Subscribe
Follow
placeholder

Ways You Can Transform Your Business This Year

Businesses are struggling this year for a range of reasons, from the increased cost of living increasing their bills to it also having an impact on user interest and their buying habits. Whilst the cost of living crisis is having an impact, there are a few things that you can do to really push your…

Businesses are struggling this year for a range of reasons, from the increased cost of living increasing their bills to it also having an impact on user interest and their buying habits. Whilst the cost of living crisis is having an impact, there are a few things that you can do to really push your business ahead of the competition and to introduce new people to your brand. These things will require some investment, but they could do wonders for your business. 

 

Invest In Your Website

The first thing you can do to transform your business this year is to invest in your website. Most businesses are now online and it is so important that you are making sure your business is competitive. If you have a website that doesn’t look good, doesn’t provide good user experience and generally is slow and uninviting, users have so much choice that they will simply go and shop elsewhere. However, when you offer a fantastic experience with great imagery, a quick website, a simple check out process and great products, they are very likely to return as a customer another time. 

So, remember to freshen up your content, have great quality images (that are compressed so they don’t slow your website down), make sure that it is well optimised to be used on mobile devices as this is increasingly the most popular device of choice and also make sure the website is quick to load for users. Finally, make sure that the check out process is simple, as this is one of the most common places where users will leave if they don’t have a range of payment options and if it takes too long for them to get to the purchase. 

You could work with a web developer on this, but if you’re on a platform like WordPress or Shopify, there are so many guides out there to help you implement pretty much any of the basic things your website might need. You can learn a lot, but if you are ever unsure of anything, it’s always worth speaking to a developer rather than crashing your website! 

 

Change Up Your Branding

Our next tip is to consider rebranding. This is a really important step for many businesses every so often, as consumers change, and so your brand needs to slowly evolve in order to keep up with this. The key here is to make sure that your brand remains recognisable and that you involve your current customers in the process, so that they don’t feel distant from the brand but instead it could bring them closer to the brand. When other brands are changing with the times, it’s important that you do too. 

For this, we would definitely recommend working with a design agency Liverpool based, as some of the best branding talent is in the city and it is absolutely vital that you get things right the first time around. If you have to rebrand multiple times within a short period of time, even your loyal customers might turn away from the brand. So, work with a professional agency and you will be so much more likely to make your branding changes a success. 

 

Expand Your Skill Set

Another thing you can do to transform your business is to expand your skill set. If you are noticing a decrease in your business, then one thing you can do to fill the gap by offering another product or service. For example, if you are a marketing agency, you could offer a different marketing avenue to your clients in order to expand that way. 

If you are a clothing company, you might expand to make shoes so that your customers can buy a full outfit from your business, helping to increase your average order value quite significantly. If you’re a restaurant, you might offer a unique table side service option where customers can have fresh salads made at the side of their table for a unique experience, or you could offer a Chef’s Table experience where customers can watch the chef work and interact with them to learn more about the different techniques that they use. 

If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to expanding your skill set and offering new services as part of your business, look at what your competitors are doing and use that for inspiration. Something you might never have thought of before could be just what your business needs to turn a corner and to become the successful business it was once again. 

 

Invest In New Marketing Avenues (SEO) 

If your issue is that you struggle to raise awareness of your brand in the first place, or to retarget your existing customers, it’s highly likely that you need to try out a few new marketing avenues that you might not have tried before. 

One of the best avenues to attract new customers is SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, a form of digital marketing that helps you to become more visible on search engines like Google. The aim of SEO is to ensure that when someone searches for a term (keyword) relevant for your business, that your website appears. Then, when they click through to your website, they find the products that they were looking for and go on to make a purchase. This is what is known as a qualified user, someone who will not only land on your website but will also go on to make a purchase. 

SEO is unlike any other form of marketing as if you can rank high in the search engines, when people do land on your website, if you have chosen the right keywords people should find exactly what they are looking for, rather than you spending lots of money on adverts that target people that may or may not be interested in what you have to offer. For example, if you sell seamless gym leggings and you have a range of 20 pairs, with different colours available and different sizes, someone searching for the keyword “seamless gym leggings” is highly likely to find what they are looking for. So, the key to good SEO is making sure that you spend time choosing the most effective keyword for each page. 

There are then over 250 different things that Google takes into account when it comes to deciding where different websites should rank, so we would recommend working with an SEO agency who will be able to balance as many of those things as possible and also make sure that they’re being done better than the competition to maximise your ranking potential.