As an entrepreneur, taking your business online allows the internet to open up the entire world to you, giving you wider reach and visibility. It can be your sole marketing and sales platform! You will no longer have to foot hefty utilities bills or pay exorbitant rents for brick-and-mortar stores in prime locations. Websites can be fitted out with all the functionality necessary to guide a client through the entire shopping experience. You can use them effectively to showcase your products and services along with customer reviews and testimonials. This completely eliminates the need for fancy window dressing, product displays or even shop assistants to deliver long spiels. The internet has truly revolutionised what it means to operate a business. WordPress, in particular, is hugely popular as a platform through which entrepreneurs and even big corporations choose to place their enterprises on the web. Best of all, WordPress is completely free to use!
Yes, the internet is a great leveller but this can have some drawbacks too. When everyone out there can take their business online on WordPress, what can you do separate yourself from the crowd and gain that winning edge? This article is here to answer those queries for you.
Armed with a few canny tips, you can deftly avoid the typical pitfalls that tend to plague the uninitiated WordPress user. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be an ace programmer or have a management diploma to be able to pull this off. All it takes is a little understanding of some simple tweaks that can turn your WordPress site into a power platform for your business.
So, without further ado, let’s begin!
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Premium Themes
Yes, we know how tempting it can be to stick with free themes. But let’s face it, everyone else out there is using them too! Besides, they offer too little room for you to project the uniqueness of your business. Free themes offer limited parameters for customisation and, frankly, they are restricting. Custom-designed Premium templates and themes offer greater flexibility, detail and flair. With them, you get to totally revamp the look of your site in line with your overall creative vision. At the same time, it’s all too easy to go overboard like a wide-eyed child in a candy shop. There are several online marketplaces that offer Premium WordPress themes. In the interests of quality and security, always choose reliable ones like StudioPress or ThemeFuse. For best results, we recommend engaging the services of a professional designer to help you fully exploit the potential of your chosen Premium theme.
Regular Updates
For one thing, regularly updating your website is essential to its health. WordPress constantly introduces updates on the platform and these include software patches to address vulnerabilities and security threats. Take care to frequently upgrade to the latest version of WordPress so that your site can remain protected from hackers. Additionally, take care to introduce fresh content on a regular basis. This improves your SEO score and projects the image of a company that is on its toes and clued in on the latest trends. As customers ourselves, isn’t that a quality we would appreciate? Also ensure moderation of comments and prompt communication with clients to offer customer satisfaction and instil a sense of trust. One cannot overemphasise the value of building trust as a business.
Plugins
Even if you are using the free version, plugins help you customise the site to your needs. These are dedicated programs that you can ‘plug’ into your site in order to avail of added functionality. There are free and paid plugins for all kinds of features such as order forms and social media sharing, search engine optimisation (SEO), backups and so much more. Of course, too many plugins can end up bloating your site and causing it to load slowly. However, every website owner should definitely make use of security plugins to protect from malware and hacker attacks. Always choose plugins from reliable developers for smooth functioning and security of your site. As a business, you are responsible for ensuring the safety of confidential information pertaining to your clients.
Responsive Design
We all know how annoying it can be when websites fail to display neatly on our smartphones or tablets. The failure to provide mobile-based customers with an optimal experience can cost you some precious clients. The good news is that this problem is fairly easy to fix. Instead of creating a separate mobile version of the site, create a responsive one that adapts to the device being used. Choose a quality responsive theme. You can also apply custom plugins to ensure that individual elements like menus, images and contact forms are resized depending on the size of the browser window.
Facilitate Social Media Sharing
Social media is the key to unlock a flood of customers to your site. Use plugins to facilitate sharing of your content on popular social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to ensure greater visibility for your offerings. Watch how your popularity soars and a trickle of customers soon multiplies exponentially as your posts, videos or images go viral. ShareThis is one of the most popular choices among the many plugins that address this need.
On the face of it, it might seem like the internet is a vast universe with plenty of space for everyone who wants a spot in it. While this is partially true, you will only thrive if you manage not to lose yourself in that crowd. E-commerce is here to stay and everyone is scrambling to snag a piece of prime internet space. Whether you own a small home-based business or a vast international corporation, the governing principles for designing and maintaining your online business remain more or less the same. In order to grab the attention of potential clients, you can use these tips and free your website of deadweight so that it performs better and gives your business the boost it needs.
