As your business grows it must also undergo some changes and improvements. Sometimes you’ll have to try things that might not work as well as you planned, just to see if your audience will react positively or negatively to the change. Luckily sometimes you won’t have to experiment, since people already tried something new and shared their results. Meaning, there are a few new tricks that work just fine, and are viable improvements for your business model.
In the following article we will discuss some of these business improvements. We will talk about some management tips, and suggest some office improvements. We will also go over website improvements and email marketing tips, since your online presence needs maintenance as well. So, if you are not using any of these techniques you should start implementing them ASAP!
New management tips
For the new generations of workers you’ll need some new management approaches. Nowadays, managers work with millennials and they have different expectations than previous generations. Since we live in the age of the internet, getting a new job is not too hard. Sure, it might be tricky to land a first gig, but as your portfolio grows, you can easily make money on freelancing platforms.
In other words, millennials have expectations from you as well, and they want you to give them a reason to stay employed. As a consequence of such a mindset, millennials often stay employed under the same employer for two years tops and then they move on.
It is a kind of arrangement that is not truly beneficial for anybody, so it’s time to make some changes. First of all you need to change your leadership approach and lead in a more altruistic manner. You need to allow your employees to build a reputation for themselves, and allow them to put their name on their work. This will turn them into a good brand ambassadors, and it will motivate them to stay, considering you allowed them to grow.
Moreover, millennials love business owners who use technology to make the workflow a lot smoother. So, you can allow your workers to work from their homes, since all of you can easily communicate online. Of course, this should not be common practice, but if someone is not feeling well, or lives too far away and the weather conditions are not ideal for commuting, then you can define what expectations you have of your employees and not frown upon people working from home.
Start using management tools
Like it was previously mentioned, using tools that help you optimize task distribution and collaboration can earn you additional respect from your employees, plus it will make their work a lot easier.
So, you can surprise your workers with a new management tool that will help them communicate and collaborate, even if they are miles away from one another. These tools are useful for gathering important data, fetching projects from online archives, storing sensitive information, and task or ticket assignments.
One thing you should know related to business management tools is that a great number of them is specifically tailored for a certain line of work or business model. In other words, you have tools that help waiters with orders, or that help customer support identify tech problems, or help accountants with calculations etc. So, depending on your business model, or type of work you need to select a corresponding tool that will help with workflow optimization.
When you are selecting an online tool for collaboration, you need to go through some customer reviews and feedback to find which of the tools are actually revered by your peers. So search for the best management tools and see how these are evaluated and ranked. Once you find a couple of viable options, that have good feedback and an affordable price, see if they offer a free trial period, and try them out, before you become a paying customer.
Improve your website
Now that your workers are all satisfied with how you run things, you can focus on how to improve customer experience. First of all, your website is also your store, but it is its design that is your top seller. Sure you need to have a live chat option so that any visitor can easily reach you and ask about your products or policies, but if your website provides them with a satisfying experience, they are more likely to return and shop there, and to make a purchase in the first place.
Let’s just state first that even if you have the best design possible, it won’t do you any good if your site is slow, and if it is not optimized for smaller screen devices like smartphones and tablets. The design is useless if the users do not stick around to see it in the first place. Therefore, you need to makes sure your web hosting service is reliable, and you need to make necessary changes to the website, so that it can work on small screens as well.
In terms of web design improvement you can do the following, you can give the users an interactive and visually rich experience interface that mimics the real experience to the highest fidelity possible. So, if for example you are in charge of restaurant website your user should be able to have a tour of the restaurant online, click on the table they would like to book, look around the restaurant in a full 360 degree view, and perhaps organize decorations and ornaments that will await them when they arrive.
This can allow them to plan romantic dinners or celebrations, and they will enjoy customizing their evening online.
Improve your e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing is still a potent driving force behind sales. If your users are subscribed and if you can reach them via e-mail, you can easily notify them about latest happening, latest products, discounts, price drops etc. However, the problem is getting the emails in the first place.
The number one problem is that users are potentially subscribed to other websites, so this new subscription would be like bringing sand to the beach, and only another source of messy inbox that is overflowing with e-mails. Additionally, maybe your visitors just don’t want to bother with registration process, they are simply browsing and any further investment is out of the question.
Here’s a good suggestion how to actually get your users to subscribe. Instead of trying to forcefully notify them about a subscription by dropping down a banner that blocks their entire screen, you can take a more subtle and more incentivizing approach.
Tell the users they get either a discount coupon or some sort of gift simply by subscribing. This actually gives them a reason to become a follower, and the approach many websites are using now simply annoys people because it interrupts what they are doing on the website.
Another good advice related to e-mails is to customize your templates. Today, e-mails have a framed massage with a button that immediately leads readers to their website, and they always have their logo and theme of the site included in the e-mail.
So, rather than sending a wall of text with a link to your users, you send a mail that looks more like a greeting card, because it looks more professional and does not resemble today’s spam messages.
Add a game room
Finally, you need something that can boost productivity and workplace satisfaction in general, and at the same time something that will impress clients or business partners that visit you in person. A game room is a great feature for the office and it has multiple positive effects. First of all, it helps your workers relax and unwind during their break.
They can go and either play pool or darts, or have some fun playing table soccer, and even enjoy half an hour on a gaming console, it all depends what you have included in your game room. This serves as a good form of team building exercise, which can result in better teamwork and communication.
Do not think of it as a distraction, because no one will simply abandon their work post in order to play, it is simply something that boosts the satisfaction in the workplace, and helps your workers to be more productive.
Also, you want to have something to impress the visitors and a room where you can take pictures for social media updates. Your customers need to see that you are a cheerful organization that has an interesting work habits, it is a good way to acquire some additional sympathy and admiration.
As you can see, these are all doable improvements and if you are not using any or all of them, you should start as soon as possible. These will help you create better bonds with your employee as well as your current and potential customers. It’s how all of the successful businesses already operate, meaning it is a formula that works.