approach a merchant bank directly to open an account

>See also: How do I build a website for my small business?

How much does an e-commerce account cost?

Fees differ from provider to provider. Generally though, you pay a transaction fee – usually a percentage of the value of each sale. Some e-commerce merchant accounts also come with a monthly charge, plus a setup cost – so read the T&Cs before you sign on the dotted line. Merchant accounts notoriously lock you in for 18 months at a time.

Who are the leading e-commerce merchant account providers?

• 2Checkout
• Clover
• PayPal
• Shopify
• Worldpay

What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway (also known as an e-commerce gateway) is software that works with your e-commerce platform to process, validate and secure online transactions.

It usually comes bundled with your e-commerce merchant account.

>See also: Your guide to starting an online business  

How is a payment gateway different from a merchant account?

As we have seen, a merchant account is a bank account which temporarily holds funds from online payments before transferring them to your business bank account.

A payment gateway acts as the interface between your customer’s bank and your merchant account, enabling funds to flow – eventually in to your business bank account once payment is authenticated.

Some payment processing platforms come with merchant accounts bundled together as a package:

• Adyen
• Braintree
• PayPal
• Stripe

Others offer standalone payment gateways

• Cardstream

Pro tip: When it comes to integrating with your website, some gateways are only compatible with certain platforms. It’s important to consider your card processor requirements prior to building a new e-commerce site. For example, there are more merchant account and gateway options for WordPress sites than there are for Shopify.

Online payment gateway apps

PayPal Business

PayPal is known to be one of the most secure and trusted payment apps available and works well if you deal with business internationally. Its strong encryption technology is known worldwide.

With the PayPal Business app, you can make and accept payments in one place, send invoices, issue refunds and view customer information to streamline business operations. It isn’t required that the client has PayPal to make a payment to you, either.

Pro tip: If you do set up a free account with PayPal though, ensure you fully intend on using it as you can be charged a £9 inactivity fee if not used in 12 months.

Stripe

The Stripe payment gateway allows you to request payment and use payment links to sell or start a subscription service. It follows a two-day rolling pay-out system, so you get paid daily for transactions completed two days ago.

Customers can pay with their debit card straight to your business account and it has a marginally cheaper transaction rate to its rival PayPal at 1.4 per cent but still offers 24-hour support.

Pro tip: One thing to keep in mind is the 20p transaction fee – there is no threshold on this so if you make many small e-commerce sales, this can become costly.

Selling high-risk products

If your e-commerce business involves selling products such as cigarettes, medicines, alcohol, etc. you will probably need a specialist high-risk merchant account, which offer chargeback protection (money being reversed back into your customer’s bank account) and fraud prevention tools.

PaymentCloud offers a suite of features designed for high-risk businesses.

>See also: High risk merchant accounts: What you need to know

Access to customers worldwide

Perhaps the most important advantage of opening a merchant account for an e-commerce business or for any online business, be it small or large, is that it significantly expands your client base.

Having a merchant account will offer the possibility of expanding the client base and at the same time improve customer satisfaction.

Related: What is a merchant account and how do you open one?

The post Advantages of a merchant account for your e-commerce business appeared first on Small Business UK.

Your website is the virtual shop window for your business that needs to:

• Look good
• Feature relevant and simply written content
• Communicate clearly and succinctly what it is you do and problems you solve
• Show why your website visitors should buy your products or use your service

…but most importantly, it needs to work.

Whether you are selling products or enticing people to get in touch about starting a business relationship, if your website doesn’t work properly or takes too long, your prospective customers will leave and go to one of your competitors.

>See also: How to personalise your customer experience

I see so many businesses make the same mistakes over and over again with their websites. They don’t spend the time getting the fundamentals right, and therefore waste time and money creating something which is not fit for purpose. You wouldn’t file sloppy accounts, I imagine, so, why are you doing it with the public face of your business?

Top 10 things affecting website conversion

Here I’ve set out the top 10 things that I’ve seen all too often with corporate websites that impact customer conversions, and how to solve them:

#1 – Slow load speed

Businesses need to design a website with focus on speed, efficiency, and user interface (UI) – so the buttons, toggles and visual elements of a website which visitors will interact with, and the user experience (UX), which means the entire interaction between a visitor and the website. Avoid using too many plugins on your website too, as although they may help with functionality, they may affect load speed.

