You have started your entrepreneurial venture with passion and successful established your business. Though people around you are talking about digital economy, digital transformation, and digital presence; you never believed them. Your thinking was my business is doing good and what is the point in making it online? Do you prefer buying vegetable by seeing a picture or actually touching it? My business is of that kind. Why care about taking business online?
Let us analyze what all reasons one can have for not taking the business online and what is wrong with them!
Excuse 1: Hell with best web hosting plans! No one buys/sells these things online?
You may think that your services or products cannot be delivered online. No problem! But, that doesn’t mean you do not need an online presence.
Today people are hooked up on their mobile phones and internet. Before buying anything, they want to search your product or your service. Want to know what other consumers are saying about your products. Once purchase is decided, they will want to know more about it. For this, they will give a call or send an email. Customers are searching for their need online, do want them to notice you or not.
Excuse 2: My business is good even without online presence why think of best web hosting plans?
Perfectly understandable. You are the only champion of your product or service in the local community. You have a kind of monopoly. Now, you can expand your customer base from locals to the entire world in minutes. And that too sitting at home with a website.
Let us not forget this increasing trend. Customer search for the local needs also on the internet. You know this young generation of millennial. If you are not online, you are going to miss this entire buyer community which may be local or global.
Excuse 3: I am not technical person, do know nothing about web hosting, plans etc.
This is one of the big myth when you want to embark on the journey of taking business online. You have heard that you need to know something about hosting, domain name, social media campaigns, search engine optimization, website and what not.
Technically speaking, all this is required. But let me tell you a little secret, all these jargon describe something very simple. There are websites which will help you to do all these steps quickly and with very less expenditure. You do not have to be a coding geek to create a website or doing some posting on social media.
Excuse 4: I am not good at writing content
To create website contents you need not be an accomplished writer. As a businessman you know pains of the customers which are best served by your product/service. You need to make the same marketing or sales pitch on you website. You can look at some of your competition and see how they are positioning their product. This can be useful for you to give a differentiating value proposition to your customers.
As a successful businessman you have mastered the product. There is no better person who can tell or write a story about it as an expert.
Excuse 5 : I have no time
I am kind of ‘one man show’ or we are just 4-5 people team. We are doing everything from purchasing raw material, packaging, dispatch, accounting, sales, marketing etc. We just cannot have one more action item for us.
Let us look at what it takes to create a website. Selecting domain name, purchasing domain name, purchasing hosting plan, creating some pages. And all this may not take even 3 to 4 hours. On the contrary, the advantages of online presence just outweighs this small amount of efforts put in.
Secondly, there are lot of possibilities of doing automation using customer relationship management (CRM) tools, email automation, marketing automation etc. These system keep on doing the work for you of engaging the customers when you and your font desk team are fast asleep.
Bottom-line is, it saves time!
Excuse 6: It will cost a lot to get best web hosting plans
Taking my business online is a costly affair. I not only have to put efforts, but also need to spend a lot of money to have website and to start advertising on web. This concern is completely unfounded. You will see that with very less money and time one can set up your online presence.
Read our article 3 Quick Steps which can take your business online very fast with best web hosting
Corona will prove to be boon for growth of business online
Today, with Corona Pandemic, streets, shops, malls everything is closed. Due to lock-down no one can get out or stroll around on the street. The working professionals are stuck at home and some of them who are digitally savvy, started using internet and other digital technologies/tools to continue their work. This was relief to some extent.
People who have some digital presence like website, Facebook etc. started focusing on using these to connect to their customers. All big brands following the suit.
Why are you waiting? Now you know that all your excuses do not hold water. Start, choose the best web hosting and start your journey towards following the omni-channel model for retail business.
