The best way to expand your business in the digital age is to have a strong online presence by maintaining a website, promoting your business via social media and using search engine optimization. Until recently, businesses in the Middle East didn’t have the opportunity to use the Internet to promote their companies, but now they do. If you run a business in the Middle East, here are some tips for building an Internet presence.
Build a Great Website
Internet usage has grown tremendously over the past six years, with some countries in the Middle East seeing up to 12,000% growth. With this type of growth, if your business isn’t online, then it will become invisible to people looking to buy the types of products or services your business offers. The first step in building an online presence is for your company to have a great website and also you can do good quality SEO for your website.
A website has all of the information about your business that your customers, and potential customers, will want to know. Even if you have a small local business, it may become the primary place where you will promote your products or services. There are several elements of a successful website, including design, content, and accessibility.
Website Design
A business website should look professional, with a simple layout, easy-to-find features and content that will help draw visitors to the site. When visitors land on your site, they should be able to easily navigate it to find the information they want. There is some information that will be standard for most website design, such as:
- About Us – This webpage will give readers information about your business, its history and/or your company’s mission statement.
- FAQ – This stands for “Frequently Asked Questions,” which are the most common questions that customers will ask about your products, services or business procedures, and the answers.
- Contact – The contact page will contain your company’s address, telephone and fax numbers, email address and your hours of operation.
These are the standard pages that you will find on almost every website. Some of the other webpages on many sites include blogs, product pages, or pages that list the services the companies offer.
Website Content
The content on a website is extremely important. It is what will help draw web visitors to your site, keep them on the site to give you a chance to convert them to paying customers, and, hopefully, entice them to frequently return to your website. Depending on your business, your content may be primarily textual or visual, but it is important to use a variety of content on the site to make it more interesting. Some of the content you may use on your site includes:
- Articles
- Images
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Blogs
A blog is one of the best forms of content you can have on your website. It allows you to promote your products or services, introduce new products, answer customer questions in depth or keep your customers informed about changes in your company.
Website Accessibility
This is very important, because with Internet usage in the Middle East rapidly growing, you should make sure everyone can access the information on your website. While some people may have high-speed Internet, others will use Wi-Fi or dial-up services to go online. In addition, not everyone will use the same type of web browser, so you have to consider everyone who may access your website and design the site accordingly.
Consider Mobile Internet Users
With the ever-increasing number of smartphones and tablet computers on the market, more of your customers will access your website via those devices. You will want your website to be responsive so they can easily read the information on your site and be able to navigate it. A responsive website will automatically adjust to the device accessing your website, so whether someone is using a desktop computer, a smartphone or an iPad, they will be able to access and search your site.
Along with creating a responsive website, you should consider offering a mobile app to make your company’s products easier to order. Whether you have a takeout restaurant or a shoe store, if your customers can easily access these products online, they will be more apt to order from your company instead of the competition. A mobile app that can be pulled up on a smartphone or tablet will help increase your sales and make your business more profitable.
Create Social Media Accounts
It is important for businesses to take advantage of social media to promote their products or services, share information and interact with customers. Millions of users are on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest on a daily basis. As Internet usage continues to rise, there will be more of your customers creating accounts on these social media sites, giving you the chance to compete against larger companies for their business. Also, make a check on popular Instagram accounts as it is fastest growing Social media site and you can get benefited to a great extent by opting their strategies.
The key to using social media to promote your business is to be professional when interacting with your customers. Don’t be insulting or patronizing, but be polite when responding to inquiries or comments. You can have some fun, but always remember your tweets or posts will be out there for millions of people to see, so you want to represent your company by always being professional.
Hire Professionals to Help
Unless you have technical expertise and an abundance of time on your hands, you should hire a digital marketing company to help you build your company’s Internet presence. It can take several months for all the elements of a strong web presence to come together and, for most small business owners, it is time you may not be able to devote to your site.
A good digital marketing company will have both the technical and marketing expertise needed to build a strong online presence for your company. If you want to be competitive within your industry, you have to be where your customers are, which, in the 21st century, is online.
