African Digital Renaissance - No business left behind by Anesu Michael Maposa
With the digital renaissance dawn upon Africa and in these tough economic tough, every penny counts so whatever you decide to invest your hard earned cash in your business, it’s not rocket science that you would want a positive return. The higher Return On Investment you realise, the more satisfied you are. An investment in a company website in this digital era in Africa is surely one of the ways to increase your businesses’ sales revenue.
Long gone are the days when only the big corporates were the only players who could afford investing in a company website. With the current competition in the website design market, you can get your business, whatever size you are a website from as low as $150.So before you get yourself a website the important question you pose to yourself always is: “How am I going to boost my business’s online sales revenue in line with the current internet boom in Zimbabwe and the rest of the world?” An enormous number of businesses with websites are in the pursuit of increasing their Return On Investment and some rely heavily on highly targeted website traffic. Improving a website’s search engine visibility has proved to be the most common and popular way.
But before we go into depth with the following strategies you have to make sure that your website is optimised for mobile phones. With the current rise of mobile phone internet use in Zimbabwe and the rest of the motherland, it doesn’t need a rocket scientist to figure out that for your business to reach a wide scope of potential clients; your website has to be compatible for viewing on mobile phones. There are more people in Zimbabwe browsing the internet on their mobile phones than using the traditional desktop computer. Investing in a mobile website is only a plausible investment decision. A simple search on the internet will give you results for mobile websites designers.
Now I am going to delve into the 3 strategies you can use to help you harness the power on the internet using your business website. The 3 strategies are Pay Per Click advertising, Organic Search Traffic and Targeting your Local Market.
Pay Per Click Campaign Advertising
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is defined by Wikipedia is an Internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, where advertisers pay the hosting service when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system. PPC is a major attribute for page search engine results. Therefore, it is very important to try by all means to attain the best possible exposure without breaking your bank. Times are hard.
Any winning paid search strategy has its foundations in sound amplified and or optimised campaigns. Care should be taken and avoid the gut reaction of uselessly burning resources on Google AdWords and other similar campaigns. You can increase your ROI and stretch your budget to an extra mile by using the right targeted keywords on your target market or niche market; this includes more precise geographical locations and most profitable periods.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), Wikipedia defines it as the method of creating an experience for a website or landing page visitor with the goal of increasing the percentage of visitors that convert into customers, therefore, is an opportunity worth looking into. Let’s assume that you are getting website traffic but you are not converting it into sales, there surely is a serious issue that needs to be taken care of. If you thoroughly analyse your landing pages, website forms and checkouts, you will surely find out areas which are lacking and needs improving. Running live checks is important to establish the relative value of making the changes. The ideal final outcome ought to be the increase in the Conversion Rates and Sales Revenue of your website.
Organic Search Traffic
Organic Search Traffic is the traffic to your website from search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements. Your website can be seen on search engine results pages by using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO aids increasing your website rankings in the organic results by targeting specific keywords of your choice aligned to your website. Implementing SEO greatly assists your website and aligns it with the search engines standards.
Target Local Market
Concentrated energy is put into better use and achieves more results effectively and efficiently. You should strive to appear in your local searches, it is very important and should not be sidelined from your internet marketing strategy in working towards increasing your ROI. Running besides Search Engine Optimisation, local search services will help you attain supreme visibility in your area.
A simple search for “company Harare” on Google places will come up with the following results.
On the left side of the image above you will notice that there is a list of companies who have signed up for Google Places in Harare, and they have shown up in the results. Now the major advantage of this are:
1. Prospective clients will see your contact details on first glance without visiting your website, giving you more chances of them contacting you.
2. On the right side there is a map showing your business physical location, corresponding with letter marked reddish bubble. This adds an intangible value to your business that you are actually in “existence”
3. You business name is hyperlinked to your website. If a visitor goes on that link it takes them to your linked website page.
4. There is a Place page besides your business name. Google give s you an option to create a place page which is more like a one page website on which you can upload your logo, business pictures and you can list your products and services.
5. On the Place page, customers can review your business, giving you aiding that “word of mouth” advertising.
So what are you waiting for? Go on and create yourself a Place page, for whatever City you are in. The best things in life are free. Even after you sign up for Google Places, Big Brother G will even send you advertising credits for Google AdWords, though I haven’t confirmed this to be the case in Africa.
What fellow entrepreneurs out there need to focus on now is this opportunity to come up with a system of facilitating people to buy and pay for goods and services online. One to come up with such a solution will surely be carrying the pot of gold home. But in the mean time you can be creative and depending on your situation, come up with a solution for a check out system if you sell goods and services online. You can have people to reserve goods online and pay in your shop or offices, since a lot of people in Zimbabwe do not have credit cards and Visa cards to pay online.
Don’t let your business get left behind, jump on the digital bandwagon and rip the “digital benefits”, expand your market share, increase your sales revenue and your Return On Investments, it’s not yet water under the bridge.
For more tips and articles like this please visit Ngoda Business, a free business article portal aimed at helping fellow striving Zimbabwean Entrepreneurs by Zimbabwean Entrepreneurs on www.ngoda.info . Anesu Maposa is a founding member of Ngoda Business.







