E-commerce is a competitive biz, so when you find small things you can do to make a big difference, you have nothing to lose by doing them. Like making sure your online store has all the top web hosting features every e-commerce feature needs, to make life easier for your visitors and get those sales ticking over.
E-Commerce Hosting: What Is It?
E-commerce hosting is web hosting services specifically tailored for businesses selling products or services on the internet. These kinds of web hosts offer handy features for selling, like website/storefront builders, shopping cart software, payment gateways, and on-the-ball customer support who are knowledgeable about online stores.
Why Hosting Matters for E-Commerce Success
Your web hosting affects everything from your website’s security to user experience. With a good web host on your side, you can look forward to faster page loading times, which lowers customer frustration and minimizes cart abandonment.
Then there’s the extra security, which builds trust and protects your customer’s info. A good web host will also be able to handle spikes in website traffic, keeping your store up and running even if there’s a bit of a surge.
Key Features to Look for in E-Commerce Web Hosting
Find a web host that ticks all the boxes. Here are the top web hosting features every e-commerce store needs. Make sure your host has them all!
1. High Uptime Guarantee
You can’t make sales if your store is down. If you’re serious about your business, find a web host that has an uptime guarantee of 99.99% or higher. This means your store will almost always be online, with no risk of someone trying to shop while your site is down. Plus, research shows that if someone tries to access your site while it’s down, their trust in you goes down.
2. Scalability
As your business grows, your hosting needs will probably change. From the start, choose a hosting provider that offers scalable solutions. This allows you to upgrade your resources easily and seamlessly without having a negative effect on your site’s performance.
Scalability is super important in handling traffic spikes during peak shopping times, especially during holidays or sales events. A scalable hosting solution is like opening your doors wider—it can allow a larger number of visitors and transactions without crashing.
3. Speed and Performance
Once your visitors have arrived on your site, keep them there with fast page loading times. Your web host should make it their mission to be fast and perform seamlessly. Look for features like SSD storage, using content delivery services (CDNs), and regular updates.
Don’t neglect this! A faster site boosts the user’s experience, reducing bounce rate and increasing conversions. Plus, it helps you climb those elusive SEO rankings, so it’s double important!
4. Security Features
Protecting your customers’ data is one of the most important things you can do. Make sure your hosting provider offers excellent security features, such as SSL certificates, regular malware scans, firewalls, and DDoS protection.
This doesn’t just protect your customers’ data. It also keeps you safe from cyber threats and builds trust in your customer community.
5. E-Commerce Integration
If you’re selling, you need e-commerce features. Your host should make it easy for you to link up to popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and others.
These features usually help you to do things like process orders more efficiently, keep track of your stock, and provide decent customer service.
6. Backup and Restore Options
If your store crashes, will it be a quick process to get it back up and running? Your hosting provider needs to offer automatic backups and restorations, or they’re not worth your money!
Accidents happen, and trust us—even fast restoring options can feel like they take forever. And every minute your website isn’t available is a minute you’re losing out on sales.
Don’t leave room for potential problems—just choose a web host that’s meticulous about backing up your data and offers easy-restore features.
7. Easy-to-Use Control Panel
Managing your hosting shouldn’t be difficult. A user-friendly control panel, like cPanel or Plesk, makes it easier to handle things like setting up email accounts, managing domains, and setting up your server settings.
Even if you’ve got the tech know-how, a simple, easy control panel makes life easier. You can focus more on just running your business and less on the server admin side of things!
8. SEO Tools and Features
Surprisingly, good web hosting can improve your site’s search engine rankings on Google. Better SEO = better rankings, so choose a host with things like site analytics and SEO plugins to take advantage of this.
Better SEO leads to more organic traffic, more potential customers, and at the end of the day, more sales. Built-in SEO tools mean you don’t need to clutter up your dashboard with plugins.
9. Analytics and Reporting
Don’t think keeping track of your site’s performance is silly. Find a host that gives you data on visitor behavior, where your traffic comes from, and sales figures. Study it. Use it to make better business decisions.
10. Customer Support
You never know when you might need extra support. Traveling to a different time zone? Struggling to sleep? Choose a host with 24/7 customer support so you can always reach out when you need to.
