![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341912-image05.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
You’ve worked long and hard to get things up and running. You learned the art of the trade, got your license and insurance, and have maintained a stable business. You have a system that works, but find yourself in a rut.
\nIn this post, we’re going to lay out 22 ways to grow your landscaping business. Having a plan is vital. You can’t go about this blindly expecting to strike gold. Your growth will be the result of purposeful steps. Let’s take a look.
\nIf we apply the 80/20 rule here, 80% of your work is coming from 20% of your clients. In this case it is vital to maintain a good relationship with clients. Be the face of your company. Touch base with your customers. Ask questions. How are you doing? How can you improve? You must keep your loyal customers in order to have a foundation to build a growing business on.
\nGet going early in spring. The nature of a landscaping business, depending on where you’re located, is that you have to make the most of those spring, summer, and fall months. Take this time to get ahead of your competitors. Start rolling out various ads. Find clients willing to put your sign in their yard. Walk door-to-door spreading the word with a card or brochure simply featuring your brand and services.
\n
There is no shame in asking your customers to pass the word along. Choosing a lawn care company is a big deal, and most people want to hire a company that has good rapport with their trusted friends. Tell your clients you appreciate their business and ask them to tell others. Have a contest. Whoever gets the most referrals in a given month wins an ipad. Make it fun!
\nAn easy way to create buzz around your business is to use yard signs. Let them do the heavy lifting of marketing! Neighbors will see your company’s work, appreciate the quality of the work, and have a phone number to contact you all from a sign. Ask each client to consider putting a sign in their yard to help you out.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341920-image04.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
If you are running a solid family business that has plateaued, it’s a good time to hone in on your logo and refocus your brand. Enlist the help of a graphic designer to create a logo and tag line for your business. This will go a long ways in creating interest. Let people know what you do. What you value. Are you offering the lowest price in the city or are you boasting organic high-quality care? Use this logo on social media and any other place you advertise your landscaping business.
\nHas your website remained unchanged since 2005 when it was initially created? Time to update it. Again, if you need to outsource this task, it will be it will be worth the investment. You will pay a small amount to get a site up and running and will be able to easily keep it up yourself. Be sure that it is mobile friendly, optimizing its usability and where it falls when google users search for a landscaping company in your area.
\nCreate a space on your website for a blog that is regularly updated. This is a place where you can establish yourself as an expert on landscaping. Answer frequently asked questions you receive from clients. Post common problems and solutions for readers. This is a way to extend your reach and give your website depth.
\nGo to where all the people are: social media. Twitter is an exceptional place to build a platform for business recognition. If you don’t already have a presence on Twitter, establish one. Post before and afters, discount offers, referral contests, and tips and hacks. Be sure to create a company hashtag and consistently use it when you post. Once you’re established on Twitter, you can consider purchasing ads. This will get you additional followers and direct followers to your new-and-improved website.
\nTurns out getting the word out on Facebook isn’t as easy and straight-forward as it once was. Less and less “fans” are seeing page updates from the businesses they like and follow. Use Facebook ads to reach your existing FB fans more frequently and to reach users who are not currently following you. This will produce more leads. It is not a sure-fire way for the little fish to get a good return on investment. Be sure to watch the numbers and see what your sales do as you delegate part of your budget to Facebook ads.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341902-image06.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
Google has created advertising that is pay-per-click, in which the company advertising is charged on a per-click basis. This can be a better investment for smaller companies than Facebook ads. Say someone in your area searches “Landscaping Macon GA”. If you pay for those adwords, your site will be listed at the top of the page as an ad. Rather than figure this out by trial and error, check out one of these sites for beginners to Adwords.
\nBoth Yelp and Angie’s list are websites where users rate services and companies. Having good ratings on these sites can boost business, however, having low ratings obviously does the opposite. Angie’s list charges a small fee for you to view ratings and is found to be a bit more reliable than Yelp, where users can leave anonymous reviews. Be sure to communicate when reviews are left, positive or negative.
