20 Tips For Moving Your Offline Business into the Online World

11 min read

When it comes to doing business, the only thing constant is change. To be competent in the market, businesses need to know their customer’s needs and be innovative. Every business has its way of doing things that might have worked for years, even decades, but not necessarily these methods going to work for you longer because in this constantly changing world the demand of the customers also changes with time. The best time to realize it’s time for a change is before that change is necessary. If you wait for your customers to tell you to move the offline business to online, it’s already too late. You’ve lost them.

As we know in this world of digitalization, the buying behavior of the customers also changing which makes it essential for businesses to go online to access more customers and increase their visibility in the market. In this article, I will share with you some of the most essential tips to move your business online. Moving your business online is a daunting task if you’re not entirely comfortable with building websites and marketing yourself through social media and traditional online channels. Fortunately, Rome wasn’t built in a day and your online business doesn’t have to be either. All you need to do is keep moving forward.

Here are the 20 most essential tips that you can follow to effectively move your business online.

Do Your Marketing Research

Do Your Marketing Research

One thing you must keep in time is that the marketing needs of an offline business are way too different from the marketing needs of an online business. You already have customers in your offline business, and some of these may transfer to online customers. But you’ll need to learn about different marketing techniques on the Internet as well. This may include social media, advertisements, paying for potential customers or just working to build an authority-type presence. Before you can get started marketing online, you’ll need to know what the options are and what is best suited for your business and demographic. Conducting detailed marketing research would also help to effectively understand the needs and demands of your customers about your business.

Build Your Website

When shifting your offline business to online, building a new website should be the first step. Your website is your brand, and building your website means you won’t be putting your best foot forward as you start your internet business. make sure to minimize the logical mistakes while making the website and check for the basics like typos and misspellings. Be sure all of the links work. One thing online entrepreneurs must understand is that the credibility of their business is as good as the quality of your website.

Don’t Reveal Your Website Too Soon

Building high quality and attractive would take a lot of time, so you have to be patient when deciding to move your business online. There is no sense in revealing your new online presence if it’s not ready. Too often we rush to be online and wind up looking unprepared with untested pages and even blatant mistakes. Don’t drag your feet, but do take the time to develop a high-quality website, even if that means paying someone else to help you with the process.

Keep It Simple Stupid

Keep. It. Simple. Stupid (K.I.S.S), is the first thing you keep in mind when starting your automated online business. many businesses while moving online overdo everything, as they go for every social media platform for promotions and invest in a lot of advertisements. Keep. It. Simple. Stupid may not be the most pleasant acronym, but sometimes blunt is best. There is no need to go from no web presence to a full-blown firestorm of social media, interactive displays, and ever-changing content.

The complex websites and brands you see online make the whole process seem intimidating in the first place. You don’t have to be complex, just clean and appropriate for your customers. Start with a simple, professional design and then get more complex over time if you choose to. Google is one of the most successful websites of all time, and it has a logo and search bar. Keep in mind that when it comes to starting an online business effectiveness is more important than efficiency.

Develop a Plan for Maintenance

Develop a Plan for Maintenance

People get a little excited when thinking of moving to an online business. they want to make the most profitable internet business website with all the interesting features. It’s cool, but what matters the most is to be consistent. It’s not enough to have a new website, you must maintain it. There is no logic in making a website that you may not maintain in the future. The website is no one-time investment but you have to invest in it constantly to run an online business operations and functions. Prices and descriptions will need to be added and updated. Old information will need to be removed and new information updated on the site. Set up regular intervals for website checks and maintenance and you’ll never turn away customers with outdated information or broken links.

So, most profitable online businesses need to plan for the maintenance of the website, so while making the website, you must add only those features that you can manage and maintain in the long run.

Don’t Skimp on Payment Processors

If you’re selling online, there are three critical elements to making the sale: The item image, description, and payment process. Too often website owners focus on great images and descriptions and then lose customers at payment. You must be able to ensure customers trust your website and know their information is safe. Work with established, reputable payment processors and expect to pay for the privilege.

For the long-term success of any business, it is essential to build trust in your customers. Try to make the payment process on your website as simple as possible. Most businesses add hidden costs to their product that are not mentioned in the product prices, it will shatter your customers’ trust in you and there are chances that they will not buy from you in the future. Be loyal to your customers and optimize their shopping experience on your website.

Get Inspiration From Leaders

Get Inspiration From Leaders

If you’re new to the online world, it’s a bit unrealistic to expect to take on Amazon or eBay. Big players have been around for a while and they have a very, very solid share of the market. Of course, there is no doubt that you cannot beat the leading companies in the market but still, you can get a lot of inspiration from their way of accessing the customers and other online network marketing techniques that they are using. Instead of fighting for market position among the strongest players in the game, carve out a niche or even use the re-seller programs of established websites to help launch your own. As far as your lucrative online business is concerned, I would recommend you follow leaders in the market.