Conclusion
Putting together an effective, popular, and successful e-commerce store isn’t hard, especially if you know what features are important. Does your business have all these top web hosting features every e-commerce store needs? Now’s the time to make changes to start ticking these boxes… Your sales (and business success) depend on you!
In this blog, we’ll explore a selection of top-notch plugins designed to simplify your invoicing and document creation processes. Whether you’re running a WooCommerce store, managing orders in WordPress, or seeking versatile solutions for generating professional invoices and documents, these plugins have got you covered.
Why businesses might need PDF invoice and document generation plugins?
PDF invoice and document generation plugins are invaluable tools for businesses and individuals looking to simplify their invoicing and document creation processes. The ability to generate professional-looking invoices, packing slips, delivery notes, and other documents efficiently is essential for maintaining a polished and organized image.
These plugins offer a range of benefits, including saving time by automating the creation of documents, improving professionalism with branded templates, and enhancing organization by centralizing document management.
With the help of PDF invoice and document generation plugins, businesses can simplify their workflow, impress clients with polished documents, and ensure smoother operations overall.
Best PDF Invoice and Document Generation Plugins to Consider
Let’s dive in and discover the top plugins that can enhance your business efficiency.
1- WooCommerce PDF Invoices, Packing Slips and Credit Notes
With the WooCommerce PDF Invoices plugin, generating professional invoices, packing slips, and credit notes has never been easier.
With this user-friendly plugin, you can automate the generation of PDF documents for invoices, packing slips, and credit notes. It allows you to attach these documents to order emails and customize templates to match your brand.
You can also easily download or print invoices and packing slips, choose custom numbering for documents, and even offer a “pay later” option for customers. These features enhance your store’s functionality and contribute to a smoother and more professional customer experience.
By simplifying the invoicing process and providing advanced customization options, this plugin helps you save time and maintain a professional image for your business.
2- PDF Invoices & Packing Slips for WooCommerce by WP Overnight
The PDF Invoices & Packing Slips plugin by WP Overnight is an essential extension that seamlessly integrates into your store. It automatically adds PDF or UBL invoices to order confirmation emails sent to your valued customers.
With a basic template included and the option to customize or create your own templates, you can ensure that your invoices and packing slips reflect your brand’s identity perfectly. You can even attach invoices to WooCommerce emails of your choice and can also download or print documents directly from the WooCommerce order admin page. This will simplify your order management process.
Furthermore, the plugin offers bulk PDF generation, fully customizable HTML/CSS invoice templates, and multi-language support. With its sequential invoice numbers and custom formatting options, you will also have complete control over the numbering of your invoices.
Overall, you can simplify your order management process, enhance your brand’s image, and elevate the customer experience with this indispensable tool for WooCommerce store owners.
3- WooCommerce Shipping Labels, Dispatch Labels and Delivery Notes
WooCommerce Shipping Labels plugin is a comprehensive plugin designed to simplify your order processing by creating professional dispatch labels, shipping labels, and delivery notes for WooCommerce orders. With custom settings and layouts tailored to your business, this plugin simplifies the generation of essential order documents.
It automatically generates fully customized documents. It offers multiple pre-built layouts to choose from. It also allows you to create your own templates by adding, removing, or editing components of the document layouts to suit your business requirements.
The generated documents can be easily accessed from the order edit page of each order. You can add a ‘Print’ button to order status emails for convenient printing directly from the email. You can also easily add multiple labels to a single page and bulk-print them directly from the admin order page for efficient order processing.
It even allows you to add additional order and product-related information, such as meta fields and product attributes, to your WooCommerce documents. Plus, it offers seamless multilingual support. Overall, this plugin is a great option for simplifying your order processing.
4- Sliced Invoices
Sliced Invoices is a user-friendly WordPress invoicing plugin that simplifies your quoting and invoicing processes. With Sliced Invoices, creating professional quotes and invoices that clients can pay for online has always been easier.
The plugin offers many customization options, including pre-defined line items, customizable email templates, and flexible tax settings. You can also personalize your invoices with your logo and business details, ensuring a polished presentation.
Plus, with features like automatic increment of invoice and quote numbers, customizable templates using CSS, and support for bulk CSV import of quotes and invoices, Sliced Invoices empowers you to manage your invoicing efficiently and effectively.
