How to move a business online

More and more New Zealand businesses are making the move online, using new e-commerce platforms to complement or even entirely replace their bricks and mortar businesses. Making the move online is an important step for business owners looking to future-proof their businesses.

Digital marketing agencies in New Zealand are finding more businesses than ever before are looking to shift their businesses to be more online focussed, even businesses that wouldn’t typically look to the web as an avenue for driving sales. Businesses that have previously been heavily reliant on physical locations, word-of-mouth and bricks and mortar style service are now embracing the opportunities that the web opens up.

Many businesses are even looking at new ways to automate their sales and services processes, moving away from having sales people follow up leads generated online.

If you’re planning to move your business online, then there are a few things you should keep in mind. Firstly that you will need to properly map the current processes of your business, this means understanding the journey that customers currently follow, this will help you to understand how online services will change your business model and whether or not it will help to improve efficiency.

Once you’ve mapped your processes it will be easier to identify opportunities and then you can start to slowly make changes to your processes – it’s better to start slow as this can help to reduce teething problems when using new software or online systems. Another important thing to do is to take the time to properly invest in the training and development of the staff involved, new online systems need to be properly managed and run to be effective which means that employees need to know how to use new systems and software properly.