Leverage Your Website to Survive

OneWebHosting.com Offers 5 Key Tips for Business Owners on How to Use Your Website to Survive and Thrive; Available as a Resource to Discuss Using the Downturn to Your Advantage

Sacramento, CA (Gawkwire.com) OneWebHosting.com, a leading web hosting provider for small-to-medium sized businesses, today released 5 tips designed to aid small-to-mid-sized business owners weather the economic downturn. As the economy continues to sink, many business owners are struggling with how to survive. Despite the flailing economy, OneWebHosting.com is thriving.

"My brother and I founded OneWebHosting.com during the .com bust," said Tem Balanco, co-founder and CEO of OneWebHosting.com. "Unlike other local web hosting companies that went out of business that year, OneWebHosting combined web-savvy, creativity and cost-efficient services to survive and thrive during economic downturns. We have experienced triple digit growth since that time."
 
Taking tips from lessons learned from the last recession in 2001, Tem created the following "5 Key Tips for Business Owners: Using Your Website to Survive the Economic Downturn" to help fellow business owners weather the storm:

1. Automate administrative business processes using your website
Most businesses have back end administrative processes that they use to run their business. These processes often involve customer input collected through registration forms, application forms, surveys, and other tools. Use your website to automate these processes by placing them online. By automating manual administrative processes using your website, you'll reduce the amount of time needed to manage this data, freeing you to focus on more important things like sales and marketing.

2. Use your website to expand beyond your geography
The geographic reach of the internet is often overlooked. For the first time, small businesses can compete nationally, even globally, with much larger businesses. If your business is geographically bound, you might think about offering a product that is not. This can diversify your business and increase the return on investment for your website.

3. Create and maintain a dialogue with your customer base
Take advantage of new communication tools the web provides like forums, blogs and email marketing. Businesses that maintain a dialogue with their customer base fare much better during downturns. For example, you can use a company blog to share tips and advice about running your business. By maintaining regular contact with your customers, you remain on customers' minds when they decide to buy again.

4. Take advantage of macro trends like "death of the phonebook"
These days, more people are using Google Maps to find local services. Google Local (google.com/local/add) has the largest reach. List your website with the local online directories. By being listed on local directories, you can capture your share of local searches at no charge and profit from the "death of the phonebook."

5. Narrow your focus
If you are new to e-commerce, narrow your focus. Small business owners often want to get all their products online and spend too much initially getting started. Start with a small sampling of your most profitable products. This will allow you to test the waters for your product online. Once your website is producing revenue, you can reinvest the profits to expand your website.

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