When it comes to growing the business online, most entrepreneurs grapple as they are already operating on tight budgets and limited resources. With this article, we aim to help all those who wish to broaden their online business horizons without having to let their budget go through the roof.
Table of Contents
Content Management System – Choosing a suitable platform for your Website
Being a new entrepreneur calls for being careful each step of the way. Choosing the right platform and the hosting of the website is the most critical one. Do not create unnecessary future headaches by going with the wrong option. Out of the many choices available for website building, WordPress is the most sought-after and qualified option for just about any website. Out of all the online businesses online, it is estimated that 31% run on WordPress. If you are not familiar with WordPress, like any other Content Management System (CMS), you will need to spend some time getting used to the platform (as with any other) but WordPress is quite straight forward for both new and advanced users.
There are a range of platforms including Magento, Wix, BigCommerce, Drupal, Joomla which are all popular to consider but we find in terms of cost to build, maintain and for future development, WordPress is well maintained, regularly updated and has a huge range of plugin developers who are always developing new features to suit just about any need.
Website Hosting
Bluehost (at the time of this blog) being the official recommenders for WordPress are a fitting web hosting company for you to get your online business started and one that we have found to be quite good for new start-ups and blogs on a budget. Their pricing is highly competitive and online service is generally very good.
Some others for consideration include Crazy Domains & Go Daddy. When signing up some things to consider include:
- Do they provide SSL?
- Do they provide email hosting?
- What are their normal rates if you’re signing up for a promotional offer
There are some hosting providers that may be slightly cheaper but have horrible and pushy marketing techniques. For example, we have experienced one provider (none mentioned in this blog) where after signing up with a great introductory deal for a few years, in the second year an email was forwarded saying that too much resources was used and an upgrade was essential if not the account would be suspended. This for a very small website with maybe 15 website visitors per day.
Build a User-Friendly and Professional looking website
It’s a collective mindset that one needs to spend a lot of money to build an eye-catching website to catch the audience’s attention. When in reality, WordPress offers you a spectrum of free professional looking templates to get started. For those that have a budget to have a website built, you can always hire a web developer to build the website for you. Naturally this becomes a Cost Vs. Time exercise. Thanks to platforms like WordPress, gone are the days when one had to learn coding to develop themselves their first website.
Online Forms – Make It Easy For Your Clients To Reach You
Building a convenient communications channel for your costumers to contact you is a good way to boost your overall conversion rate. The first way to do so is by designing a contact form which can be done with a WordPress contact form plugin. There are paid and free options available. Using this feature, you can add your contact details to your website, building open communication to your potential customers. The other way to maintain a presence with your customers is by asking for their email addresses. Building an email list is a vital step to follow from the day your website goes online. This ensures a constant dialogue between you and the client which not only keeps your brand present, sharing useful information over time helps to build trust and embraces a solid business foundation.
Give your Online Traffic a Boost
To pull the audience’s attention towards your website, you need to get the attention of search engines like Google as they are a huge source of Internet traffic. The most common channels of website traffic come from:
- Organic – This is where search engines like Google gives searchers answers to their questions and bring traffic to your website for keywords that people are searching for. You may have heard of the term SEO before. Search Engine Optmisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising your website on an ongoing basis to have your keywords ranked by search engines.
- Paid – This is what we call PPC or Pay Per Click marketing where you literally pay a search engine like Google or Bing to display an Ad when someone has searched for your keyword.
- Social Media – This is where you might have something like a facebook page, Instagram or twitter and people want to learn more about you so visit your website through your social media platform.
Use Free Marketing Tools
The tool that comes the handiest to devise a smart marketing tact is Google analytics. It gives you a comprehensive insight into the number of visitors, their country of origin, and their activities while surfing the site.
Utilising this tool is a smart way to design your marketing strategies. With the boost of numerous social media platforms, exploiting them for advertising businesses is a necessity. Formulating a calculative strategy that targets each of these platforms to their fullest is the best and the most farsighted marketing method in the current times. Using Google Analytics while running your own campaigns can also determine which campaigns are working, which ones are underperforming and which ones are not worth continuing.
We aren’t affiliated with any platforms mentioned in this article. There are many providers and hosts but we have found especially for those starting out on a budget for these to be reasonable options especially for those with a limited range of resources.