Customers looking for your products?

If we take just Google search into consideration for this example, we can start to get an idea of the power of the search.  Google search engine is processing 40,000 search queries every second of every day, if you do the math, that works out to be about 3.5 billion searches a day and this is only Google.

What does that mean for your business?

It’s simple really

If you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t need a website to drive traffic, you’re wrong.  Consumers go online before making a purchase even if they are fully planning on driving up to your store.  They check to see if you have what they want in stock, if your prices are comparable with your competition and even to just see what they can glean about your business.

Social media plays a big role in the SEM part of running a business in this day and age as well.  SEM (Search Engine Marketing) means that your business is being shared and talked about by your customers and their circle of friends will make choices based on the opinion of people they trust until you become one of those people/businesses.

The search engines understand the consumers better than we ever will, they have to, it’s what they live and die by.  Part of the ranking factors for Google is social media.  This doesn’t mean you run out and buy fans or followers, which will do nothing but cost you some cash.  The search engines pay attention to how your social account content is shared by your fans and followers.

So reviews have become an area that may be worth pursuing.  This can be a double edge sword.  You can’t make everyone happy and in the world of online reviews there are those people that live to trash a business.  Take it in stride.  If you see a business page on Google+, Face book or Yelp and you see nothing but amazing reviews it can actually cause people to question if those are real or if they are shilled.  

Look, it’s not about never having an issue or problem in your business; it’s about how you handled it.  Did you get a bad review and ignore it? Did you respond with proper concern? They say that everyone is someone’s “EX”, just because one customer was less than thrilled doesn’t mean that others didn't love everything you did for them as a customer.  Bottom line is that people talk about their experience, what will they say about your business? Customer Reviews

If you find that competitors are giving you bad reviews you typically have recourse on review sites.  You can dispute and call attention to an issue where someone is trashing you just to try to drive business away from you.

Don’t forget the basics

Your website is the first impression for your visitors.  Does your website flow well? Can customers find what they’re looking for? Is the platform designed to speak with the search engines and if it is: what is it telling them?
You want to focus on content that is valuable and gives your visitors good information, original and unique from other sites that offer the same service or products and if you can entertain them with images, videos or posts to your blog then you’re doing great.

Talk Mobile

Google really wants your website to be mobile friendly.  They even have a free tool that you can use to check your site.  Just go to this link and paste in your URL. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
If your site meets their mobile friendly filters you’ll see a cool little image of your site in a phone and a nice big “Awesome! This page is mobile friendly”.  If it’s not you’ll be given the areas you failed and some tips on how to fix those.

The internet and E Commerce is simply not going to go away.  If you expect to compete in business online you will need to look at your long term goals and decide where your time and money is best spent on improving your online footprint in general.
As ASAP Network Members you can talk to one of our staff that stays on top of the trends online.  You can get 30 minutes of help to understand what you can do to improve your traffic online for free each month.  Just use this form below to set up time to speak.  You won’t be sold anything.  The information is designed to help your online business and there is never anything to buy.