Keep Products and Prices Aligned

To build long-lasting relationships with your customers, it is important to align your product prices with the values of the products. If you are a “bricks and clicks” establishment, you have services and products in your brick-and-mortar shop and you’re also selling them online. While customers will forgive a bit of a price difference, wild discrepancies between products and prices can turn customers off. Keep your online merchandise as updated as you’re in-shop merchandise and you’ll keep your customers happy.

For businesses, that are selling their products online and offline, they should not keep a lot of difference between the on-the-shop and online prices of the product because it would have a bad impact on the customers.

Develop a Return and Refund Strategy

While shopping online, you might notice that the businesses, that are selling their product on the internet must have a refund policy. It is a good way to build trust in customers for your products. Having an online aspect of your business means you can expect the online world to collide with the bricks and mortar. A customer buys something online and isn’t satisfied. What is your refund and return strategy? Exchange only? Money-back? Plan this out ahead of time and be ready with a displayed appropriate policy.

Don’t Undersell Yourself

Be careful with pricing. Being online often means offering lower costs or specials. While these strategies can draw in customers, too much of a good thing can make you ultimately unprofitable or unable to honor the special you’ve extended to others. This is especially true if your online prices are considerably lower than you’re in-store pricing and you offer to price match.

Make sure to price your online products appropriately and this can boost your sales, establishing a strong foundation for your business. If somehow you get your pricing strategy wrong the consequences will be terrible as you will end up creating unsolvable problems for your business. There is a vast range of strategies for pricing products. Although, there is no single or definite success-proven strategy for all kinds of products, markets, and businesses. Pricing your products involves the consideration of certain components such as your targeted audience, tracking your competitors, and balancing the relationship between price and quality. The good news for you is that you have a great deal of flexibility when you are pricing your products but, in some situations, it is also bad news.

Explore the Possibilities of Social Media

Explore the Possibilities of Social Media

If the thought of all the social media platforms makes you freeze up with anxiety, just relax. It’s very possible to have a successful online business without ever tweeting about it or pinning images to various social media accounts. But When you do get more comfortable with the online aspect of your business, explore what the possibilities are. Social media may easily be Phase 2 of your online model once you have the basics done and some confidence building. Social media is the best platform for marketing your services as well as branding your organization.

With the help of social media, you can contact influencers or affiliates to make recommendations for your services and products to their online followers. The audience trusts these influencers and affiliates a lot and uses their affiliate link to buy your services or products which will eventually end up in boosting the sales of your organization. You can also start writing blog posts or offer special discounts on multiple social media platforms to drive traffic onto your business website but make sure to post quality and engaging content.

Choose One Good Platform

If you find you are ready to utilize social media to get the word out, don’t overwhelm yourself with updating responsibilities. Instead, focus on a single good platform that suits the nature of your business. You can always add accounts later, and starting with one will allow you a chance to build a following and explore the possibilities in depth without being spread too thin. When you succeed in building a good repute over a single platform and make it look trustworthy enough then there is a greater chance for new and existing site visitors to buy or visit your profile again and again to make their purchase. They may also recommend your services within their social network. This may surely help you achieve your predetermined organizational targets.

Try an Existing Platform First

If you’d rather take small steps to online profitability, there are ways you can do exactly that. Amazon, Etsy, and eBay are among many large websites that have reseller programs that allow you to build a store and sell through the more established brands. Working this way is ultimately less work, at least initially, and may be ideal for the nature of your business.

When you are marketing your services online the audience looks for credibility, and to make your page look credible you should first start working on a previously existing platform. As it will give an organic view to the end users. You can also mention in the “about us” section that from when and how you started this will surely assure the users that you are offering credible services. Moreover, you can mention the names of your previous clients and their feedback so that it may create a sense of trust within your site visitors.

Use Existing Tools

Use Existing Tools

Google has a full fleet of tools designed to assist webmasters and business owners in understanding their customers and their website activity. They aren’t the only ones. Do a bit of research to see what programs you can use with no or minimum cost as you get started and begin to grow your web presence. I know that moving to an online business can be a bit expensive because you have to pay for the different tools. At an initial level, you can make it cost-efficient by using the existing tools that are free to use.

Be Ready to Scale

Always prepare for the absolute best scenario. Your small business may get an explosion of business virtually overnight and you will need to be ready to handle it. Even if success doesn’t arrive so abruptly, your business will likely grow and change by adding an entirely new dimension to it. This may mean changes and growth for your brick-and-mortar in the future as well. It shouldn’t be too challenging to play for your future success!

Create a Responsive Website

As you develop your website, keep it simple of course, but not just for now but for the future as well. A responsive website automatically changes to fit screen sizes and with so many would-be customers shopping over mobiles and tablets, it’s a good idea to have a responsive website from the start to avoid having to create a specialized website for every situation down the road. The more responsive your website is the more it will be engaging for your customers.

Develop an Email Distribution List

The minute you launch your website you should be working to collect email addresses and information from would-be customers. Offer coupons, have customers register at check-out, take a survey, or offer an email newsletter. The more email addresses you have, the more customers you can reach with special offers and new information.

The email list you can use to make the customer’s persona and it would help you to personalize your marketing for the customers.