The plugin also offers features like sending automatic payment reminder emails and cloning existing quotes and invoices, further enhancing your invoicing workflow. Whether you’re a freelancer, small business owner, or agency, Sliced Invoices provides the flexibility and support you need to create professional quotes and invoices with ease.
5- PeproDev Ultimate Invoice
PeproDev Ultimate Invoice is a great solution for generating advanced HTML/PDF invoices for WooCommerce orders. This plugin offers unparalleled customization options, allowing you to create beautiful, professional-looking invoices that perfectly reflect your brand identity.
With PeproDev Ultimate Invoice, you can effortlessly download PDF invoices, email-styled invoices, and attach PDF invoices to WooCommerce emails, packing slips, shipping labels, and shipping tracking. You can provide them with downloadable, customizable styled invoices that meet their expectations.
The plugin offers full customization capabilities. You can customize every aspect of your invoices, from the layout to the design, and even create your own invoice templates, PDF invoice templates, inventory report templates, and packing slip templates. You can also alter plugins via Action/Filter hooks.
With PeproDev Ultimate Invoice, you can simplify your invoicing process and elevate your WooCommerce store
6- WooCommerce Proforma Invoices Plugin
The WooCommerce Proforma Invoices Plugin is an advanced tool designed to simplify the creation of custom proforma invoices for all orders in your WooCommerce store. With this plugin, you can effortlessly generate branded proforma invoices that align with your business standards, complete with advanced settings and layout customizations.
It allows you to automatically generate proforma invoices for all orders in your store and easily customize them by adjusting plugin configurations to suit your needs. You can also customize pre-built layouts by adding, removing, or editing components.
It offers custom numbering options to personalize proforma invoice numbers. You can adjust starting numbers, number formats, and lengths to your preference. You can also add custom fields such as special notes, transport terms, sales terms, and custom footers.
These WooCommerce proforma invoice PDFs can be attached to order emails, along with specific order status emails for attachment. Customers can also print invoices directly from the ‘My accounts’ page of your store, either individually or in bulk.
Plus, it offers seamless multilingual support. overall, you can simplify your invoicing process and elevate your business standards with the WooCommerce Proforma Invoices Plugin.
7- WooCommerce PDF Invoice Builder by RedNao
WooCommerce PDF Invoice Builder by RedNao is an innovative plugin that revolutionizes PDF creation for your WooCommerce store. With its intuitive drag-and-drop builder, you can effortlessly create invoices, packing slips, credit notes, and more.
The plugin allows you to easily customize fields such as dates, invoice numbers, and billing addresses, and personalize detail tables with different colors, styles, and columns. Plus, it offers over 500 icons, image support, and style designer, with which you can make your PDF invoice unique and professional.
You can download your PDFs directly from your dashboard or configure them to be sent within WooCommerce emails. It also offers a variety of PDF templates to choose from if you’re short on time. The plugin automatically formats amounts using the currency of the order.
Also, with configurable invoice numbers and file names, WooCommerce PDF Invoice Builder by RedNao offers unparalleled flexibility and convenience for your invoicing needs.
8- Challan
Challan is a comprehensive PDF Invoice & Packing Slip plugin for WooCommerce that simplifies your invoicing process effortlessly. With Challan, you can automatically generate PDF invoices and packing slips, attaching them to order confirmation emails based on the configured order status.
Its intuitive drag-and-drop builder makes creating and printing invoices a breeze. From resizing PDFs to bulk downloading invoices and packing slips, Challan simplifies the sales and purchasing process.
Its customization options ensure your documents reflect your brand’s identity perfectly. Challan allows you to set shipping and billing information, order data, customer notes, tax details, and more with ease. You can also customize invoice numbers, order titles, product details, and templates effortlessly, and tailor the invoice style using custom CSS.
Plus, with features like automatic attachment of invoices and packing slips to order confirmation emails, delivery address generation, and sequential order numbering, Challan empowers you to create professional and organized invoices and packing slips for your WooCommerce store.
