Your business presence during lockdown

25th March 2020

There is no doubt that COVID-19’s presence is having a significant impact on the world, in all walks of life. As a business owner, now is the time to invest in your online presence. This will help ensure that when the world inevitably recovers from the current situation, your business will be there shining like a beacon when normality resumes. We have listed eight ways that might help you to continue to run your business, or prepare for your return when this problematic period ends.

Video Conferencing

As we are now officially on lockdown, before you jump into cancelling all meetings and events take a second to explore other ways these could still take place. It is always a viable option that a meeting could be held as a video conference, using free communication tools such as Zoom. Holding meetings in this way allows you to maintain some resemblance of a normal routine, while at the same time helping alleviate any feelings of isolation within your team.

Show your website some love!

Websites have the potential to become outdated more quickly than we can predict, so what better time than now to update your content? Keeping your content fresh and current works wonders in maintaining your business’s visibility, while effectively representing your brand at the same time.  If you have had to temporarily close your business, it’s worth remembering that Google never sleeps. When Google sees that your content is being regularly updated with high quality content, this will increase your Google ranking, making a small amount of work worth the time.

Work together

Partnering with other similar businesses during this challenging time can be hugely beneficial. There will be time to compete with each other later but for now, pooling your resources means you will all have a better chance of weathering this storm and emerging relatively unscathed.  Within business communities during this difficult time, more and more businesses are sharing the details of other businesses in the area.  Almost as a show of solidarity.  Write a blog about these businesses and link their websites in the piece.  Not only this, but your customers will appreciate information being made available to them in one place, as they can find services they require with ease. Acknowledgement backlinks (which is what these would be) which lead people to high-quality websites are essential for SEO too.

Link up!

Now is a perfect time to ensure all customers and clients can access your links to various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Double check that they are all up to date. Something to bear in mind is to make sure these links open in a separate browser page, so the visitor can return to your site with ease. Broken links are a massive frustration to users, so don’t waste this opportunity to double-check them.

Maintain your social media presence

While in isolation or working remotely, it is the perfect time to stay on top of your social media posting. Live streams, uplifting posts, and engaging content are good practice under normal circumstances. However, in the current climate, these types of posts will play a large part in keeping morale up too.  Best of all, it is clear you are open for business! Everybody wins!

Accessibility

This one does not just apply to times of isolation. Having a webpage that adapts to any device is a great habit to get into at all times. Not only will it prevent frustration in your clients viewing on their mobile, but as mentioned above, helps hugely with your Google rankings. Google now uses mobile-first indexing which in layman’s terms, means that your place in Google is determined by how your website appears and performs on a mobile device.

Security is key

A secure website is an emblem of trust. With people taking online security more seriously than ever before, an SSL certificate is hugely reassuring. An SSL is a digital certificate that provides authentication for a website and enables an encrypted connection between the user and the host. Not to sound like a stuck record, but again, this is key to your ranking on Google. A website deemed ‘unsecure’ will display a warning message to the user, which increases the likelihood of them leaving your page immediately.

Light the beacons!

Calls to action cannot be emphasised enough. You can do everything right, and still lose business if you do not have a clear call to action that directs your client or customer to where they should go to acquire your service. Popular advice is to have three calls to action on your site’s homepage. An example would be how to contact you, with options to call, email and a ‘contact us’ form.

These are just some of the ways you can stay ahead during these inarguably uncertain times. Would you like some more advice? Perhaps you have a suggestion of your own? Either way, we would love to hear from you! Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us!

Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels