"Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement." ~Peter Drucker

The most important investment you'll make is investing in a website. Don't try to do it yourself if you don't have the basic knowledge of Wordpress or DIY websites that give you templates, even these have to be designed specifically to represent your brand. It's important to invest in a good site and find a web developer that is affordable, but one that understands your industry, leave it to the experts. You have to know exactly how to set up the right tabs on the header for easy navigation and make it user friendly. People will not spend the time going through your website and dig through layers of information to get to the source.

DIY maintenance on your website is time consuming, but being a small business, your funds are limited as to where they will be allocated. After you pay for your cost off goods, salaries and taxes, you barely have enough to survive. Especially nowadays where competition is fierce. Every businesses is trying  to get a piece of the pie. Larger companies could afford the best in SEO experts, or content writers to keep up to date with the latest technology and have good content by hiring full time bloggers and social media gurus.

Over the years, I realized my sites, were just sitting there doing nothing, I wasn't capitalizing on my investments in monthly hosting fees.  I wasn't getting much foot traffic, not even my established clientele would browse and look for new products. I soon discovered that people in today's fast paced technology are not necessarily loyal to your brand. Everyone will surf the net to look for the best deals. So you need to get creative to keep people coming back.

After spending time to see what others were doing and studying what the competition was up to, I had to take matters in my own hand and become pro active in order to survive. I set out to ask SEO experts to take a look at my sites and point out what needed to be done, what changes had to be implemented to be on top of today's technology. The reports came in, it wasn't positive, my websites were training to page four on search engines, and sometimes trailing behind page ten. That was a reality check. I took their advice they listed and chiseled at it until I was satisfied. Many of the experts tell you that inputting keywords, or meta tags no longer suffice, the reason being is that mot search engines are looking for sites with original content, affiliations, links to other companies, blogging, company listing on sites such as yelp, yellow pages and etc.

I had my work cut out, everyday I set time aside to learn something new and then implement these changes. So this week I was focused on adding new plug ins. My business depends on selling courses, its  90% of my revenue. After researching various companies, I found one that responded to my needs.  Months of searching, led me to companies that offered scheduling to spas and salons, although I am in the beauty industry, my business is a combination of selling products to the beauty industry, not booking appointments for services. My frustrations grew until I found Bookeo which was the answer to my prayers, easy to set up and compatible with Wordpress. They also have an easy  step by step website integration and I love it how easy it is to use. Task, accomplished.

The next thing I did, was to go on my Wordpress dashboard, to look at some new plug ins, most are free, so it's a matter of finding one for your specific needs, these plug ins mostly are Gravity forms which you upload the plug in and then activate it. The one I added was a chat box. This facilitates the shopper's experience. This form can turn a lead into a sell, and you won't lose them, if they don't want to enter their information on the contact form.  There are pros and cons, but love the live interaction I have with clients.

The next task I am going to implement is a RSS feed, once you set that up, you won't need to do anything else to keep subscribers up to date with newsletters. Unless you have an email account such as Mail Chimp. But I am looking to reduce my costs, by doing everything from my website. Stay tuned...I will let you know how that turned out. Happy Friday!!