Being a young business person is challenging and running a startup is a very risky endeavor. There is a lot of uncertainty and insecurity, but also a lot of positive energy and goodwill. On the other hand, maintaining an already existing business may even be a bit more challenging as that initial enthusiasm is gone and there is only fear of being left behind. However scary it may seem, it is up to you how you want to face this challenge, and here are some tips on how to tackle it.
Stay updated
One of the basic rules of owning a respectable business is always keeping the correct information on your platforms. This may seem foolish, but it is extremely important. Nobody likes to struggle to find out the working hours of a business. Google may have some different information from your website, which may be different from the Facebook or Instagram page. It is an extremely bad practice that makes users crazy. Bumping into several conflicting pieces of information will cause users to lose trust in your business and they will instantly become less likely to use your services. This does not relate only to working hours, but many other things, as well. It is up to you to keep everything up-to-date. Don’t let yourself keep some products on your website when they are actually out of stock never to return. Always delete services you no longer offer. Keeping everything updated is a way to convey the most important information to your users. This builds immense trust and makes you the number one choice for everyone that experiences it.
Boost user experience
UX is an inevitable part of the way you run your business. UI and UX are something to invest in and to spare no expense. If you are out of ideas, it is best to hire outside help. Nevertheless, there are some basic principles you need to stick to. First of all, you must understand that most users know much less about your business than you do. Having that in mind, you would need to spend more time explaining some processes you consider basic. Also, you need to try to keep it as simple as possible. Nobody likes long and tedious texts. So, you need to try to make things more interactive and interesting. Introduce algorithmic images, tutorial videos, and chatbots. Reread all your content and make it as short and simple as you can. Make sure to hire a control audience that will be there to test your work. Do some experiments and use their feedback to improve your content, as well as your design. The design should be enticing, but not too flashy so it dominated the content.
Optimize
Most startups don’t even think about optimization. When one is starting up a business, there are so many other things to focus on that investing in the future seems too far away and maybe even unattainable. However, if your dream of achieving fame and popularity does come true, you will be in a sea of trouble unless you have responsive web design. Check it out yourself – you may be encountering these problems at this moment, as well. Is your website lagging? Does it occasionally crash without an obvious reason? This may be due to a number of users that is too high for the performance ability of your website. As you can probably confirm, there are not many things more frustrating than a lagging website. It can easily culminate in a loss of customers without any hope of their return. So, if you want to avoid this scenario, take action as soon as you can.
Be proactive
Most of us do our best to be as reactive as possible. From a business point of view, that means responding to all sorts of feedback and all your customer requests as soon as possible. However, as great as that may be, you can go one step further than that and strive to be proactive. That means trying to predict all your customers’ needs beforehand and responding to them. In order to do this, you need to distance yourself from your business and your role in it and try to take the role of a bystander that would like to use your services. Try to think of all the features, options, and events you would expect from such a business. Invite more people to join you, the more different perspectives you get, the better the results. Make notes of everything you learned during the experiment and start taking action. Naturally, you should still ask for feedback and stay reactive, but whenever you can, try to anticipate your customers’ needs. It will be highly appreciated.
Award loyalty
It makes perfect sense to be all cute and sweet to your new customers. However, they are not the ones that are holding your business together. In fact, those are your oldest and most loyal customers. They are the ones holding down the fort. Their regular orders are the ones that guarantee your steady income. This is exactly why you should try hard to show them some appreciation. So, use your website and social media to track the number of orders made by each registered customer. Come up with a threshold that would make a regular customer become VIP. Once they do, they should start getting special discounts and offers that are valid for them only. Make sure to also personalize your offers. Use their order history to see what it is that they would like or need and make an offer that would truly interest them. If they have been there for you until now, this strategy will make it official and final.
All in all, there is no secret recipe to keeping your business afloat, but there are words to live by. In this case, those words would be to always keep learning. In order to keep up with the trends, you need knowledge and a thirst for information. Continuous work and desire to develop is the secret to lasting success.
