Digitally Transform Your Business

Digital opportunities to grow small and medium enterprises

A compelling high-quality website can reach new customers

A website is one of the simplest ways to present your business in the digital world. You might already have one, which you built yourself, or someone has built for you some time ago. If you already have one, you should ask yourself:

• Has your website generated new business and revenue for your business?
• Is the business generated through your website growing, declining or static?
• How many people visit your site in a day, week, or month?
• Do these visitors engage with your website or just bounce off to somewhere else on the net?
• How many visitors to your site are you converting into buyers of your services or products?

If you do not have a website yet, or are unsure about any of the above, you should engage your digital transformation partner. This is usually a low hanging fruit you should grab to reach more potential customers and drive more revenue.

But just putting a website on the net, will unfortunately not do the trick yet. There are around 1.14 billion websites across the world-wide-web at the time of this article and this number is growing every second. You are not alone out there in the digital space, and if not done correctly, chances are, that winning the lotto is more likely than your customers finding you.

For a website to be of high-quality, solid performance and standing out for the right audience, requires a professional approach. Both in terms of the technical architecture of your site as well as the content you are putting out there. We have summarized some of the most important aspects in a separate article here.

The bottom line is, if your website project is not approached in a holistic and professional manner, your investment is likely not going to pay you the return you deserve.

If websites are not your domain, we strongly advise that you engage a competent partner to support you in making the project a success for your business.

On a last note, over 80% of all websites are not active, and out of the rest many are not regularly updated. Your website should therefore not be a once-off purchase. It should be a continuing partnership with someone who supports you to keep the site up to date and up to the latest standards as technology changes. Otherwise, it may soon disappear in the big black hole of inactive websites on the net.

Actively managing your online footprint can make a difference

This is often also a low hanging fruit you should consider. Your online footprint represents your brand and how your clients and potential clients perceive you and your service. It is thus important that you manage your online presence to ensure it accurately reflects what you stand for and want to represent.

Depending on how you are managing your online presence, you might even be surprised how much about your business is out there, which you are not aware of. If that’s the case, it’s high time you take control.

Reputation Management is critical for your success in the digital space. You should be in control of what people say about you. If customers leave negative reviews about your products or services, you should respond quickly and offer a channel to resolve the issue. It shows prospective new clients that you care and take pride in your service or product. Equally, you should acknowledge positive reviews and compliments people publish out there.

You should also ensure your listings are consistent across all business listing sites. It makes it easier for people to find and identify you. If different contact numbers and email addresses appear across different listings, your potential customers are more than likely never going to get in touch with you.

Managing social media accounts and placing online adverts can drive a lot of valuable traffic to your website, get you in touch with new clients and ultimately boost your profits. It is however important that your social media posts and engagements are relevant across the various channels and consistent with your brand and the services and products you offer.

You should also track your online advertising spent and the returns you are achieving. Digital processes generate invaluable data, which can help you to improve and optimize your advertising strategy and approach and get the best returns from your budget.

With our Client Business Centre, you can conveniently manage all the above in one central place.

You can link your social media accounts, schedule posts across multiple platforms, and centrally manage all your business listings, customer reviews and responses. And you can access your online advertising intelligence to compare your digital add performance across Google and Facebook and compare their returns on your investment. It’s an easy and simple step to manage your presence and reputation in the digital space. And it’s entirely free.

Mobile Applications for bespoke customer experiences

Mobile applications have been growing by more than 25% year on year over the past years. It is something you should seriously consider in your digital strategy.

The growth of mobile applications is mainly the result of the smart phone penetration across society, which has grown tremendously. At today’s smart phone saturation, it is very likely that all your customers have a smart phone and are used to interact with mobile apps. This provides you with virtually endless opportunities to revitalise your customers’ experience and your engagement with them. And it can also introduce substantial productivity gains and cost savings into your business.

Let’s assume you are running a restaurant in the traditional way. People call a number you have published somewhere to reserve their preferred table or order their take-away or delivery of their food and drink choices.

With a mobile application, people can book their table, order their food and even pay you straight from their mobile phone, 24/7 from any place, whether you are open or not, busy on another call or otherwise unable to attend to their call for a service. This is not only a more contemporary experience for your customers to engage with you but boosts your productivity at the same time.

Remember, whilst the customer is calling you, both their and your time is consumed to convey their service request to you, and you still need to capture that somewhere into your booking or ordering system. If the customer does it all from his or her smart phone, your time is freed up to be used for other more value adding activities.

You can also engage with your customers through the app, increase your customers’ loyalty to your business and increase their return frequency. Your app could include loyalty stamps which customers can collect and redeem for a discount voucher or something similar.

You can announce your specials, or special events to your customers via push notifications on their smart phone. Your customers can then book their table with you and even pre-order their preferred meals or drinks. The app will directly contribute to your bottom line.

Let’s look at an example. If you have 500 customers who have downloaded the app, you can run your special campaigns directly to them on their phone, via a push notification. If only 5% or 20 people take up the offer, and your average customer spends $20 per visit at your establishment, then your app campaign generates around $500 of revenue for just 1 push notification.

This is just one example for a restaurant. But the same principle applies to any business and the opportunities are literally endless. Apps are extremely adaptable, and fully customizable to your business needs, regardless of the industry you are in.

If you choose the right partner, mobile applications can completely revive they way you do business and how your customers engage with you.

At N3 Services we have collectively nearly half a century of experience in process re-engineering and best practices coupled with our cutting-edge technology solutions and ongoing support to assist you. Enabling your business to grow, is our mission.