\n\n
![\"Landscaping](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595339728-13.jpg?w=700&h=400&fit=crop\")
Retargeting is targeted advertising for an individual based on previous clicks. If you research slippers on L.L. Bean, you will be sure to see an ad for them when you click over to Facebook. This enables companies to get another chance with clients who previously visited their website. To reach out to people who have already shown interest in your company. Make prospective customers paying customers. For more information, check out this Beginner’s Guide to Retargeting Ads.
\nUse this venue to gain momentum and reach the community. Once spring rolls around, everyone starts thinking about their outdoor property. Find out what people in your area would be interested in learning and formulate an ongoing circuit of classes.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341946-image02.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
Perhaps you’ve settled comfortably into your routine. You’re getting by, making ends meet. One way to clean up your act is to evaluate whether or not you are easily reachable. Do you or someone else answer calls throughout the day? Do you follow up on potential or new clients? Are you good at keeping lines of communication open? This dependability will go a long way to set you apart from other businesses.
\nAs your business grows, you will need to hire employees. Whether you are hiring someone part-time to do paperwork or looking to expand your man-power on the job, putting together a good team is essential. Make sure to do a background check on each worker. Hire people who encapsulate the traits you know will cause your business to thrive and don’t settle.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341930-image03.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
Growth, ads, new clients, and new employees are nothing if you cannot measure your success. Growth is good, but only if your new employee is putting more money in your pocket and overhead isn’t killing you. Find a software that works well for your business and track your expenses and income. You will see what is significantly increasing your income and what is detrimental.
\nThe only way to be able to stay on top of the numbers and have a smooth running business is to have an organizational system that works. Have a place for everything. You know how you operate best. Apply some sort of organization to your madness. Collect payment on the day the work is done. You’d be surprise how much time is wasted when a business is not a well-oiled machine.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341892-image07.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
The key to sustaining a solid business is solid workers. You need your employees to know there is room for them to grow. They’re not stuck. There are ways for them to move up in the business. Create this atmosphere, speak this way, and create the managerial positions.
\nChange things up. If you are strictly servicing residential properties, consider branching out into commercial property. Commercial properties tend to have ongoing, larger needs than residential properties and therefore provide more business.
\nThink outside the box. If you are only mowing lawns, research ways you can expand your services. Explore irrigation, tree work, and chemical treatment. This will set you apart from other businesses and make you more appealing to clients.
\n![\"Moonclerk](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595341958-image01.jpg?w=600&h=300&fit=crop\")
There are many benefits to moving from a 5-day work week to a 4-day work week. This will reduce overtime and cut down on gas costs. Your vehicles will get less wear and tear, and you will find your workers will become more efficient. They may be skeptical at first, but you can assure them that it is possible to get in 40 hours, overtime, and have an extra day off too.
\nLook into adding a business that would compliment landscaping. One that would fill the winter months. A couple options are snow removal and outdoor Christmas tree decorating. You’ve got a lot of the equipment and the man-power. Why not put them to good use?
\nA list like this can be daunting. Rather than be overwhelmed, after you read through it chose one or two tips that will help take your business to the next level.
\nHow about you? What strategies do you recommend for growing a landscaping business?
\n
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Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market. We have a lot of customers who use Squarespace for their websites and it’s a great tool. We even have a tutorial on our blog showing how to use MoonClerk with Squarespace.
\nBecause Squarespace has now added some recurring payment features, many businesses and organizations might investigate using Squarespace for that purpose. We built MoonClerk from the ground-up with recurring payments in mind. Because MoonClerk’s sole focus has always been recurring payments, as opposed to recurring payments just being an add-on for us, there are often advantages to using our system – both from a functionality standpoint as well as a usability standpoint.
\nWe’ll try to cover some of the differences in the two systems here.
\nPayer Portal
\nWith MoonClerk’s Payer Portal, you can choose to give your payers the option to view and make self-service updates to most every aspect of their recurring plans.
\nRead more about MoonClerk’s Payer Portal and what your payers can control.