Look for Niche Marketplace

Look for Niche Marketplace

If you’re selling handmade signs or wreaths, your customers aren’t looking for handmade crafts on Amazon. You’d have better luck working on Etsy or one of the many other niche marketplaces and reselling websites out there. Act as a customer and see what marketplaces are popular for the types of things you’re selling. That should give you an idea of where you should go to sell as well.

Spend on Advertisements

While it is possible to make money online with minimal investment, it’s a hard road to walk and one that’s much easier to do if you already have years of experience building and marketing websites. In the case of a new business, you should expect to invest in this part of your business in the same way you did your original one, primarily in advertising. Customers must be able to find your website, and you may have to pay for that to happen.

Keep Your Eye on ROI

But while you’re paying, always keep an eye on your ROI. You may be able to take a bit of a loss initially as you gain traction, but no business survives without profits indefinitely, especially a small business with a tight budget. It’s absurdly easy to spend ridiculous amounts of money online on marketing and website development. Don’t be caught unawares as this is a very expensive lesson to learn.

The online marketplace can be daunting, but it shouldn’t scare you away. If you have a successful business offline, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to use the power of the internet to develop and exponentially grow your business online. You simply must be brave enough to try that first step.

Conclusion

In this article, I have shared with you some of the most effective tips to shift your offline business online. In this modern era, being online is essential for every business that wants to access maximum customers. You have to do good marketing research to effectively make a plan and goal for the business. So, it can be said that the online world is full of Internet business opportunities that can be an indicator of success for any business.

I hope the information I have shared in this article helps move your business to the online platform. Share this post in your circle, if you find it useful and informative. If you have any questions related to this post, do ask me in the comments section.

19 thoughts on

20 Tips For Moving Your Offline Business into the Online World

  • Monna Ellithorpe

    Hi Saurav and Oleg,
    Great post and awesome suggestions and ideas. You have mentioned quite a lot of points that new and even seasoned marketers need to be aware of and follow.

    Thanks for sharing.

    • Oleg Calugher

      Hi Monna,

      welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
      Glad to know you liked the tips,

      thanks,
      – Oleg

  • Priyam Baksi

    Awesome Post Oleg,

    For every online business, building an email list is an imperative part of success.
    Great list of tips, Thanks for sharing and Have a nice and productive day.

    • Oleg Calugher

      Hey Priyam,

      welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
      Surely, the email list is the first marketing asset that a small business should start building for a successful future,

      thanks,
      – Oleg

  • Ravi Roshan Jaiswal

    Hey Oleg,
    Amazing tip indeed. 🙂

    It sounds like very difficult but to move a offline business into the online business but these 20 tip are really useful for it. By following one by one tip, it will be easy. Now a day, it’s necessary to do business through online mode and customer like them too. But it should be easy and comfortable according to customers need.

    The tips which you have described here are really awesome. And I’m sure it will be the perfect and great beneficial tip for everyone to enhance their offline business into online business. These are perfect and written very well considering the necessity of modern time.

    I agree with you that looking for a niche marketplaces is the best way of selling more things. Also, creating a responsive website is important to attract customer to visit site using tablets or smartphones.

    Thanks for sharing it. 🙂
    – Ravi.

  • Joy Healey

    Hi,

    Those are very useful points. I think the biggest mistake I made when starting out online was not to have an auto-responder. I had a website that sat on page 1 of Google for a long time – but no auto-responder. What a waste!

    Another mistake I made was to assume that my hosting company (at the time) was backing up my WordPress site. They weren’t and neither was I. Big disaster when I was hacked.

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

    • Oleg Calugher

      Hi Joy,

      thank you for the comment,
      yeah, an auto-responder series helps a lot. Getting subscribers is easy, keeping them busy and active is the hard part – that is where the auto-responders helps most.

      thanks,
      – Oleg

  • Danial

    Great Post Oleg

  • Lalit Kumar

    Bringing the business online is important because the Internet penetration and smartphone usage is growing by the day. More and more customers are getting used to with the extra convenience provided by online purchases. Change is the only constant thing. The so-called “offline businesses” must turn online to make more money and to adapt with times… which are changing!

  • Wallpaper DP

    Thank You Oleg for Great list of tips, Thanks for sharing and Have a nice and productive day.

  • Stella Garcia

    Impressive tips! Thank you for sharing your ideas.

    • Oleg Kaluger

      Hey Stella,

      Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
      Glad to know that you have liked the article,

      thanks,
      – Oleg

  • Omprakash

    I agree with you that looking for a niche marketplaces is the best way of selling more things. Also, creating a responsive website is important to attract customer to visit site using tablets or smartphones

  • Meet Sen

    Hey, Oleg Thank you for explaining . These days people are prefering e-commerce website . and no of e-commerce website is growing rapidly So Peope are more approching to customer to online

  • Ella

    I think online businesses are better than offline ones, as they can target a huge audience. During this pandemic, I also moved my offline business online. I enjoyed reading this post, as I came to know some new tips which can be beneficial for me. so thank you so much.

  • Mazhar Hussain

    Really awesome post. Thank you for sharing the information.

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