9- Flexible PDF Invoices for WooCommerce & WordPress
Flexible PDF Invoices for WooCommerce & WordPress is a versatile plugin that empowers you to create invoices effortlessly, whether for WooCommerce orders or standalone transactions within WordPress. With this plugin, you can issue VAT invoices seamlessly, simplifying your invoicing process across all platforms.
The free version of Flexible PDF Invoices offers a range of powerful features, including the ability to issue PDF invoices for WooCommerce orders and manually create VAT invoices in both WooCommerce and WordPress.
The plugin allows you to easily manage invoices as custom post types, add, edit, and delete invoices with ease, and send them manually as needed. You can also customize your PDF invoice templates to suit VAT taxpayers and VAT-exempt entities and generate and download invoices in bulk by date range for efficient invoicing.
Plus, with options to add payment info, additional notes, and custom numbering of invoices, Flexible PDF Invoices provides the flexibility and convenience you need to manage your invoicing efficiently.
10- Print Invoice & Delivery Notes for WooCommerce
Print Invoice & Delivery Notes for WooCommerce is yet another powerful tool that simplifies the process of printing invoices and delivery notes for WooCommerce orders. With this plugin, you can effortlessly print out invoices and delivery notes, customize them with your company or shop details, and even add personal notes, conditions, or policies.
The plugin seamlessly integrates into your WooCommerce order management system, adding a convenient side panel for administrators on the order edit page. This allows you to print invoices or delivery notes quickly.
Additionally, registered customers can easily print their orders with a button added to the order screen. It also offers features like bulk printing, allows customers to print orders from their account page, and includes print links in customer emails for added convenience.
With support for simple and sequential invoice numbering, as well as compatibility with the WooCommerce refund system, this plugin offers flexibility and functionality to meet your invoicing needs.
Conclusion
Investing in PDF invoice and document generation plugins can revolutionize how businesses manage invoicing and document creation processes.
With the ability to automate tasks, improve professionalism, and enhance organization, these plugins offer invaluable solutions for managing operations and impressing clients. Whether you’re a small business owner or a seasoned professional, integrating these plugins into your workflow can lead to significant time savings and improved efficiency.
In the intensely competitive ecommerce sector, your store’s Domain Authority (DA) can significantly influence your brand’s online success. In simple terms, it is a metric developed by Moz that determines a site’s ranking based on search engine results. For ecommerce brands, a higher DA means greater visibility, increased organic traffic, and potentially higher sales.
In this article, you will explore the tried and tested strategies for improving Domain Authority for ecommerce brands, along with actionable tips and insights to boost your site’s credibility and performance.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) varies on a scale of 1 to 100. A higher score indicates a strong domain, which means the site will have a higher ranking on SERPs. It depends on factors such as the number and quality of backlinks, the quality of content, and overall site structure.
Why is Domain Authority Important for Ecommerce?
As discussed earlier, a website with an excellent DA score will rank higher in search results. Better ranking further implies that the site is authoritative and trustworthy. For e-commerce brands, this translates to more organic traffic, improved brand credibility, and increased sales. If your store has a high DA, potential customers looking for them will easily discover your products and services.
Strategies to Improve Domain Authority
Create High-Quality Content
Content is the front face of any brand. If you create valuable, informative, and engaging content, you will attract visitors, and other websites will also be inclined to link to your content.
Tips for Creating High-Quality Content
Focus on topics that are relevant to your target audience.
Ensure your content is well-researched, accurate, and up-to-date.
Create informative blog posts, infographics, videos, and guides.
2. High-Quality Backlinks
If you get a backlink from a reputable website, it will indicate to search engines that your site is a credible source of information. So, it will be more fruitful if you focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks for your site.
Strategies for Building High-Quality Backlinks
Guest Blogging: Write articles for reputable blogs in your niche. This method allows you to include backlinks to your site, which will certainly increase your DA score.
Influencer Partnerships: You can also collaborate with influencers. Your DA score will improve if they share your content and link back to your site.
Content Marketing: Create shareable content that other websites find helpful and will like to link to. Like, you can design infographics and create research reports.
3. Optimize On-Page SEO
On-page SEO involves optimizing individual pages to improve their search engine rankings. This includes using relevant keywords, optimizing meta tags, and ensuring a user-friendly site structure.