\nWith Squarespace, your customers have limited options to update their own information, none of which can be enabled/disabled by you.
\nStartup Costs
\nMoonClerk’s monthly fee starts at $18. Similar to Squarespace, we don’t charge an additional per-transaction fee.
\nVisit MoonClerk’s pricing page.
\nWith Squarespace, if you want to accept recurring payments, you’ll need to subscribe to their Commerce Advanced plan. Their Commerce Advanced plan costs $40 – $46 per month, plus tax.
\nDesign
\nMoonClerk allows you to create unlimited design themes and style the checkout experience to match your site and brand.
\nRead about your options for styling the MoonClerk checkout process.
\nOn Squarespace, once you arrive at the checkout page, you’re limited to their default checkout design.
\nDonations
\nMoonClerk works well for donations and we have many nonprofit clients.
\nSquarespace doesn’t allow recurring payments for donations.
\nACH
MoonClerk allows you to accept recurring and one-time payments via ACH / bank accounts as well as credit/debit cards. The transactions fees for ACH payments are drastically lower than card payments, making them a great option for large volume transactions.
Learn more about using ACH with MoonClerk and its advantages.
\nSquarespace doesn’t offer ACH payments for either one-time or recurring payments.
\nDecided at Checkout
\nMoonClerk allows you to let your payers choose at checkout: the amount, frequency, start/recurring day, and duration of their recurring plan. You can set these options yourself but you can also let your payers set them.
\nSquarespace doesn’t allow your payers to determine these parameters and it doesn’t offer some of these parameters, regardless of who might determine them – you or the payer.
\nUpfront Amounts
\nMoonClerk allows you to accept one-time upfront payment amounts that are different than the recurring amount. These upfront payments can be charged right when a customer checks out or in the future if the recurring plan is scheduled to start in the future.
\nSquarespace doesn’t offer upfront amounts.
\nAmount Options
\nMoonClerk allows you to set an open amount for a checkout where your payer can choose what they want to pay. We also allow you to list “suggested” amounts at checkout.
\nWith Squarespace, you always have to set the specific amount or amounts that your payers will pay at checkout.
\nOptional Fees
\nMoonClerk allows you to charge a fee (as a percentage or whole dollar amount) but also allows you to make the fee optional for your payers to choose at checkout.
\nWith Squarespace you can set shipping fees and taxes based on certain parameters; however, Squarespace does not allow for any optional fees.
\nRecurring and Start Days
\nMoonClerk offers the following options for the start day and recurring day:
\n– The day the payer checks out (default)
\n– Set a fixed day of the week or month (ex. every Wednesday or the 1st of every month)
\n– A specific date in the future (ex. the 25th of January of next year)
\n– After a trial period of X number of days
\n– Whenever the payer decides as they check out
\nSquarespace only offers the option for recurring payments to start and recur on the day the payer checks out.
\nAddress Verification and Limitation
\nIf you choose to ask for an address at checkout, MoonClerk allows you to also choose to verify that the address is a valid USPS physical address. If you’re shipping internationally, you can also choose which countries you want to appear as options at checkout.
\nSquarespace doesn’t offer verification of US-based addresses or a way to limit the list of the countries at checkout.
\nCoupons
\nWith MoonClerk, you can use coupons for one-time and recurring payments. When you create a coupon code with MoonClerk, you have the ability to choose a wide variety of parameters for the coupon.
\nLearn more about the options available for coupons with MoonClerk
\nSquarespace doesn’t allow the use of coupons for recurring checkouts.
\nProgrammatically Passing Data to Checkouts
\nWith MoonClerk, you can programmatically “seed” checkouts with a name, email, or a specific amount by passing through a query parameter to the payment form URL. You can also track a known user from your site through the MoonClerk checkout by passing a custom ID to the checkout.
\nSquarespace doesn’t offer the ability to programmatically pass data to checkouts or track known users through the checkout.
\nCheckout Limitations
\nWith MoonClerk, you can limit payment forms so that your payers can’t check out on them after a specific date or after a specific number of successful checkouts.
