How to Set up a Business Online (And Make It Successful)
If you’re a budding entrepreneur seeking advice on how to set up a business online, follow these pointers to ensure success during the early stages.
When setting up a business, making the right decisions during the earliest stages of development is crucial for long-term success. For potential business owners, these early steps will serve as a blueprint upon which your company will grow and scale. You have to build a secure foundation today, as anything short of solid and substantial will pave the way for a shaky future, leaving you and your business vulnerable.
By the end of 2018, there were 5.7 million private sector businesses in the UK. That’s a 63% increase in the number of businesses since the millennium. So in order to stand out from the saturated crowd, you need to make sure the premise of your business is unique and sustainable.
Find Your Market First
It’s often said that an innovative and effective product is one that solves a problem customers never knew they had. But the mistake most budding entrepreneurs make is that they look for a product first and the market second.
If you’ve decided you want to set up a business online but have not yet identified an industry, you should carry out relevant research to determine the most viable niche:
- Monitor online forums to see what questions customers are posing and what problems they’re trying to solve.
- Do some keyword research and pinpoint the queries that online companies are not aggressively competing for but a lot of users are searching.
- Visit competitors’ websites to see what they’re doing. Don’t just look at what they’re doing right but also identify where they could improve. Take inspiration from their most successful products and see how you can answer the same customer problems with a product of your own or improve on any of their failed products.
Design a Quality Website
Your website will be the face of your online company, so you shouldn’t cut corners with this step. You need to design and build a quality website that engages prospects and is easy to navigate. It’s important to seek the services of an established and reputable company that can help you build a website that’s designed to make the journey to purchase as easy as possible for your visitor. Your website should have:
- A consistent style and tone: aim to be friendly, encouraging and authoritative
- Easy-to-navigate pages, especially on key sales pages
- Effective and relevant graphics and media to enhance your message/services
- An “opt-in” offer that allows you to build a database of email addresses — these are warm leads who specifically want to hear from you, so you don’t want to neglect your email marketing strategy!
Direct Traffic to Your Website
After you set up your business website, you need to start driving visitors to it. There are two main ways you can do this:
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay per click (PPC) is the quickest and easiest way to drive traffic to a new website. One of the main advantages of PPC advertising is that your ads can appear at the top of the search results almost immediately, giving you great visibility. It’s important to note that you’ll be paying for every click through to your website, so it’s vital that you are targeting the right keywords and experimenting with your headlines and ad and website copy to make sure you’re targeting the right audience.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is traffic coming to your website via search engines, such as Google. If you don’t have the budget to invest in paid advertising, developing an effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy is a way to attract traffic without it costing you a penny — many websites accept high-quality guest posts that you can use to demonstrate your expertise and earn a valuable link to your site. However, this method takes time — expect to wait at least six months (or longer, if you’re in a competitive industry) before you start to see tangible results.
Write Captivating Sales Copy
The copy on your website, whether it’s the content on your sales pages or blog posts, should be consistent, engaging and persuasive. Follow these tips for writing effective sales copy:
- Write a compelling headline
- Describe the problem that your product solves
- Succinctly outline how your product will solve this problem
- Showcase your company’s credibility/pedigree for solving this problem — do you have testimonials, or are you suitably qualified to offer a service?
- Make your offer enticing
- Make a credible guarantee
- Create a sense of urgency or scarcity to encourage users to take action now
- Include an engaging and friendly call to action (CTA) — this is the one step you want your visitor to take after landing on your website. You might want them to “buy now” or “book a free consultation”.