#2 – Generic or uninspired title, subtitle and calls to actions (CTAs) 

Be specific about what your business does or what actions you want your website visitors to take. Using the same generic language as your competitors won’t make you stand out from the crowd. Don’t overcrowd with too many calls to action, but don’t forget to add at least a few or your website will just be a blog.

‘The internet is full of poorly designed, badly functioning, and not fit for purpose websites’

#3 – Too many interruptions (music, video, pop ups)

Only add background music if absolutely necessary, and the same goes for videos and animation – if you do have to include a video, give your visitor the option to mute or stop. If you use pop ups, time them properly so they do not interfere with the UX, or if you can use exit intent ones (that pop up when your visitor looks like they are going to leave a site), as these don’t generally interfere with the user experience.

>See also: How to market your e-commerce website

#4 – There isn’t enough reason to trust

Anyone who is coming to your site for the first time, or who might not have heard of your business before, won’t have reason to trust that you’re a reputable brand without seeing some social proof. Testimonials from clients and customers in any form can help conversions in this way, and you can also add banners with brands you have worked with. Lastly, feature biographies of employees to add personality and a face to the company. 

#5 – The site isn’t mobile first

Most people use their phones to search more than anything else, so it’s important to consider a mobile first approach when creating or updating your website. Preferably, consider a responsive website that adapts to the shape and size of any screen.

#6 – Your customers can’t talk to you

Add live chat, a telephone number or a contact us form to help visitors ask questions and position it somewhere visible on your website, such as the main navigation. Show them you are there to help. Not only can this keep them engaged, you get the chance to start a dialogue with potential customers.  

#7 – Confusing jargon

Use the simplest form of language in your messaging and be exact and precise, matching the tone and language of your ideal customer – speak to them in their own language.

#8 – The site could be more secure

Build trust and always use SSL protocol for hosting – in a nutshell, use https:// instead of the old HTTP. The problem here is that HTTP data is not encrypted, so can be intercepted by third parties to gather data – any tech savvy customers might be wary, and Google now shows a big warning message before visiting a site that isn’t using SSL.

#9 – Complicated checkout process

If using a checkout, be sure that it is simple and that there are as many payment methods integrated as possible, with very little steps to complete the sale. An optimal number of “clicks” for any online checkout is between two and five. 

#10 – The messaging isn’t right

Ideally, your website content should include all the words or phrases that your ideal customer is looking for. By improving your messaging and value proposition, you’ll not only make products and services more enticing, you will improve SEO by making the copy relevant to the audience – and climb up search engine rankings at the same time. Another quick tip – highlight the benefits of your business instead of the features.

Get the fundamentals down

I’ve just given you a broad-brush insight into what we see day in day out here at Illustrate Digital. Many of these mistakes are quick fixes, while others will take some time to rewrite your content, test some different UI, and generally take some time to chat to your customer base about what they like and what they don’t.

Taking time to take stock, make some changes and – in some instances – get the experts in, will pay dividends.

The internet is full of poorly designed, badly functioning, and not fit for purpose websites that businesses have paid a lot of money to develop. Make sure yours is reflecting the hard work you put into your own brand by getting the fundamentals right and continually improving it. After all, you wouldn’t leave your shop window full of products you offered five or even ten years ago, so why would you do that with your website?

Scott Jones is CEO of Illustrate Digital

More on website building

What’s the best website builder for my small business?

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“Customer is king” has never rung truer than it does in today’s retail environment. The rapid growth of online retail means people have more choice than ever before. Businesses that don’t offer what the customer wants, when they want it – in short, premium customer experience – are at risk of falling by the wayside.

What I call a “MeCommerce” strategy puts the person you’re trying to sell to at the forefront of your strategy. Customers feel valued through communication and engagement with the business and its values. The products they buy are tailored to their specification. Everything is centred on the customer.

Applying the ideas of MeCommerce has allowed my business, Engravers Guild, to reach new audiences and give my customers a truly personalised experience. While personalising products is central to my business, that’s just one small part of MeCommerce. Any business can succeed by making the customer feel like the world revolves around them.

I’ve put this guide together to help other businesses who are thinking of adjusting their strategies.

Personalising how you sell online

Customisability

Giving the customer options is central to a successful MeCommerce strategy. In the tech industry, companies like HP let you select the processor, RAM and storage capacity for your laptop or PC, giving you the freedom to tailor the machine to your needs.

For ecommerce sites, this might mean offering size or colour variants. For B2B companies, tiers of service are a sensible way to suit differing needs.