\nYou can’t place limitations on checkouts in Squarespace.
\nPayer Account Creation
\nMoonClerk doesn’t require payers to create accounts but still gives every payer a secure method for updating their recurring plans.
\nWith Squarespace, payers must create an account in order to complete a recurring payment checkout.
\nSkipping and Pausing Payments
\nWith MoonClerk, you can skip recurring payments for your payers by moving their next recurring day to a day in the future. You can pause recurring payments because whenever you cancel a recurring plan in MoonClerk, you can restart it with the click of a button at any time.
\nSquarespace doesn’t allow for skipping payments or pausing recurring plans.
\nEditing Plans after Checkout
\nWith MoonClerk, we allow you to edit almost every aspect of your payers’ specific recurring plans even after they checkout. You can take actions such as changing the amount they pay, the frequency, the duration, and the recurring day (which also allows you to skip payments). You can also apply account credits and debits, update the name, email, and update the custom field information your payers entered. You can go in at any time and charge the card you have on file for them. You can also take actions like manually retrying unpaid invoices (in addition to our automatic retries), and forgiving old ones.
\nWith Squarespace, after a payer has checked out, you aren’t able to change any of these parameters or take any of these actions. Instead, with Squarespace, you will need to cancel the payer’s recurring plan and then have them check out again for a new recurring plan.
\nPlan Cancelation
\nWith MoonClerk you can choose whether you want your payers to be able to cancel their recurring plans on their own or not.
\nWith Squarespace, your payers are always able to cancel their own recurring plans.
\nHowever, whether you or your customers have canceled their plans, with Squarespace, you are not able to restart those canceled plans. With MoonClerk,k you can restart any canceled recurring plan.
\nNotification differences
\nMoonClerk and Squarespace both send email notifications to you and the payer but the types of emails vary. However, MoonClerk offers a wide variety of recurring payment-specific email notifications. For example, with MoonClerk you can choose to send yourself or your customers a notification about upcoming payments. Squresapce does not offer this notifications. Additionally, whenever one of your customers updates their name, address, email, etc. MoonClerk sends you a notification. No such notifications exist in Squarespace.
\nYou can choose whether or not to send notification emails, and you can customize their content with dynamic data.
\nLearn about the emails that you can send to your payers with MoonClerk.
\nLearn about the emails that you can send to yourself with MoonClerk.
\nMoonClerk also offer a number of other non-customizable emails such as password resets, payers portal log-ins, etc.
\nViewing Subscribers
\nSquarespace does not offer a way for you to view your subscribers in a dashboard. You will need to keep track of those yourself. You would need to create an export then manually perfom your own filters in a spreadsheet. MoonClerk's dashboard allows you to view all of your subscribers and filter them based on a wide variety of factors.
\nRenewal Schedule
\nWith Squarespace, all checkouts on the 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st of any given month will eventually bill on the 28th of every month. They eventually defeault to the last day of each month and never revert to their original date. With MoonClerk if someone checks out on the 28th, 29th, 30th or 31st of the month, they will always bill on that day (unless there are lesser days in the month, in which case they will bill on the last day of the month and then revert back to their normal date after that.)
\nStripe Subscriptions
\nSquarespace does not use Stripe's subscription system. They only store the card information for each of your subscribers in Stripe. Squarespace has their own recurring software infrastructure. MoonClerk is built on top of Stripe's recurring software infrastructure.
\nFinal Notes
\nIf you would like to make the move from MoonClerk or any other system to Squarespace for recurring payments, one key item to consider is that Squarespace doesn’t allow you to migrate your existing customers or recurring plans onto Squarespace. You’d need to cancel all of your recurring plans in the other system and then have those payers check out again on Squarespace.
\nHowever, if you are using Squarespace's recurring payment system and would like to migrate to MoonClerk, we would love to talk with you. We can help you manually import your Squarespace subscribers (using your existing Stripe account with Squarespace) to MoonClerk. Just send us an email at help@moonclerk.com
\nAt MoonClerk, we’re always trying to improve our recurring payment system. We love getting feedback and look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions about MoonClerk, let us know!
