e-commerceCompetition is everywhere–top to bottom, left and right, even a few meters from your shop you might probably see another shop selling the same products and services you have.

While you may be an expert in keeping your business alive within your geophysical location, you might need help in tapping the great potential of the internet to increase your sales. Sure, the internet is like the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for humans but do you really have to go online to sell?

Here are five signs to check if you should:

    1. Your customers are the same people ages ago. Don’t miss out on the biggest 24/7, eternal source of exposure your business can have. The internet cuts across all races, gender and classes and being online will give you a higher chance of reaching out to new customers.
    2. Google doesn’t know you. This is important as 97% of consumers search online for products and services. Besides, 91% of consumers visited a store after having a positive experience with the store’s website. Kindly hyperlink to the infograph) If you do not come out of their search results, then you are missing a lot of bucks.
    3. You don’t know the significance of “www.”
      This only means you don’t have a website. With every www. that you see lies a portfolio of a courageous business offering itself to the entire universe’s scrutiny and consumption. But don’t take this as a setback. Instead, see this as an opportunity to introduce yourself to billions of people any time, any where without physically doing so over and over again.
    4. You do have a website but it doesn’t look nice on mobile. Unfortunately, you belong to a whopping 93% of businesses that don’t have the right technical support to automatically convert your website into smartphone-friendly. Better start talking to your web developer now as 4 out of 5 consumers shop online using their phones. That’s a huge chunk of potential buyers!
    5. You only use Facebook to check on your friends. Worse, you only use Facebook and nothing else. There are a variety of social media out there that you can use to promote your business such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Viber, Etsy, etc. Each platform caters to different preferences of people. If you use at least two of these not just to connect socially but promote professionally, you are expanding your reach to more clients.

To back these signs up, you might want to check the rest of the statistics below:

5 Signs That Your Business Lacks Online Presence

So if you have any of the signs mentioned above, here’s what I propose that you do: have a functional and good-looking website and well managed social media.

First, create a mobile-friendly website packed with relevant yet fun-to-read content, and an effective SEO (search engine optimization) to help you land the first pages of search engines. Second, your social media accounts should be managed properly such that timely updates are in place and that each platform offers a different yet related content to your business promotion. (A content for Facebook should be different yet related what you post in Instagram).

Obviously your first priority is the products and services you offer. Creating all these online stuff may be alien to you hence the need to tap experts and web developers. Just be ready with your concepts and researches on what works for your business and what should be avoided in making websites and managing social media accounts and then let the geeky guys transform these into a strong online presence for your advantage. Best of luck!