When to hire experts for your online business
Most online business owners are used to taking risks and making decisions – on their own. This is why the hardest part about being an online entrepreneur is realizing that you don’t have all the answers. The second most difficult part is understanding when to ask for help, when you finally admit that you need it!
If you’re not sure if your site calls for outside help, trust us: faltering business leaves plenty of clues to this answer. If any of the following issues are familiar to you, you may need some outside help:
>> Decreased sales: A steady decline in online orders is a sure sign that something is wrong. It doesn’t matter how many products or services you offer – if overall sales go down month by month, you lose valuable dollars.
A sharp and immediate drop in online orders is treated differently than sales that drop steadily over a long period. If you suddenly lose a disproportionate number of sales, first check for these issues before you start to panic:
1. Your site has lost its search engine rankings.
2. Your site or server is temporarily down.
3. You had a security breach.
>> Stagnant Sales: If your online orders aren’t growing as your business matures, you have a problem. You may see a sudden spike in sales on a new product or from new customers. Stagnant sales mean that you are losing loyal customers, which means that you are either not attracting new visitors to the site or you are not adding enough products to account for the attrition. No matter the reason, it’s money out of your pocket!
>> Recent changes in management or partnership: Resolving a relationship with a business partner or experiencing a high level of management or employee turnover is often a sign of more serious issues lurking in the background. Making poor decisions, experiencing limited or no growth, and tolerance of a hostile work environment are things that can intimidate business partners and employees. Your business needs a new perspective.
>> Difficulty Attracting New Visitors: Don’t Blame Search Engines! Websites with strong search engine rankings can have trouble increasing their visitors. The same percentage of visitors constantly hover over your site. why? Lots of potential reasons can explain why your site won’t attract more eyeballs – or the right eyeballs. The bottom line is that if your site hasn’t gained a huge number of viewers, it’s time to find out why.
>> Low Traffic: Worse than not being able to attract new visitors is watching your numbers drop — sharply or not. If the decline has been steady and hasn’t occurred over the weekend or as part of a seasonal slump, it’s time to stop the bleeding.
>> Low Search Engine Rankings: You used to be in the top ten return searches in Google for the main product category, but now you’re not even in the first ten pages of returned search results.
This drop doesn’t mean that you’re running your business poorly or that the quality of your product has gone down, but it does indicate that you haven’t kept up with the changing rules of search engine optimization or made the most of search engine marketing (SEM) to keep your site visible. In turn, it is very likely that your sales will be affected if you do not get help.
>> Customer Complaints Increase: If your customers take the time to file a complaint, consider yourself lucky. Not all customers are kind enough to tell you this – they simply go somewhere else to shop! The increasing number of complaints is one of the best indicators that something is wrong with your site, product, service or customer service.
>> Increase in negative chatter: Another aspect of customer complaints is negative chatter, or word of mouth. Unlike customers who take the time to let you know they’re unhappy, a similarly vocal group of customers would rather let everyone else in the world know you didn’t meet their needs! These customers write negative reviews online, and talk about their bad experience on social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube.
>> Added competition: Your site will likely have a lot of competition online – and offline. Even if you don’t think you’re taking a direct hit from competitors, it’s possible that they’re targeting your customer base with competing products and services.
>> Profit Vacuum: Depending on how well you maintain your accounting procedures, you may not immediately realize that profitability is an issue. As you watch the sales come in and pay your expenses, everything seems to be fine.
Of course, as a more established online business, you analyze the numbers closely to let the real story unfold. When the amount of money you settle begins to decrease (or not increase), you need to find out the cause and correct it.
These red flags are the most common signs that your business needs tuning. Of course, sometimes science is just the tip of the iceberg. You may encounter several problems at once, some more serious than others.