","featuredImage":{"alt":"moonclerk recurring payments vs. squarespace","title":"moonclerk recurring payments vs. squarespace","gatsbyImageData":{"images":{"sources":[],"fallback":{"src":"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595271096-squarespace-vs-moonclerk-recurring-payments-1.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.8&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1000","srcSet":"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595271096-squarespace-vs-moonclerk-recurring-payments-1.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.2&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1000 200w,\nhttps://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595271096-squarespace-vs-moonclerk-recurring-payments-1.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.4&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1000 400w,\nhttps://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595271096-squarespace-vs-moonclerk-recurring-payments-1.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.8&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1000 800w","sizes":"(min-width: 800px) 800px, 100vw"}},"layout":"constrained","placeholder":{"fallback":"data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAoHBwgHBgoICAgLEBUNDhgNCRMNDh0VFg0YFxYZGBYfIiEaLSsjGh0oHRUWJDUlKC0vMjIyGSI4PTcwPCsxMi8BCgsLDg0OFQ4NHDscFhwvLy8vLy87Oy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy87Ly8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vL//AABEIAAoAGAMBIgACEQEDEQH/xAAYAAACAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgIFB//EACAQAAEEAQQDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEAAgMEkREhMTIFEhP/xAAWAQEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADBAH/xAAaEQACAgMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARNRAgMS/9oADAMBAAIRAxEAPwDXzbgA3eFB1+rpvIEuyuPpyVXyOdr2OUbyKloVjZN5Gq2PuEJMtOd8+TlCLs2BWf/Z"},"width":800,"height":306}},"id":"DatoCmsPost-5639117-en","slug":"moonclerk-recurring-payments-vs-squarespace-recurring-payments","title":"MoonClerk Recurring Payments vs. Squarespace Recurring Payments","date":"2023-09-26","meta":{"firstPublishedAt":"2023-09-26T11:47:48.000-04:00"}},{"author":{"name":"Lee Campbell"},"category":{"title":"Business","slug":"business"},"content":"If you’re a developer you know modern websites need to be fast, flexible, SEO-optimized, and easy to maintain. With this expanding list of requirements, modern tools are rising to the challenge by creating modular and flexible toolsets that easily work together. Gatsby, Netlify, Stripe, and MoonClerk are just a few of these tools. Using them together allows you to quickly create and scale lightning fast websites that are deployed to a global CDN and accept one time and recurring payments.
Gatsby is an open source React framework that helps you build lightning fast websites that can pull data from anywhere, all wrapped in a modern tech stack leaving you without the headache of setting up your own.
Accepting payments online can be a challenging and time consuming process that often requires extensive development knowledge and a decent budget. Moonclerk let’s you create completely customizable forms that can be embedded or shared anywhere. You can also automate and integrate your business processes with built-in tools and 3rd party integrations.
Gatsby sites are static and thus don’t need complex servers that require maintenance and management. Netlify steps in to help you run web projects at a global scale without servers, dev-ops, or costly infrastructure.
We’ve built two Gatsby Starters that leverage these tools to help you explore or get up and running quickly with Gatsby and MoonClerk. These Starters use entirely open source tooling and assets to allow for easy configuration and customization. We’ve found that using Gatsby and MoonClerk together creates a powerful connect that allows developers to spend less time building custom tools and solutions and more time shipping projects.
![\"\"](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337934-gatsby-donations-starter-for-moonclerk-recurring-payments.jpg?w=1024&h=614&fit=crop\")
This Gatsby Donations Starter for MoonClerk is for easily creating donation-focused landing pages. It is perfect for nonprofits and organizations who are looking to quickly set up and accept online donations.
Preview a model of the Gatsby Donations Landing Page
![\"\"](\"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337940-gatsby-payment-starter-for-moonclerk-recurring-payments.jpg?w=1024&h=614&fit=crop\")
This Gatsby Payments Starter for MoonClerk is a perfect beginning point for creating service or SaaS-focused marketing landing pages that can accept payments. The codebase allows for easily configurable sections that can be quickly customized, rearranged, and themed to your needs.
