Business-Ready DIY Online Checklist for SMEs
GrowthPath's DIY SME Online Checklist will help you make sure you are not falling behind as online business enters a new phase in Australia.
What do you need your site to do?
You can talk about your "online strategy" and get very theoretical, or you can take a shortcut.
1. Review five competitor websites
2. Decide if you want to neutralise your online presence by aiming to have a presence which is about the same as your leading competitors or decide if you want a web presence to be innovative and to distinguish your business
The decision is your judgement. You can also do nothing and fall behind.
This article focuses on the foundation steps: how to make sure you're not falling behind.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) including location awareness
Why is it important?
SEO means that potential customers find your site when searching.
Good SEO covers searching from desktop computers, and searching with smartphones and tablets which are 'location-aware': the search process uses the location of the user to return more relevant results.
First-level SEO optimisation mainly involves understanding the ways people search for sites in your area of business, and improving the content of your site to make it more relevant to those search terms. More advanced SEO works to increase the credibility of your site through original content and links from other sites.
More and more searches are location-aware. SEO now needs to include a strong focus on location.
How to check?
SEO is an area of expertise.
To get a feel for your performance, you can enter keywords into google and see where your site ranks, but there are at least two traps.
Firstly, how do you know what key words to use? You should check your rankings with the keywords that you potential customers use. There are commercial and freely available tools to help, but it goes beyond the scope of this article to go into those.
The second trap is that most browsers give a higher ranking to sites you appear to visit frequently. So your own website will perform much better for you than it does for the general public.
A simple way around this is to install another browser that you don't use day to day (choose from Opera, Firefox, Safari or Chrome) . Learn about how to clear the browser cache. Also, using the private browsing mode that many browsers offer should give more accurate results.
If you are unhappy with your SEO, be careful when engaging outside help. There is a lot of snakeoil and manufactured complexity.
Website look and feel, performance and content
Why is it important?
A website needs to present well, load quickly and support a good range of browsers and operating systems.
The content should be relevant, easy to read and short, and be free of spelling errors, grammatical errors. The look and feel should have an easy-to-understand menu structure, and should be searchable
How to check?
If you're not an experienced web user, ask someone who is to give you their opinion of your site. A professional will measure things like loading time and can inspect site traffic logs to see how people are navigating around your site (or if they are simply "bouncing" off your home page).
Browser versions
It's becoming very hard to predict which browser someone will use. Your website should work well in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer.
For Firefox and Chrome, test against the latest version. These browsers run on Windows, Mac and Linux. It it works in Chrome it will work in Safari.
Internet Explorer is a bit trickier: there are two versions to be concered about, V8 and after versoin 8. Windows XP users won't get version 9; they're stuck on version 8, and there are still a lot of Windows XP users. If you use V9 on Windows 7 and Vista, you can run it in V8 mode using the built-in developer tools.
If you use a Mac or Linux, you can't run Internet Explorer. You can check Internet Explorer compatability by visiting this website: http://netrenderer.com/
Mobile device support
Why is it important?
Mobile browsing is important. Today, it means support Apple iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Complex sites won't look good on small screens, and some technology commonly used in traditional websites, like Flash, won't work on Apple devices.
Also, mobile users are more likely to be looking for specific information.
A good website automatically detects mobiles users, and gives them a specially formatted website. A modern website platform makes this easier than it may seem. They jargon for this is "responsive design". The GrowthPath website uses responsive design. For example, on a mobile device, the menu at the top of the website is replaced with a button. Responsive Design websites are not as good as dedicated mobile sites, or even mobile apps. But they are easy to do and easy to maintain.
Understanding how your website improves your business
Why is it important?
Websites cost money, and they take time to update. They should be generating leads and establish credibility. To measure this, we typically look at analytic tools to see which pages visitors are reading, how long they stay, where your site visitors are coming from, how often visitors return and how they find your site.
An e-commerce consultant can also discuss the potential benefits of Google AdWords, and advertising on social media websites.
Social Media
Why is it important?
Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) are valuable for businesses connecting to consumers. They generate awareness of your brand and new products, provide good referrals and help you monitor what consumers think about your offer. For non-consumer businesses they are less important, although professional-service sectors (eg accountants, lawyers) may get benefits from niche social media networks.
Your mobile device support situation
Online Trading
Why is it important?
Selling online can be a valuable addition to your business. For wholesalers, it can mean operating a retail operation very efficiently, and for retailers it can mean a way to compete with online retailers.
When reviewing this, you need to be aware of the risk of fraud and your privacy obligations, and you need to be aware of modern expectations for the shopping process (such as reliable delivery dates, free shipping and online stock availability information).
Online trading can grow very quickly; if you run a promotion, you may get a much stronger reaction than you expected. Working with suppliers and postage providers is obvious: less obvious is the demand rapid spikes put on customer service.
Technical matters: Your website platform
Why is it important?
The website platform controls the security of your website, how easy it is add new content and improve SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and how easy it is to link to social media and online trading. Some platforms support multiple languages very easily. The platform and hosting arrangement also determines the performance of the website.
The platform also determines how effectively you can present and market your product catalog, how easy it is searchable, and how automatically you can provide customer service (such as providing order status and inventory levels).
Your website platform determines how 'locked-in' you are: some platforms are very well known around the world and you can move from supplier to supplier with little risk of being locked in.
This part of your audit should also check your backup strategies, security strategies and your support arrangements.
Intellectual property
Why is it important?
Your website contains intellectual property, such as brands and logos. If you had trademarkable-IP developed specifically for the website, it may not be registered.
It's important to make sure that you own the domain name, and that you know who is responsible for registering the domain name when it expires. Domain names expire regularly. It certainly leads to disruption of your site, and unfortunately there are individuals who pounce upon expired names for the purpose of selling them back to you.
Further Reading
Contact GrowthPath for more help
GrowthPath believes that online business is a key plank to growth. We are finance-oriented business consultants with a strong interest in the growth potential and return-on-investment that a good web presence can bring to SMEs. We have good knowledge of SEO and web techniques in-house, and we have serious e-commerce management experience. We have close relationships with SEO and web specialists who help clients under our guidance.