On-Page SEO Best Practices
Keyword Research: Your first step should be identifying relevant keywords. When you get the list of key terms potential customers use, include them naturally in your site’s content.
Meta Tags: Optimize your title, meta descriptions, and header tags with relevant keywords.
Internal Linking: Use internal links to guide users to related content and improve site navigation.
4. Improve Site Structure and User Experience
A well-structured website with a positive user experience can help improve your DA score. If your site is easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, swiftly loads, and ensures the presence of every UX factor that strengthens its architecture, you will have a good DA score.
Tips for Improving Site Structure and User Experience
Mobile Optimization: Ensure your site has a fully responsive web design.
Site Speed: Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you identify and fix any issues slowing down your site.
Clear Navigation: Organize your site structure logically and use clear, descriptive menus and links.
5. Ensure Technical SEO is Up to Par
Technical SEO covers optimizing a site’s technical aspects. When you improve your website technically, search engines can crawl and index your pages effectively.
Key Technical SEO Tips
XML Sitemaps: You can create and submit an XML sitemap to search engines. This will help them comprehend your site’s content and index your page.
Robots.txt: Use a robots.txt file to control which pages search engines can crawl.
SSL Certification: Ensure your site uses HTTPS to provide a secure connection for users.
6. Leverage Social Media
Social media promotes your content and increases your brand’s online visibility. Sharing your content on such platforms drives interested customers to your site, which increases sales and backlinks for your site.
Social Media Tips
Engage with Your Audience: Responding to public comments and participating in discussions helps build a community around a brand. So, leverage the way to engage with your audience.
Share Valuable Content: Regularly share your blog posts, product updates, and other valuable content on your social media channels.
Collaborate with Influencers: Partner with influencers and amplify your reach to a broader audience.
7. Monitor and Analyze Your Performance
If you regularly monitor and analyze your site’s SEO performance, you will identify improvement areas and track the effectiveness of your strategies.
Tools for Monitoring SEO Performance
Google Analytics: Track your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates.
Moz: Monitor your Domain Authority and analyze your backlink profile.
SEMrush: Track your keyword rankings and identify opportunities for improvement.
Conclusion
Overall, improving Domain Authority is a multifaceted process that requires high-quality content creation, strategic backlink building, on-page, technical SEO optimization, and social media leveraging.
By implementing these strategies, e-commerce brands can improve their organic visibility and traffic and ultimately increase sales. Regularly monitoring performance and making data-driven adjustments ensures that a store’s efforts yield the best possible results.
Partnering with an experienced e-commerce SEO agency can help those who want to maximize their SEO efforts. They have the expertise and resources required to significantly improve an e-commerce website’s domain authority.
Are AI design tools about to replace human designers? Most of us would assume they are not quite there yet. But: could they be getting closer?
While AI can certainly generate strong designs instantly, it often misses the mark on the finer details that a human designer would catch. If you, for example, ask an AI to draw a picture of a hand—it might get a general idea, but it might not capture the subtle details that make a hand look real.
And yet, despite these limitations, AI has its strengths. It can handle repetitive tasks, analyze vast amounts of information, and even suggest ideas that a human designer might not have thought of.
So, while AI isn’t ready to take over the design world just yet, it’s definitely changing the game. To succeed in this new era, designers need to adapt and integrate AI into their workflows.
In this article, we’ll explore the current state of AI in design, its strengths and weaknesses, how designers can adapt, and what the future might hold.
AI design tools are shaking up the industry. They’re fast, efficient, and can generate hundreds of ideas in no time. Tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Adobe Sensei use advanced algorithms and vast datasets to create designs that are visually attractive and technically precise.
However, AI’s speed and efficiency come with limitations. These tools lack the human touch—they don’t understand emotions, cultural contexts, or storytelling. They serve as powerful assistants but fall short of replacing the instinctive decision-making of human designers.
AI isn’t here to replace you, the designer. It’s here to assist you. Think of AI as a powerful ally, taking on monotonous tasks and freeing you to focus on the creative, strategic parts of your work.
Here’s how AI can help:
Automating Boring Tasks: AI can handle repetitive tasks like resizing images, selecting colors, and generating variations. This automation means you spend less time on tedious work and more on creativity.
Data Analysis: AI can sift through large datasets, spotting trends and suggesting design improvements. This can provide insights that might not be immediately obvious.
