Modern-day business, if you haven’t noticed already, is totally dominated by technology. There’s never been a point in history where free trade has been so defined by such a wide range of methods, tools, tactics and strategies. Seen as you’ve made it here, I’m sure you’ve read enough about the general skills you need as an entrepreneur. Here, we’ll focus on the more technical skills you should make a point to work on…
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Conversion rate optimisation, often initialised as “CRO”, is the process of crafting a website that turns a higher proportion of its idle visitors into paying customers. Since the large majority of people do a lot of their browsing and shopping online, having this skill is one of the highest-ROI skills you can have in terms of marketing. Even if you have a strong understanding of website design, the full range of CRO strategies can be very complex and hard to wrap your head around. However, the base principles are fairly simple. When you have a solid understanding of your target market, you should try to work with your accessible data to establish some practical tactics. You can then run A/B testing to find out what works and what doesn’t.
User Experience Design
Often abbreviated as UX or UXD, user experience design is all about improving user satisfaction through your website, working on the usability, accessibility, and all-round pleasure which people get from interacting with your website. User experience is the thread which runs through SEO, CRO, content and various other facets of online marketing. If you can pin down what your customers value in your website, and the best ways of enhancing those features, you can easily drive your business on towards bigger and better things. Though it may not be the easiest thing to measure and develop, your UX is way too important to neglect. Study some of the sites from the giants in your industry, and soon enough you’ll pick up on what it means to have a great UX.
Search Engine Optimisation
Don’t buy into that rootless saying that’s still being thrown around: “SEO is dead”. Search engine optimisation is alive and well, and just as important now as it’s always been. When you’re looking to improve your traffic and conversions through SEO, the most important thing to understand is that it’s all a matter of balance. You don’t want to lean too far on one end of the spectrum and totally neglect SEO, thinking that modern algorithms are so sophisticated that they’ll pick up on how good your site is. Similarly, you don’t want to lean too far the other way, thinking that search engine optimisation is the be-all and end-all of effective marketing, and ruining your online presence with all kinds of poor, outdated tactics. A lot of inexperienced entrepreneurs apply various old-school SEO tactics, which will only penalise your website, and prevent users from being able to find it in the first place! Knowing the basics of SEO and being able to form a strategy around them is essential for any modern entrepreneur.
