If you’re working from home and looking to move more of your business online as you adapt to reduced face-to-face customer dealing, one of the best things you can do is refresh your website.

This probably isn’t the time for a complete website makeover, but there are small improvements you can make which will help increase your ranking on Google and boost customer interaction and sales.
Here are my top 5 tips to pump up your online business

1. Improve your customer journey
   Have a look at the website of a successful rival company. How many clicks does it take you to access the product or information you need? How visually accessible is the site and how readable is the content? Now have a look at your own site – or ask a friend to. How many clicks does it take for you to reach the same information?
   UX – or User Experience – is an understanding of your customers’ journey on your site as they try to access the information they need, and having this knowledge is vital to creating a site that best suits your customers’ needs.
   Simplify their journey and streamline your pages so visitors aren’t bombarded with details and can quickly and easily access your products or information.
   
2. Check your SEO
   People think SEO is some sort of secret magic formula that miraculously bumps them up the rankings and boosts their site visits, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. For sure there are tools I deploy to assess the right key words and phrases that will support an SEO strategy, but at the most basic level, having content that talks plainly about what you do will create a similar effect.
   Think about the words or phrases that people would put into a search engine to find you. Something like ‘phone repair Caterham’ or ‘office supplies Grimsby’. These are the phrases you need to use early in your content to boost your SEO. But, there is a bit of a knack to getting it right. If you use the phrases too often, Google can penalise you. Equally if the content reads like a clunky list of key words and doesn’t scan like genuine copy, the ‘crawlers’ which assess websites will spot it a mile off. It needs to read naturally and clearly.
   Don’t forget to check (or get your web expert to check) that your site meta description, keywords, header and footer details are all refreshed and accurately reflect what you do.
   
3. Add a chat feature
   It’s great if people are visiting your website, but if they leave without making a purchase or engaging your services that’s an opportunity lost. If you’re moving your business more online and spending more time at your desk, you should be better able to facilitate a chat function on your site.
   These features usually include a pop-up box where a ‘bot’ greets any visitors to your site. Most people will just ignore them but if the greeting is worded correctly, they can help visitors more quickly access the information they need and prime them to buy. Once the bot has alerted you to a visitor you can pop into the chat if required and help guide your guest to your products and services, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
4. Create a content plan
   You need to keep people visiting your website, and particularly encourage new visitors. Content marketing is your friend when it comes to building an online audience and keeping them engaged as well as sharing your details and products with others. The key is to develop a multi-channel strategy to spread the net wide and then learn over the coming weeks which content works best in each channel and then to hone that content accordingly.
   You ideally need a mix of content types, themes, tones, messaging and media to keep your audience interested and to maintain your brand awareness. Build your plan around a calendar to make sure you’re hitting days and hashtags that have resonance with your audience and might help expose you to more people.
5. Create some freebies
   If there’s one thing customers love, it’s a freebie and that’s a great way to draw in new visitors to your site.
   As a successful business owner you’re an expert in a lot of things. Whether that’s your particular product or service, sustainable sourcing, drawing up contracts, managing staff or building a business from the ground up, you have a lot of skills, knowledge and experience that others can benefit from.
   Pull together an eBook or How To guide, a tutorial or a webinar that will share some of that insight with others. Creating this shareable content will win you good will and new potential customers. Additionally you can capture people’s emails when they sign up to access or download your content, creating a handy mailing list to target for future marketing mailshots or newsletters.
   
   

As you move to more online selling, your website represents your shop window. Visitors can assess a site in less than ten seconds and will quickly click away to a rival if they don’t like what they see or you’re not instantly capturing their attention.

A website that looks dated or too cluttered or takes too long to scroll through or too many clicks to get where they want to go will lose you customers.

And, here’s the thing that many business owners don’t really get about their website. It’s not about you! Your website is for your customers. The information they want to find is probably not the same as the information you want to tell them. You need to think from your customer’s point of view. Do they care that you’ve been trading since 1986 or that you won the Durham Small Business of the Year in 1992? Probably not. Be clear on your messaging, know your brand voice and talk to your customers in a way that really connects with them, their interests and their concerns. These first five steps will go a long way to helping you achieve that.
Siobhan O’Neill

N.B. A good content designer can help with this. By taking the analytics from your site to build a picture of your client base, coupled with an understanding of the UX, adding a knack with SEO, a knowledge of brand marketing and a great turn of phrase they (I !) can help you build content for your website and social media channels that will grow your audience, their engagement and your sales.