Generating Ideas: AI can propose a range of design ideas, sparking inspiration that you might not have thought of. This expands your creative possibilities and helps you think outside the box.
By taking care of the heavy work, AI lets you focus on what you do best—coming up with ideas, solving problems, and creating designs that connect on an emotional level.
Let’s look at some tools that make this possible:
Microsoft Designer: This tool offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features for creating various items quickly, from social media posts to professional presentations. It leverages AI to suggest design elements and layouts, making your workflow smoother and faster.
Adobe Firefly: Firefly allows you to generate vectors, brushes, and textures from simple prompts. It’s perfect for experimenting with new concepts and bringing your creative visions to life without extensive manual work.
Runway: Runway simplifies video editing with its comprehensive suite. It offers advanced features for color correction, visual effects, and seamless integration with other tools, streamlining your entire production process.
With AI as your partner, you can work faster, explore more ideas, and push your creative boundaries further. That said, no matter how advanced AI gets, it can’t replace the unique human perspective. Let’s explore what makes human designers truly irreplaceable.
The Irreplaceable Human Touch
Despite AI’s capabilities, it can’t replicate the unique qualities that human designers bring. Designers infuse their work with personal experiences, empathy, and an understanding of human behavior that AI lacks.
Human designers can:
Anticipate user needs and craft engaging narratives.
Understand the emotional impact of design elements like color and typography.
Grasp cultural context and ensure relevance and sensitivity.
AI might be able to generate a variety of design options, but it can’t really understand the emotional impact of color choices or the cultural significance of certain design elements. It can’t predict how a user might emotionally respond to a particular design or how a design fits into a larger strategic vision.
So, how can we blend AI’s capabilities with human creativity to create exceptional designs?
The future of design isn’t about AI versus humans; it’s about using the strengths of both to create exceptional work. AI can generate several ideas and handle repetitive tasks, freeing human designers to refine these ideas with creativity, strategic thinking, and emotional intelligence.
Here’s how to make the most of AI in your design process:
Streamline Your Workflow: Let AI take care of repetitive tasks like resizing images and selecting colors. This frees up your time to focus on more complex design elements.
Speed Up Iterations: Use AI to quickly generate multiple design variations. This allows you to test and refine ideas faster, improving the overall design process.
Enhance Quality: Leverage AI’s precision to ensure technical accuracy, while you add the creative touches that make a design stand out.
Stay Innovative: Use AI to explore new design concepts and ideas that you might not have thought of on your own. This expands your creative possibilities and keeps your work fresh.
Make Data-Driven Decisions: AI can analyze large datasets to spot trends and suggest design improvements. Use these insights to inform your design choices and stay ahead of the curve.
The key is to view AI as a partner. It handles the heavy lifting, but your creativity and vision bring the final product to life. This collaboration is the future of design—leveraging technology to enhance, not replace, human creativity.
That said, the impact of AI goes beyond the creative process itself.
AI is changing not just how we design, but also how we collaborate. Effective communication is crucial in design projects, and AI meeting assistants can make a big difference. By automating meeting tasks, AI lets designers focus more on creativity and less on administration.
Transcriptions: AI can transcribe meetings in real-time, ensuring nothing is missed and everyone is on the same page.
Summaries: Generate concise meeting summaries, highlighting key points, decisions, and next steps.
Action Items: Identify and track action items, ensuring follow-through on tasks and responsibilities.
Using AI in your meetings means less time spent on logistics and more on what really matters—creating great designs! This is especially important as design teams often juggle multiple projects and meetings.
The Future of Design
Let’s rewind and revisit our original question: Can AI replace human designers? The short answer is no. But it will definitely change the game.
Designers who rely on both AI and their insights will thrive. Those who leverage AI for repetitive tasks will have more time to add creative details and make their work more impactful.
Here’s the bottom line: AI is here to stay. It’s not a threat; it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to work smarter, push the boundaries of what’s possible, and create designs that make a real difference in people’s lives.
The future of design is about human-AI synergy. It’s about creating designs that are not only functional but also emotionally resonant. It’s about leveraging technology while staying true to your core values as a designer.
