As the school summer holidays draw to a close, we can at last all take a long, deep breath and refocus on our business.
We all love our families, but August can be a challenge sometimes! Screaming children running havoc while you’re on a Zoom call with a client, water fights that get out of control, paint splattered all over that new wallpaper you’ve just put up – the list is endless!
We hope you’ve had a restful break but, if your holidays have gone anything like ours, we bet you’ll be glad for a breather once the kids are back at school.
Yet that new peace and tranquillity is the perfect time to pause for a moment and review your business goals for the next few months. Take stock of where you are and what you want to achieve. We hate to mention “the C word” but, with Autumn creeping ever closer, now could be the best opportunity to start planning what your focus will be in the run-up to the festive period.
Is your website at its best?
The last quarter of the year is generally the busiest time for retail sales, particularly in November and December. In fact, Statista reports that UK retail spending during this period is the highest in Europe.
If you sell your products online (and if you don’t, why not?) you’ll definitely want to take a good look at your website and make sure it’s working at its best. Do all of your products have images and descriptions? Is the purchase process nice and simple? Is all of the text clear and easy to read? It can be useful to ask a friend or family member to spend a few minutes on the website and see what they think of it. They can offer a fresh pair of eyes and their outsiders’ perspective may provide some useful learning.
Even if you’re not in the Ecommerce industry, your website is still the online face of your business. It’s important to make sure it’s not slow or clunky to use. Which package are you on? Is there enough capacity to cope with a potential surge in demand?
There’s a lot to consider, but it’s important not to get overwhelmed. There’s always the option of having a whole new website designed for you. Our Build Me a Website team can get one built in just six weeks, right in time for the peak sales period towards the end of the year.
Is your business compliant?
In this calm before the storm, it’s also a good idea to review your level of compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations. The landscape changes all the time, so things may have moved on since you last looked into it.
It can be quite a dry topic, definitely not one to delve into when you’ve got kids running around! We’ve tried to make it a bit easier with an online scanner that will check over your website and make sure you’ve got all the basics covered.
Do you have some goals?
It can be a useful exercise to set yourself some achievable goals. For example – increasing website sales by 5% by the end of the year, or perhaps gaining 50 new customers instead. Make sure they’re realistic though and ones that you can easily measure.
Tools such as Google Search Console can be very useful in measuring how busy your website is over time and where this traffic is coming from. You can start to build up a snapshot of exactly who your customers are and how they’re finding you. This sort of data can be used to plan future marketing campaigns and grow the business.
And relax…
So as you endure these last few days of the summer holidays, take the time to have a good rest and get yourself refreshed for the coming months. Use the time to check over where your business currently is and where you want to be a year from now. Celebrate your past successes and plan for your future victories.
But above all, give yourself a big pat on the back. You’ve made it through the school holidays in one piece! Now, the real work begins.
Whatever you decide, we wish you the very best of luck.
