Now that I can hardly breathe through my busy schedule, even on Sundays, I really miss those days when I used to hold my mother's forefinger, wear a little cap, and visit the market to see the vibrant shops with my wonderstruck eyes. Gone are those days when we used to go to the library to find a book on the topic we would like to learn about. In this modern era, most of those things got replaced by its online counterpart which made everything just a mouse-click away.

Even a few years ago, I used to go to the market to buy some fresh vegetables and fruits, but now I buy them from online companies like BigBasket, Grofers, etc. Now, why is that so? Isn't there the same market anymore? Well, no, going to a market takes time, and moreover these online services give me fresh vegetables and fruits delivered at my doorstep. This saves time, money and the effort needed. 

Why should I move to an online service as a customer?

From a customer's perspective, my need is always to go for something that is hassle-free, time-saving, and should solve the purpose. I have to do a lot of stuff every day, so I like to keep the time spent on doing a single work as short as possible. If I have to read something, I would like to search for a book or an article online rather than going to a library or a shop. If are reading this article then probably you are doing the same. If I have to buy some groceries, then I would prefer some online grocery shops because: a) I detest queues in shops and b) I do not have to worry about the time consumed in the process. I can literally buy groceries when I'm cleaning the house, or talking to my client. Moreover, unlike traditional markets, I get reviews of the product from real customers who bought the same product before. So, I do not need to worry about if the product should really solve my purpose.‌‌

Why should you digitalize your business?

Every successful businessman I have seen have understood their customer's real need. You see, Steve Jobs understood that his customers dislike to bring out and use the stylus while using an Apple smartphone, so he made a smartphone that can be operated just by using finger touches.‌‌‌‌

According to Statista, a German online portal for statistics, around 4.57 billion people are actively using the Internet (as of April 2020). This comprises 59 percent of the world's total population! Now, why would that figure be important to your business? Well, just like you cannot clap with one hand, your business will be incomplete if you do not have customers. By having an online presence, you now have access to 4.57 billion potential customers. That might look fictional to you now, but even 0.01% of that figure can boost your business like anything!

Using Google Trends, let us look at how popular is "Online Grocery Store" at this moment. Below is the result:

Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular.

Coming back to Statista again, If we look at the number of digital buyers from 2014-2020, we will see that there's a steady increase.

In 2020, the number of digital buyers will reach 2.05 billion. To capture this huge market you just need a website and a mobile application. 

Going further we shall look into common human psychologies and how having an online presence can help you to boost your business.

1) Short Attention Span

Now, what is an Attention Span? According to Wikipedia, Attention span is the amount of time spent concentrating on a task before becoming distracted. In 2019, the average attention span of humans has decreased to 08 seconds. This means that people are no longer interested in long discussions about your product. They just want to have a short, yet informative info about your product. Now, you have two options using which you can advertise your product: 1) Paper Pamphlets 2) Website or Mobile Application.

1) Paper Pamphlets

These type of advertisement media have now been very old. Hardly anyone uses it these days. The greatest disadvantage of using these to boost your business is its limitation in production and distribution. Well, how many pamphlets can you produce? And how many can you physically hand it over to people? Maybe hundreds or even thousands but not more than that. At the end of the day, we will have wasted money and papers just to get in a few customers.

2) Websites or Mobile Application

The biggest advantage of websites and mobile applications is that it can be made very precise and to the point. In just 8 seconds you can attract them towards your products. You just need to make a good looking user interface, give short and precise information about your product, and leave your contact details so that they can contact you when they need it. One more advantage is that you do not need to hand it over physically. Moreover, you can actively edit or showcase your products online.

2) Consumer Interest Driven Contents

Not everyone likes to view products that they do not even need. I personally hate them. It is like, you went to buy tomatoes to a shop but the shopkeeper is insisting you buy a refrigerator instead. So, you need to take control of what you show to your customers. Here is where digitization comes to use. You can use different analytical services to see and analyze which people like to see what on your website and show them what they would like to see. For example, if you see that a specific customer does not like to see Oranges on your website, you can just hide that part away, or show them where they would get less emphasis. Targeting user-specific ads are widely used by many big e-commerce websites. Take Amazon, for example, you'll see if you buy a smartphone from Amazon, from the next day they will keep you updated about all their deals on smartphones. 

3) Efficient Feedback Systems

Taking feedbacks are very necessary in order to boost your business. You need to understand what exactly the customer wants. If someone wants something that you probably do not manufacture or market, you can add them if there is a possibility to do so. This makes your customers stick to you, rather than going to someone else. Now, when you have a large number of customers, it is very hard to keep track of each of them and ask for feedback. You can instead make an online portal for your customers where they can visit when they want to provide feedback on your product. In the backend, you can maintain a database of all the feedbacks and sort them out according to your needs with a click of a button. This saves your time and your customer's time as well.

How to have an online presence?

Well, by now it must be clear to you that having an online presence can help to boost your business. But now, the one question that arises is, how to have an online presence? You may not be from an IT background, and your business does not have engineers who can make you a website or a mobile application. In that case, all you need is to look for services that can make you a website and a mobile application. There are several companies online that make you a website for your business. They take up the entire responsibility of coding your website and hosting it live on the internet. This too saves your time and money, and you can concentrate on other parts of your business.

Conclusion

As of now, 76.8% of the total populace is digitalized and around 4.57 billion people are actively using the Internet (as of April 2020), so having an online presence is necessary to boost your business. Due to the busy schedule, most people have lesser time to look at your products. By taking your business online, you can now showcase your products to the world without doing paying much effort. You can easily keep track of your customers by analyzing the traffic on your website or mobile applications. You can also actively collect feedback from your customers which will let them stick to you and not move to your competitor.

Do you not have an online presence yet? Well, we at icrewsystems are here to help. Drop us a mail at hello@icrewsystems.com and we would be more than happy to write you back.

Need a Mobile Application for your business? icrewsystems can help with that too! We make mobile applications both for Android, iOS, and Web. Head over to our website by clicking here.