‘Any business can succeed by making the customer feel like the world revolves around them’

Care

It is no longer enough to simply provide a good product – you need to make the customer feel special. Excellent service throughout the customer experience journey is needed, letting them engage with your brand’s values and opening communication between business and consumer.

Cosmetics retailer, Lush, has perfected this feeling of care. Its brand values are at the forefront of all of its marketing, and each product is labelled with the name and face of the person who prepared it. It’s a nice way of adding a personal touch to what can be a somewhat faceless process.

>See also: The pros and cons of selling through your own website

Convenience

In an online world, customer convenience is key. The modern shopper doesn’t have to visit a store when they can order through their phone at any time of day. They also shouldn’t have to browse; you should be recommending products for your customers based on their shopping habits.

Technology has become democratised to the extent that small businesses can incorporate many things that were formerly unique to major retailers.

Most website building platforms can allow users to log in, view past purchases and see products recommended for them based on their buying habits.

4 steps to personalise customer experience

#1- Build your platform for mobile devices

This feels like an obvious point, but it’s more important now than ever before. Offering convenience means allowing people to order through their mobile. 54 per cent of e-commerce sales were made through mobile devices in 2021, and that number is only going to increase.

It’s not just a case of making your website responsive. For a truly mobile-first and customer-centric experience it should be possible for customers to buy items, track the progress of their order (and shipment), leave feedback and engage with customer service through mobile too.

#2 – Utilise the power of your website

Used correctly, a website is one of the most powerful assets your business has – but many businesses fail to take full advantage of the capabilities of online selling.

Your website can collect customer data (based on purchase and browsing habits) to provide tailored recommendations and highlight popular products based on demographics.

The customer should feel that your business truly reflects their values and can allow them to become an ideal version of themselves. Reviews, testimonials, and helpful information should all be placed around the site to help the customer feel supported, understood and valued.

>See also: Taking payments online for ecommerce businesses

#3 – Be consistent

The website is usually the hub of your business online, but it’s not everything. Social media plays an increasingly important role in modern commerce – and there’s no better way to engage with customers in a direct way.

It can be hard to achieve an authentic, value-based connection with your audience by treating social media as a junior discipline. Social media posts need to be regular, eye-catching and should be consistent with the tone of voice used across other marketing channels.

In short, the messaging on your social platforms should reflect your target demographic, their values and the factors that make them want to buy.

Social media also offers a way to literally speak to customers by responding to comments and questions. Consider it your direct line to customers and treat it as an opportunity to impress them.

#4 – Automate what you can

Marketing automation is a complex discipline, but these are two basic systems pretty much anyone can set up quite easily:

• Product recommendations

Using past data to predict what customers might need means you can offer up-sells, cross-sells and more – and plugins make it easy to set up.

Offering customisability where possible means some retailers may need to re-evaluate their inventory. Tailor-made clothes, personalised engravings and custom-built PCs means many MeCommerce businesses are carrying less inventory and instead focusing on making items “to order”.

• Automated emails / SMS

Send your customers deals on their birthday. It’s a simple idea but it makes them feel loved. Other automated emails are: order updates (confirmation, dispatch notification, tracking info, feedback request); reminders (“You might be running low – is it time to re-order?”) and more recommendations (Since you bought x, we think you’ll like y)

Businesses need to adapt to survive in today’s e-commerce retail environment. John Lewis may have built its brand on in-store personalised shopping experiences, but its recent pivot to close physical stores and focus on online sales highlights that times are changing.

Harnessing the power of the internet is key. Those willing to create responsive, engaging websites and embrace social media can deliver better value for their customers, through accurate data and open communication. Consumers drive retail, and businesses that place them at the centre of their strategy will see greater success.

Elliot Bishton is the founder of Engravers Guild of London, an online start-up designed to be the pre-eminent destination for all personalised goods, delivered direct to the consumer.

Further reading

Q&A: Adrian Swinscoe talks about improving customer experience

The post How to personalise your customer experience appeared first on Small Business UK.

Marketing your e-commerce website can be a daunting task. There are so many different platforms and strategies available that it can be hard to know where to start. This article will provide an overview of the best marketing techniques for your e-commerce website. We will also give you some actionable tips that you can use to get started straight away.

>See also: How business buyers can increase margins and grow their business through e-commerce

Why e-commerce marketing?

E-commerce marketing is the process of driving traffic to your online store and converting that traffic into sales. It is vital to invest in ecommerce marketing because it can help you reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, and boost your sales.