Growing your business is often synonymous with growing your network. After all, your business is often only as good as your vendors, suppliers, employees, collaborators, and, of course, your customers. Building communities is the best way to catalyze innovation and connect people, exponentially increasing their potential.
With uncertain signals in the 2024 economic outlook, this focus is more vital than ever. Let’s take a closer look at some of the best ways to build meaningful connections to help your business thrive.
Don’t Let It Take Over Your Time
One of the most common mistakes business owners make when it comes to networking is going overboard. If you live in one of the best startup cities in America, there’s a near-endless supply of networking opportunities, from conferences and summits to casual social engagements where you’ll find yourself rubbing shoulders with leaders in your field.
However, these opportunities can easily become a distraction. Networking is valuable and necessary, but it can’t take time and energy away from your business’s core functions.
Experts suggest allocating a specific amount of time to networking; this could be per day, per week, or only on designated days or at designated times of the day. This often has a double benefit. First, setting aside specific time to network instead of only doing it when the urge strikes can often result in you actually networking more on a weekly or monthly basis than before. Second, it preserves the rest of your time for other work.
Know What You Want
Just like you should decide exactly when to network (and when you shouldn’t), you should also have a clear idea of what you want to get out of it.
Small business owners can have many different networking goals, such as raising brand awareness, looking for partners to help expand, pivoting into a slightly different area of expertise, or even recruitment. Defining these goals for yourself ahead of time will help you stay focused and on message.
Don’t Focus Too Narrowly
It’s natural to feel in sync with business owners and entrepreneurs like yourself; you understand their journey and the obstacles they face. But make sure you network far and wide, ranging well beyond your specific role and industry. The most valuable insights and relationships are often the result of differing perspectives coming together.
Beyond that, networking with professionals outside your immediate sphere will give you a richer perspective on your industry, often leading to valuable insights.
Let People Do Favors for You
Many people think of demonstrating value as a one-way street and that the best (and perhaps only) way to do so is to do things for other people. But this is a very limited view of human nature. While it might sound counterintuitive, asking someone for a favor can be one of the best ways to cement your relationship.
Most people like to do favors for others, sometimes even more than they enjoy receiving them. Doing things for coworkers or bosses allows them to demonstrate positive qualities like generosity, altruism, and competence.
Don’t Be a Taker
Still, don’t immediately start asking for favors and referrals when you forge a new contact. At the start of the relationship, share your knowledge and contacts first to make it clear you’re not just a selfish opportunist. More often than not, this kind of upfront generosity is eventually returned many times over.
Don’t Just Look Up
One of the most common goals for small business owners is to find mentors who can help them take their brand to the next level. But that shouldn’t be your sole focus.
Network in every direction. That means reaching out not just to powerful mentors further along their business journey but also interacting regularly with more junior colleagues who are just starting out. This is a great way to build out organic networks and uncover valuable hidden talents that can benefit the community. Plus, it’s not uncommon for high-performing younger employees to quickly reach the upper echelons of the company or industry. Who knows what that cup of coffee with a junior coworker might lead to someday?
Make Introductions and Connections
Don’t just think about who you can connect with. If you have two contacts who clearly share a vision but don’t know each other yet, introduce them. Building relationships between your contacts is a great way to build goodwill, multiply your influence, and cultivate the network around you.
Be Genuine
Don’t be too transactional about your networking; approach it like any other substantial human relationship. Don’t restrict your conversation to business. Talk about your personal lives, shared hobbies, or anything else that might come up.
And remember that you shouldn’t make networking all about yourself. If you think back to horrible bosses and coworkers you’ve had in the past, they probably bored you with relentless monologues about themselves. The more you can make the conversation about the other person and solicit their opinions and feelings, the more fruitful your networking will be.
Cultivate and Always Follow Up
Networking isn’t about making easy money fast; it’s about forging long-term relationships. Check in with new networking contacts soon after you make that initial contact. Remind them how you met, and continue the conversation. This will firm up your connection and leave them with a positive association.
If you said you’d give them materials or a referral, make sure you follow through. This doesn’t have to be a face-to-face meeting or even a phone call; a social media message or post can be very effective, too. Even more importantly, this has to be a consistent effort. Reach out to your contacts regularly, or your network will wither.
