WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS TO BE ONLINE?
There different quotes from respected and thought leaders in business and entrepreneurship such as
“If you business is not online, it does not exist” – Strive Masiyiwa
“If your business is not online, you will be out of business” – Bill Gates
Now, many business owners and new entrepreneurs are confused with this and I will try to explain a bit..
Internet is the biggest market that can be traded anywhere globally, day and night.
Imagine having a small business in your village and you are able to sell to someone in USA or let just say Lagos
So, why won’t your business be on such?
There different levels when it comes to “let your business be on the internet” but these are few things you should consider step by step
1. Can I be communicated with anytime from anywhere? Communication is the engine when it comes to taking your business online.
Here are tools to get started with for communication which works globally and free
+ Whatsapp Business
+ Email e.g Gmail
+ Skype Call
2. How can people see my product or services and buy from me even when I’m sleeping?
Internet is only the market globally that is traded in different timezone. To make sure your business work with people in other timezone where they can buy from you even when you are sleeping, you need to put the following in place
+ A website
+ An auto-responding system
+ A chat bot or a FAQ
+ A form to collect information
3. How can people pay you even if you are sleeping from anywhere all over the world?
After Internet, another thing that is global is payment. Everywhere all over the world, people pay everyday for one thing or the other.
That means, you need to integrate a payment system that will make your business able to accept payment from anywhere.
To achieve this, you need what we call payment gateway or processor which helps you process your payment and remit to your account.
Some of these platforms are:
+ Stripe
+ Paystack
+ Flutterwave
+ Stripe
4. Is my business visible to everyone?
With your Website, your business is already accessible to anyone globally but there is still more.
When people are searching for businesses that do the same thing you do, how do your business come up?
So you need to implement some more SEO (Search Engine Optimization) features on your website
Be present and active on relevant social medias to your business
Run some paid advertisement
Keep writing quality contents to drive your business
Add your business to Google Search
And lot more
Dear entrepreneur, you can see now that taking your business online is not a very hard thing and it should not be complicated as well.
Vertical Teams Ltd is an IT company that help businesses get online and continually give them support to go through all the steps highlighted above.
You can visit http://verticalteams.net to get started