I'm an only child who has no problem with my own company and as a freelance copywriter and journalist I’ve spent years working alone at my desk with just the Daily Politics and News at 1 for company and it doesn’t bother me at all, but a lot of people struggle to work from home.
Office working brings companionship, morale-boosting chatter, quick and easy organisational updates, dynamic team-working and a strong sense of being part of a brand identity or company ethos.
Working at home alone can feel isolating. People lose touch with their team mates, can struggle to focus on tasks and become easily distracted: not putting their usual hours in; or equally not having the clear 9 to 5.30 hours in the office, can find it hard to switch off.
Team efficiency can soon start to slip and people lose their touchpoint with that vital sense of belonging to or being part of a larger entity; the brand voice and communal drive to contribute to the wider organisation can quickly disappear.
With social anxiety high and many staff already battling stress or other mental health issues, communication is more important than ever. But pitching it at the right level is critical. Too many messages become irritating, not enough can leave people feeling disconnected.
For years I’ve been part of teams while also working sometimes from home, so here are my top tips for helping staff feel they’re still part of their team and your organisation, even if they’re working in isolation.

1. Be transparent. This is a new situation for everyone and not something that any company will have planned for. It’s good to be reassuring but don’t lie or fudge to colleagues. Deal in facts. Give them practical steps they can take to protect their physical and mental wellbeing, tell them what the company is doing, tell them their rights and what they can expect from the organisation. Give them the means to communicate back any concerns they have and ask for their ideas and suggestions.
2. Stay connected. There’s nothing worse than reaching out to a colleague and getting dead air back. It can fuel anxiety. Use emails, chat groups, Microsoft Teams or other shared comms apps to keep everyone talking and maintain that sense of office chatter that can boost camaraderie. Don’t get too irritated if people use it more than usual and chatter deviates away from work issues, but try to keep people on topic and don’t let them share misinformation.
3. Regular but not constant. People like to stay in touch and this is a fast-moving situation which requires dynamic responses and quick changes, so it makes sense to send regular updates to colleagues. On the other hand multiple daily emails from the comms or senior leadership teams become irritating, meaning staff stop reading and may miss vital information. Probably one email a day keeping staff up to date is enough, or every other day if little is changing. Establish a roll-out protocol for urgent updates through team leaders.
4. Add a little levity. Not every message coming from the top needs to be Coronavirus related or about working issues or the organisation. You probably already have a regular colleague newsletter and more than ever this can be used to help people feel connected, part of the wider organisation and familiar with the brand voice and ethos. Introduce a fun competition or the opportunity for colleagues to participate with their own updates. They could share their home routines, their pets, their gardens or hobbies. Share photos and short videos, their wins this week or their challenges. All this will help reduce the sense of isolation and give colleagues something lighter to think about.
5. Keep teams focused. Colleagues who aren’t used to working from home can struggle to stay on-task when there are so many distractions they don’t have in the office. It’s time for team leaders to step up and manage their teams effectively. Have a group conference call / meeting first thing Monday where people share their tasks for the week. Set achievable individual objectives with deadlines to help colleagues stay focused. Get them to check in regularly with their progress or setbacks. Schedule weekly (or more) online one-to-ones to ensure colleagues are moving towards their goals and offer tips and advice if they’re struggling to concentrate. Often short 30 minute stints at the desk followed by a quick 10 minute break can help people avoid longer distractions, or a reward system where they can treat themselves to a biscuit or some popcorn when they’ve completed a task.
6. Keep talking. This too shall pass. It’s hard to predict the outcomes of the next few weeks and some businesses will be hit hard but we will get through this. Be realistic but optimistic. Do what you can to alleviate colleagues’ concerns but be honest. The key is not to leave staff in a comms vacuum but to keep talking because they will fill in the gaps talking to each other and rumours can quickly get out of hand.

These are unprecedented times and for a social species isolation can be very hard to deal with, that’s why it’s more vital than ever to give people the time and space to talk whilst communicating clearly to them as things develop and move on. Your comms team or consultant will really earn their keep in the next few weeks. Take their advice on the things you need to be communicating, which may not necessarily be the same as the things you want to communicate. Stay strong and approachable because some colleagues – particularly those living alone – may really need your support.