Preview a model of the Gatsby Payments Landing Page
For full instructions on how to set up, configure, and deploy these starters visit the Github repos and follow the readme:
moonclerk/gatsby-starter-donations
moonclerk/gatsby-starter-payments
","featuredImage":{"alt":"Build Landing Pages That Accept Payments With Our Gatsby + MoonClerk Starters","title":"Build Landing Pages That Accept Payments With Our Gatsby + MoonClerk Starters","gatsbyImageData":{"images":{"sources":[],"fallback":{"src":"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337958-startersheader.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.67&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1200","srcSet":"https://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337958-startersheader.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.17&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1200 200w,\nhttps://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337958-startersheader.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.34&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1200 400w,\nhttps://www.datocms-assets.com/31749/1595337958-startersheader.jpg?auto=compress&dpr=0.67&fm=webp%2C%20png&q=90&w=1200 800w","sizes":"(min-width: 800px) 800px, 100vw"}},"layout":"constrained","placeholder":{"fallback":"data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAoHBwgHBgoICAgLDQ4NDg0WDhINGREVFhoWFxMZGBYVFhUaHysjGh0oHSEWJDUlKC0vMjIyGSI4PTcwPCsxMi8BCgsLDg0OFQ4NFS8oFhwvLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vLy8vL//AABEIAA8AGAMBIgACEQEDEQH/xAAYAAACAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQMEB//EABwQAAICAwEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAECADEDBBESBf/EABUBAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEA/8QAFBEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP/aAAwDAQACEQMRAD8A2R3CL0mUj9FFbkm2cZKXFGTXPq4k1XcVxCLsaFVuEU//2Q=="},"width":800,"height":480}},"id":"DatoCmsPost-5639080-en","slug":"build-landing-pages-that-accept-payments-with-our-gatsby-moonclerk-starters","title":"Build Landing Pages That Accept Payments With Our Gatsby + MoonClerk Starters","date":"2020-06-08","meta":{"firstPublishedAt":"2020-07-21T11:46:55.552-04:00"}},{"author":{"name":"Dodd Caldwell"},"category":{"title":"Business","slug":"business"},"content":"Today, the stakes are higher than ever, and to keep up, small business owners must not only continue growing, serving customers, and attracting talent, but adapt their business models to survive and thrive no matter how volatile things might get. That often means they need to move their business online.
Small business is changing, and recent market conditions have accelerated the pace of change in ways that fundamentally shift the small business model altogether. Today, initiatives like remote workforce enablement and establishing a digital presence are no longer honey-do items or temporary stopgaps, but necessities.
As a matter of survival, many small businesses have to move their offerings online to weather short-term downturns and future-proof themselves against any new challenges down the line. And they need to do so quickly and efficiently to avoid losing core business and going by the wayside.
The question is, where to start?
40% of small businesses do not have a website.
Visual Objects 2019 survey on small business
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The problem is that so many small businesses are brick-and-mortar – their services and products are based on the presence of people and physical spaces. What does a yoga studio, for example, do when it suddenly needs to move all of its services out of its physical location to a 100% online format? You might ask the same question of attorneys, therapists, tutors, personal trainers – the list goes on endlessly.
While the move to doing business online can be daunting, it’s not impossible, and it does not have to be a death knell for your small business. Efficient resource allocation is essential. To stay lean and mean as you move your small business online, we recommend focusing on these five essential areas:
When it comes to your online presence, many people complicate the matter by starting with the what and how before the why. Your digital presence is first and foremost about making it easy for customers to find you online.
So focus on setting up a simple, clean website that is informative, structured and optimized for search engines, and capable of handling payment transactions in a seamless manner. Even when time and resources are of the essence, you can achieve a minimally viable website through tools such as Squarespace or Wix.
