The UK may be in lockdown, and people may be stuck in their homes – but everything online is still there.
People are spending more time online at home, with less people in the office and less people commuting.
And perhaps you are finding you have less to do on a daily basis, as business dies down for a period.
Maybe now is a good time to do those things you’ve been putting off for a while, such as assessing your digital marketing strategy and updating your website. Or perhaps sorting out a new website altogether.
A website is the heart of any business which operates online, and still remains a key asset to any offline business. The fact that many businesses have websites that are out-of-date, not mobile-friendly or simply reflect poorly on the business in question is something that needs to be addressed. More people are online, and with the post-COVID world likely to be very different, the lockdown presents an opportunity for you to invest in a new website so that when things return to normal, your business is rejuvenated and ready to hit the ground running online.
Running a business and doing your work on a daily basis often means these important matters get overlooked, because as long as you’re busy, business is good, right?
What can I do during the down period?
There are many things you could be doing to ensure your business comes out of the lockdown and crisis ready to go. Cutting all your marketing and ignoring the fact more people are online is not the answer. You should be looking to retain customers, attract new ones and assess areas of improvement.
Your website
Reassess your website, and put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer.
- What does your website say about your business?
- Does your website present your business in the best light?
- Is necessary information easy to find?
- Can website visitors navigate to the parts of the site you want them to be on to convert?
Whatever it is you think can be improved, use this time to ensure your website works as well as it can do. Even if your performance has dropped off, it will come back once we are out of the crisis. You will then have a website which should perform better – and therefore yield superior results to what you achieved beforehand.
Data
Data is at the heart of digital marketing and your website performance.
If you ignore the data from your marketing activity, then you aren’t going to know if you have made any tangible improvements or not.
Take a look at your Google Analytics. Consider:
- Bounce rate – is it high?
- Traffic level – is it rising or falling?
- Sources – are people coming from Google? Direct? Social?
- Should you be getting more traffic from specific sources?
SEO
Many businesses do not keep tabs on where they rank, and simply expect to be at the top of the search results because they are leaders in their field.
If you do not put in the required effort into your SEO, then you will get left behind from competitors who know what they are doing or have hired a digital marketing agency to do their SEO.
Check:
- Do you rank on the first page for key terms your customers search for?
- What sort of content do your customers search for? Do you appear for these terms?
- Do your competitors rank for terms you could be ranking for?
The competition
Whatever your industry, it’s likely you can gain insight from the competition.
Unless you are the dominant player in your niche or field, there’s likely a lot you can learn from your competitors, and apply it to your own online presence.
Take a step back and analyse the competition. Think about:
- Do their websites look more appealing?
- Do they put out better quality content? How about the regularity?
- Is their social media presence superior to yours?
- Do they rank for terms you want to rank for?
Get up-to-date
Now is the time to optimise your online presence and ensure everything is up-to-date. All businesses end up forgetting to update details somewhere – whether that’s on your site, on a directory, on your social media profile or otherwise.
Check the following:
- Is all of your website content up-to-date?
- Are your images stale?
- Are your social media posts relevant?
- Is the information on your social media profiles up-to-date?
- Do your social media profiles look out-of-date?
Whether this is your website, your digital marketing activity, or otherwise, now should be the time to re-evaluate and reinvest in your business.
If you are selling online, continuing to strengthen your foothold in ecommerce is important.
If you aren’t selling online but certainly could be, then investing and future-proofing your offering with an ecommerce website that generates revenue in a social-distanced time can be a vital lifeline.
Get in touch with the team here at Xanthos if you need a helping hand with your website, your digital marketing or otherwise.
Alternatively, we are offering a free digital marketing or ecommerce consultation to help businesses out during this time.
