You wanna Start an Online Business? 8 Tips to Pay Attention to or you are in Trouble!

In a business-oriented WhatsApp group, someone asked, what experience-based tips would one have to pay attention to before starting an online business or getting digital with his usual business? In her words, this is how she asked:

[9:00 AM, 7/13/2022] : How can one get their business online and how can they grow them there? Need people to share expertise and experiences mostly those with online businesses. Kindly share the dos and donts

As you already know, #MiklahLife is 100% an online business and 100% offline. All our initiatives and services can be fully accessed online, but also at our office here at Zakariyyah House, Kalerwe. We could even come to where you are. Just let us know: 0779342057/miklahlife@gmail.com. Based on this background, and available evidence, below is our response to the lady’s quest!

8 Tips for online business

1. From the start, use affordable, sustainable, modern-day technology or software. Most businesses excitedly start with complex systems that they can’t afford to maintain or grow. At Miklah, we opted for WordPress because it is easy for us to grow and maintain! Of course, there could be other options, even better ones! However, be sure you can sustain and expand them as the business grows. As a by the way, WordPress currently powers more than 42% of the world’s top 10 million websites! The remaining percentage is shared among hundreds of content management systems on this planet. In other words, WordPress is number one in popularity? Ask yourself, why so? How about the remaining non-top websites, who powers them? Every fancy website you have ever seen is likely on WordPress! Take our WordPress offer here.

2. Secondly, preferably, have someone on the team who understands it, the system. I know most people will ask you to outsource from ICT companies. But that is if you have a lot of money. Those companies give you headache if you aren’t rich! A customer will have an issue with a transaction, calls you at 12 midnight, and your ICT company is busy or has travelled to Nairobi (after all, an ICT company is basically a guy somewhere). With money, you could partner with a reliable ICT company. But money isn’t an easy thing, especially if starting out! Imagine paying hundreds of thousands per month for website maintenance! Our WordPress guy is at Miklah, no outsourcing unless for special purposes. This could be your other reason for embracing easy and yet powerful technologies like WordPress.

3. Embrace blogging! I don’t understand it! Most online businesses here in Uganda don’t publish authority blogs or articles on the business they run. You find someone is running a business on timber, finances or taxes, jewelry or clothes, hardware, etc, but never writes anything about those things. How authoritative are you or can you be in a field you never or can’t blog about! Blogs educate your clients, create more market, and contribute to the SEO of your website. That is why, for us at Miklah, our blog is the most powerful, now with more than 500 well-researched articles, miklahlife.com/blog.

4. Embrace digital marketing. Online businesses survive on digital marketing, no discussion. Social media, email marketing, websites and SEO, organic content & ads (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc). You could take a course in digital marketing in just a day or two and you will be good to go. Check miklahlife.com/academy for such courses.

5. Ensure that you are also 100% offline. Uganda’s ICT ecosystem isn’t that big, nor is it advanced. People will always want an office, or even to make final commitments or payments physically at your office, especially if it is a new online business. Therefore, having a physical location for your business is crucial to the success of your online strategy, especially in less digital economies like Uganda or Africa.

6. Ensure that your online payment methods are easy. Mobile money and visa cards are enough. Don’t put many other complex gateways that people don’t even know or that aren’t famous. Leave that ‘patriotism’ out, and embrace solutions that really work. At Miklah Life, we use Woocommerce for our e-commerce needs. While it avails us ‘hundreds’ of payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, etc, we just enabled three: Mobile Money, Cash, and Visa Card. Study your market or country, and avail payments gateways that are common and easy. In addition, edit out ‘check-out’ fields that aren’t important so that it is easy and quick for clients to check out online. At Miklah Shop, we have removed many of the WooCommerce fields (for example, ZIP code, address, state, etc), making it easy to check out.

7. Engagement. My God! I can’t believe some people in our era still take days to reply their mails. An email is now like WhatsApp message. It comes in, and you instantly see it on your phone. Reply it on mobile. Messages on WhatsApp, on your social media posts, or even comments on your blog, reply them, and in time. Engagement is key. Engagement precedes sales. Invest in it. Please, reply messages, just do!

8. Prices! Make research and ensure that your prices are within the acceptable ranges for the products or services. By the time someone does shopping or business online, it means he or she is able to search the net and make comparisons. At #Miklah Life, we don’t believe in too high prices, far above our costs of production. Check MiklahSHOP here, miklahlife.com/shop. But it all comes back to your target market. If they can afford, well and good. Just charge what you should charge. As a sustainable entrepreneur, I love low and affordable prices, for I am pro ‘leave no one behind’ dream! Online shopping should be easier, in all ways, including prices.

There are many other tips, but my experience has taught me the above. When I think of others, I will share. Thank you.

Don’t forget to visit miklahlife.com and see how we could help, even in building this fancy online thing you are envisioning using WORDPRESS. Otherwise, you could also learn WordPress, digital marketing, or simply enroll for the course, how to start an online business. All at www.miklahlife.com/academy. Good day.