Aside from your website, here are a few other aspects of your business’ digital footprint to focus on:
By their very nature, some products and services make the transition to an online model natural. Language courses, for example, or coaching sessions. Others, such as law practices, gyms, and physical storefronts might find the transition more difficult. So start here:
In other words: digital marketing. Essentially, this will break down into the natural ways people find you using search engines, or through social media, as well as the ways you pay to have people come to you through tactics like display advertising.
A well-optimized, user-friendly site can go a long way to giving your site visibility online; and even a small advertising budget can deliver results when it comes to online advertising. When thinking about your digital marketing strategy, here are some questions to ask:
If your business is going online, so are the people that patronize it. Don’t leave them behind! As part of your customer communications, provide some onboarding materials. This might be an online guide or video tutorials delivered to your email list that help customers learn the new tools and media you’ll be using. You might also offer remote one-on-one onboarding sessions for a more personal, white-glove touch, for which Zoom and Skype for Business make excellent solutions.
Think of the personal trainer moving to an online model, for instance. She’ll likely want to schedule an initial video chat to get a feel for their client’s workout space and equipment so she can customize their remote training plan accordingly. A local winery might want to show its existing subscriber base where they can go to renew their subscriptions online, make payments, and have their monthly deliveries shipped.
Moving a small business online also means accepting payments online rather than in person. Beyond doing away with the old point of sale (POS) system you had in place for a digital payment solution, there are a number of other considerations to keep in mind when making the change to digital payments. See how the MoonClerk Digital Delivery extension makes this possible by allowing you to sell digital products like videos, courses, e-books, PDFs, etc. that you’ve created.
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— Joy Crossingham | Read More
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Which brings us to the wide, wide world of online payment processing. Making the change from a completely offline payment model – one centered around card or cash payments at a POS—to an online model is no small feat. The trick is to find a solution that not only fits the needs of your business and the needs of your customers, but that can help you switch to a recurring revenue model that keeps cash flow stable no matter how crazy things might get in the market.
Throughout our own experience helping small businesses make the switch, here are four pearls of wisdom we’ve picked up along the way
The last thing you want to do is frustrate a customer when they’re in the process of opening their wallet. Instead, think about how customers pay you now versus how they’re likely to pay you once you move everything online. Will you have an online portal for customers to make payment? Will you accept ACH transactions, credit cards, and Apple Pay payments? Give customers options, be flexible, and make payments easy.
RELATED: Where To Place Payment Forms On Your Website For The Highest Conversion Rate
This is so important to positioning your small business for success in the long term. Think of the local cardio boxing gym, crossfit box, or yoga studio: those businesses aren’t subsisting off of pay-as-you go customers; they’ve all built a base of monthly memberships. So, think about creative ways to move your own brick-and-mortar business to a recurring revenue model, such as automated email nurture campaigns to your existing customer base, or simply adding a subscription offering to your pricing structure. RELATED: Run a paid newsletter with the MoonClerk Mailchimp Pro extension.
Data security is an absolute must when it comes to transacting business online. While most online payment vendors adhere to some compliance and data protection standards, platform security is not always a guarantee. It needs to be. MoonClerk, for example, keeps customers safe using full SSL encryption, secure hosting, and Level 1 PCI compliance.
When evaluating which online payment processor you’re going to use, consider each vendor against your existing payment structure, technology stack, and digital marketing providers. If time is of the essence and you need to roll out an online model fast, go with the solution with the shortest learning curve—the one that integrates with your existing branding, website, and customer list without requiring coding experience or costly new overhead.
In the small business world, change is an immediate necessity, and change is necessary so that you can better navigate (and survive!) the future.
Moving to an online business model serves both purposes: it allows small businesses to quickly pivot in response to what can be a mad, mad world; and it puts small businesses in a prime position to continue thriving well into the future, even when the swirling winds abate and things return to normal.
As we’ve seen in the recent past, downturns and sudden change can come out of nowhere. If nothing else, we’ve learned that the time to pursue the online version of your brick-and-mortar business is now. This guide should give you a lot of good places to focus your valuable time and energy.