Planning for Online Business Growth in the New Year |
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December 12, 2007
With the New Year nearly upon us it's time for business owners to evaluate their progress for the past year. By examining goals set for 2007 and comparing them to actual performance managers can identify which goals were achieved and which failed short. Once 2007 goals have been evalauted then it's time to set new goals for 2008. If certain goals have not been achieved then these objectives may be rolled over to form part of 2008 goals.
Here are some suggestions for making your business even more successful in 2008.
- Evaluate your 2007 marketing plan and identify which strategies provided the most cost efficient results. For example, your business may have tried newspaper advertising which cost $5,000 in order to attract customers to your website. However, you may not have noticed any significant increase in the number of customers to your website. In this case you may wish to use online advertising methods in lieu of print advertising for 2008. $5,000 spent of targeted ad word campaigns through major search engines such as Google or Yahoo
may in fact lead to more traffic to your website.
- Evaulate each website which you operate, if you operate multiple websites, with an to operating cost and revenue. You may find that some of your websites produce little or no revenue while costing you time to maintain. These websites may be considered for divestiture. It may be more profitable for you to concentrate on your successful websites and ignore or sell off your less successful sites.
- Evaluate the performance of your current hosting plan. Was your website up 99% of the time? Have new competitors brought down the rates for web hosting such that it makes sense for you to switch hosting companies for the New Year?
- Consider the time that you spend maintaining and updating your website. If you're spending too much time then consider using some sort of web hosting that facilitates updating your site, or auto-updates your website. One such option may be to use SiteSell.com
.
- Take a look at your website stats and find out how your business has been doing on search engines. Some of the highest quality traffic comes from major search engines. If your website is getting little or no traffic from major search engines such as Yahoo, Google or MSN then now is the time to concentrate on search engine optimization. It's your choice whether you do-it-yourself or hire an SEO company to undertake efforts to boost your website. I would not recommend using SEO experts as most information is readily available. You may save thousands of dollars by learning do-it-yourself SEO tips.
- Make time to look at your competitor's websites and see what they've been doing. You may identify new opportunities which you've not thought of previously. It's always wise to know what your competition is doing. If your competition gains a competitive edge then it may be time for you to play catch-up. In our hectic schedules it's easy to overlook the role of competitors. This is the perfect time to not make this mistake.
- If you are trying to sell a product or service and you currently cannot accept online orders then you're losing out on potential sales. If a visitor lands on your site then there's a high chance that the customer would enjoy the convenience of online commerce. If you can't take orders online then that customer may visit your competitor who does. There are some great services out there such as Interested in starting an online store? Yahoo
which allow you to quickly setup online storefronts. Even if you operate a service business then you may wish to allow clients to buy gift cards or pre-purchase services. For instance, a spa might sell gift certificates for a half-day spa visit. Almost every business is taking advantage of ecommerce to help sell products or services. Don't let your business get left behind.
- If you operate a service business then be sure to allow online appointment booking. This way you won't lose any customers that visit your website. There's free software solutions such as create appointments which make it easy to setup an appointment booking webpage.
- Review customer feedbacka and complaints over the past year. Use this feedback to incorporate changes for your 2008 business planning. If you don't already have online customer feedback on your website then use a free service such as create forms to setup an online feedback form.
- Examine your product mix and determine if changes are necessary for the New Year.
- Evaluate staff performance and provide feedback to the staff. Make any staffing changes necessary to improve your business for 2008. You may find that you need to hire more personnel or lay-off personell.
- Look at your financing and check if you can obtain lower-cost financing for 2008 as interest rates have been declining. The Federal Reserve has brought down borrowing rates to the lowest rate in two years.
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