With the right ad campaigns, you can expect to bring in a lot of extra traffic to your business’ website. You certainly don’t want to make the mistake of bringing in new customers and being unable to support that many page views and additional transactions. Avoid creating a bad experience for your online customers by first recognizing that it’s time to expand your business and then taking appropriate action to reach as many people as possible while still giving everyone a great experience through your website.
When Is It Time To Expand?
Load time is slow: A growing business needs its hardware and software to grow with it. If you notice that your tech is running slowly either in office or on the customer’s end as they view the website it’s probably time to .
You don’t have time to answer emails or keep up with social media: Customers expect businesses to be accessible and get back to them quickly. If you don’t have the capacity keep up with interacting with customers it’s probably time to reevaluate and expand your efforts for better customer relations.
You’re overwhelmed and it’s effecting your personal life: Having a business isn’t easy, but you still need to take care of yourself. If you don’t take time to have a life outside of work you’ll quickly get burnt out and lose the drive that led to the business in the first place. Expanding by bringing in some extra help might mean that you have more people to manage, but asking for help (and being grateful for that help) and not trying to do everything by yourself is important for a successful business.
How To Go About An Expansion
Obviously every business is different, and depending on your budget there are a number of ways that you can expand your business to better serve your customers. Here are just a few things you can do to better your business. Even some small, simple additions can lead to big changes and make your business grow in ways you never imagined.
Revamp the website: The easier it is for someone to find you online the better. People have a relatively short attention span when they’re online simply because there’s so much information available to them. If they can’t find your business or the answer to a question right away, they probably won’t spend very much time looking. Make sure that your website is easy to find and navigate for better customer experiences.
Crowdsource to fund projects: Countless businesses have used sites like Kickstarter to fund a new product. Crowdsourcing a project can give you the extra money and buzz that you need to make that new product a reality.
Boost your social media presence: You can’t have a business these days without being on Twitter or Facebook. The more media you can put out the more new followers you’ll bring in, and in doing so you’ll expand your reach to new customers.
Collaborate: Having an us-vs-them mentality towards your competition can only get you so far. You could be surprised by the incredible opportunities that come out of collaborating with others and coming up with joint-projects and promotions.
Hire an extra employee or an assistant: Even a part time or temp worker can be a huge help in a super busy time. You can hire employees or even just commission someone to run a promotion, create a new logo, redo the website, etc.
Move to a bigger space: Often times, a growing online business simply gets too big to keep being run out of your house or garage. It might be time to look into renting or or office to accommodate your business. If you’re living among boxes and boxes of products and completely disorganized, you’re not only making life harder for yourself but you’re not creating the best business for a customer to interact with.
