Everyone has slow days sometimes. Whether it’s because you’re feeling unwell, or because it’s a certain time of year, or because you just need a break as you’ve been working hard. However, more than a few slow days in a row, and your online business could start to suffer badly. If the slow days keep coming, you might even have to shut down completely.
If you find you’re having a lot of slow days, you must find out exactly what’s behind them so you can do something about it. Anything that’s slowing down your business needs to be eliminated and new processes put in place to put things back on track. Here are some of the main reasons.
Trying To Do Everything Yourself
Strangely, one of the biggest reasons for your business slowing down might not even occur to you at first, especially as, if this is the issue, you’ll be feeling busier than ever. But just because you’re busy that doesn’t mean the business is, and this is a distinction that it’s important to make.
The reason we’re talking about is you trying to do everything yourself. If you try to do this, you’ll always be distracted and you’ll never be able to focus on the things you really should be focusing on if you want to grow the business. It’s far better to outsource what you can and use virtual services to give you some breathing space and a chance to work on the business rather than in it.
A Lack Of Advertising
Even the biggest businesses in the world still advertise, and you’ll certainly have seen ads for McDonald’s and Amazon, for example, so if you’re trying to grow your online venture, you have to advertise too. After all, if it’s good enough for them, it has to be good enough for you.
If you haven’t invested enough time, money, and effort into your advertising, the work and customers will eventually dry up, especially if you have only created one or two advertising campaigns and then done nothing at all. If those campaigns worked and brought you more business, you run the risk of losing the momentum by drawing back. If they didn’t work you might feel there’s no point in advertising, but that is not true; you simply need to find a new way to engage with people. The more you advertise – and keep advertising – the more your business will be noticed and the busier you will be.
Your Website Is Out Of Date
As an online business, your website is going to be of huge importance; you couldn’t run the business at all without it. Yet it could be what’s slowing you down as well. The online store might be what brings you customers, but what about the rest of your website? Is that up to date? When was the last time you added something new to the blog or changed the homepage to reflect a special event or feature a specific new product?
If you can’t remember, it’s been too long.
When people come to a website, they might not land on the store right away; they could land on other pages first, or they might want to check the business out before buying. If your blog is months or even years out of date you’ll be giving the wrong impression, and people might even think you’re gone out of business. Update your website and you’ll soon become much busier (and your SEO will improve too).