There are many different platforms and strategies that you can use for ecommerce marketing, but some of the most effective are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) and social media.

Defining your goals

If you want to create a successful e-commerce marketing campaign, it is crucial to start by defining your goals.

What do you want to achieve? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or boost sales?

Once you have defined your goals, you can start planning your campaign. It is also essential to choose the right platform for your e-commerce marketing campaign. If you are selling products on Amazon, for example, then you will need to focus on Amazon marketing strategies.

Similarly, if you are selling products on your ecommerce website, you will need to focus on driving traffic to your site and optimising it for search engines.

Pro tip: Utilise SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timebound) goals to ensure you and everyone at your company has clarity on what they aim to achieve.

>See also: Six things to consider during e-commerce website development

An e-commerce website fit for purpose

Your e-commerce website is your online shop, so it is vital to make sure that it is an excellent introduction to your business. More specifically, if your website is hard to navigate or slow to load, then customers are likely to leave without making a purchase. Similarly, if your website is not optimised for search engines, it will be difficult for potential customers to find you.

Pro tip: These days, you can build a high-quality website with all the necessary bells and whistles through a CMS like WordPress or Squarespace. So, you don’t have to spend vast sums of money on a developer or designer.

Invest in marketing channels

There are many different marketing channels that you can use to promote your ecommerce website. The most effective channels will vary depending on your products and target market.

Some of the most popular channels for e-commerce marketing include SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, and affiliate marketing. Therefore, it is crucial to invest in different channels to reach the broadest possible audience.

SEO: Get found online

One of the most important aspects of e-commerce marketing is search engine optimisation (SEO). It optimises your website and content to appear as high as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs). That is because when potential customers search for products like yours online, you want them to be able to find your website.

Pro tip: Write a wide range of content on your topic to capitalise on topical SEO. That is where Google rewards your site because they believe you to be a topical expert due to your wide array of relevant content.

PPC: Pay per click advertising

Another effective ecommerce marketing technique is pay per click (PPC) advertising. It is a form of online advertising where you pay a fee every time someone clicks on one of your ads. PPC can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website and boost sales. However, it is essential to note that PPC can be expensive, so you need to target the right keywords.

Pro tip: Utilise geo-targeting to ensure that your campaigns are laser-focused and you don’t waste ad spend unnecessarily.

Social media: Increase brand awareness

Social media is a powerful tool that you can use for e-commerce marketing. It can help you increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and boost sales. It’s also valuable in allowing you to reach your customers where they spend time.

Pro tip: Find micro-influencers in your niche and leverage them to elevate your brand. A micro-influencer with 10,000 followers will be infinitely more valuable to your brand than a huge (and likely more expensive) influencer with millions of followers.

Email marketing: build relationships with customers

Email marketing is another effective e-commerce marketing technique. It can help you build relationships with customers, promote new products, and drive traffic to your website.

Pro tip: Testing will likely be your best friend. You can use A/B testing to compare emails and see which works best. The best email marketers are constantly testing and never rest on their laurels.

Affiliate marketing: drive sales with partners

Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based marketing. It means that you only pay affiliates when they drive sales. Affiliate marketing can be an effective way to boost sales and reach a wider audience.

Pro tip: Don’t wait for affiliates to come to you. Reach out to successful sites in your industry and entice them with custom offers, special discounts and even individualised landing pages.

Monitor your progress and adjust your strategy as needed

It is crucial to monitor your e-commerce marketing efforts to see what is working and what is not. You should track website traffic, conversion rate, and sales. It is imperative when doing small business marketing as every penny needs to be spent wisely.

Pro tip: Make sure you have key metrics that you monitor throughout your campaigns. Work out what is vital to your business and watch these metrics like a hawk.

Some good examples are:

• Conversion rate
• Traffic
• Average order value
• Social media engagement
• Social media follower count
• Customer lifetime value

Summary

If you follow these tips, you should be able to market your e-commerce website effectively. However, it is essential to remember that the digital marketing landscape is constantly changing, so you need to be prepared to adjust your strategy as needed.

James Cooper is founder and CEO of Convoboss, which empowers small business owners to succeed online with affordable, effective digital marketing solutions. His business leadership combines expert analytics, strategy and creative design with advanced digital marketing execution and performance. He is an entrepreneur and business consultant with over 10 years of experience helping Fortune 500 and SME clients achieve business success with digital marketing

More on e-commerce

Small business essentials: The art of e-commerce

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