5 Communication Tips for Small Business Amidst COVID-19

In light of the recent COVID-19 developments, many businesses are facing reduction of staff, shortened work hours or even temporary closures. During this time of uncertainty, it is critical to be transparent in how your business operations may be affected by county, state or national efforts to reduce in-person contact. This is especially important when it comes to maintaining client satisfaction. Client satisfaction is reached by meeting and exceeding expectations even during odd or unprecedented circumstances. Businesses need to be proactive and responsive to create proper expectations especially during times of uncertainty. Utilizing these five communication tips will help your business set expectations and maintain high levels of customer or client satisfaction.

Updating Your Website Contact Page

When updating your contact information there is really no more central of a place than your website contact page. If your hours of operation have been affected, prepare a simple explanation that will allow customers or clients to understand the reason for the changes, the duration of the changes and any new supported contact methods.

Example

Given the uncertainly around COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to limit our practice to emergencies only for the next two weeks from 3/16—3/29 to ensure the safety of our patients and your family members. This follows the recommendation issued by the CDC and guidance offered by state and local officials. We will continue to be available by phone and email to answer questions and schedule future appointments. Thank You.

The three sentences above concisely inform any new and current clients what to expect from this business in the coming weeks. The content clearly states what measures are being taken, why they are being taken and how clients can contact the business for future appointments or questions.

Monitor & Update Your Google My Business & Apple Maps Listings

When customers or clients are looking for your contact information, they will rely on the information on your Google My Business which appears in Google maps along with the information in Apple maps. It’s important to update the information provided by both Google and Apple to ensure clients or customers can easily contact your business. While you may not think to update this information for short windows of time like holidays or periods of social distancing like we are experiencing with COVID-19, it is worth reflecting your accurate business hours as much as possible. Most business directories, like Google My Business, make updating your hours a quick process allowing you to temporarily set specialty hours for periods of time, which can be set in advance.

Don’t forget to make similar adjustments with any other directories that your client base utilizes to contact you. Here at Capitol Tech Solutions, we utilize YEXT, a tool that sends business contact information out to multiple directories all at one time.

Create Informative Pop-ups

Although the sentiment around website pop-ups are not always positive, they are still a quick and effective way of to get your brief message across. Here are some best practices with pop-ups that will help keep the user experience positive.

1. Keep the pop-up message short and sweet. If you have more content to share, implement a learn more button within the pop-up linking users to more information.
2. Set a reasonable delay time for the pop-up. Something around 3 to 5 seconds is a good place to start.
3. Enable cookies and set a time span for the pop-up. If you enable cookies, you can create a time span that will disable the pop-up for returning visitors. This allows people to come back to your website and not get hit with the same pop-up over and over again.

Set Up an Email Announcement

Email is a proven way to get your critical information to clients and customers. If your company already utilizes an email marketing platform this process is even easier for you. If you do not already use an email marketing tool, here are a few recommended newsletter platforms: (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Drip). When setting up your announcement, be sure to review your branding and style guide to select fonts and colors that fit your branding. When creating content for newsletters, utilize blocks of content between 50 and 125 characters. Don’t forget to include your contact information or link to your website’s contact page.

Create Social Media Posts

Social media posts are a fast and low barrier approach to sharing all types of company announcements. While the primary value of most announcements is in the written content, you should never overlook your visual image choice when creating a social media post. Your chosen image should convey the tone and foreshadow the written content that follows. In the caption, summarize the announcement; most announcements made through social media cannot be covered entirely within the post caption. If you are posting on Facebook or LinkedIn, you can link to additional information within the post itself. The rules for Instagram are a little different. You can link to content with a link in your bio, but not the post itself. For accounts with ten thousand followers or more, you can post an announcement in your story and utilize the swipe-up feature to link to a specific page.

Bonus Tip: Post a Flyer on the Entrance of Your Business

When you have exhausted all your digital avenues to inform your clients or customers of any changes to your business operations or hours there is one thing left to do: Print and post a flyer. Inevitably someone will miss your digital messages but a flyer on the business door is almost sure to catch any customers or clients coming to your business. Be sure that your message covers why the business has chosen to momentarily change operations or hours. Provide a timeline for how long the new policies will be in place. Lastly, provide an easy avenue for all current and future clients to contact your business.

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A website will help your business grow by utilizing your online presence to target and engage with new customers. A website is the backbone that supports all of your other user experience strategies, such as SEO, social media marketing, paid online advertising, and content marketing.

But putting together a website for your business can seem like a daunting task. You want your site to be an engaging and informative representation of your brand and company culture. You need images, content, and structure. But where do you start?

The user experience team at Capitol Tech Solutions has years of experience creating award-winning websites for large and small businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies. We partner with our clients to create eye-catching websites that fit their unique business goals. At the beginning of every project the CTS team outlines the different pieces that are needed for a successful website.

No matter the size of your company or your unique business goals, these four tips will get your website going in the right direction.

1. Graphic Material that catches the eye

Strong graphic material can stimulate aesthetic senses and increase connections with your viewers.

Logo: Your business identity starts with your logo in the highest resolution possible – preferably an .ai or .eps file type.

New images: People respond to professional and engaging imagery, so gather as many high quality images as you can and give them descriptive filenames. No images? No problem, check out istockphoto.com for countless royalty free image options.

Color scheme: Everyone loves a great color scheme. Do you have particular colors you like? Provide the CYMK or RGB colors. If not, describe what you want, or find images that demonstrate your preferences.

Are you inspired by other websites? Put together a list of websites you like and make note of what you like most about them. This gives a visual representation of what you like and can provide a good starting point for design ideas.

2. Create a strong website structure

As you begin thinking about your website and how your content will be distributed, it’s important to focus on a site organization that will help visitors easily find what they are looking for.

Sitemap: What content pages will your website contain? We call this your sitemap. Most sites have some unique and some common pages. Think about what needs to be on your site.

Homepage: A modern website homepage has 4 -7 sections of content. Think about short content and descriptive images that can go on your homepage.

Call to action: Once people get to your website, what do you want them to do? Contact Us, Register Now, Call Us, Sign Up, Learn More, Get More, and Buy Now are a few options.

3. Create engaging website content

Now that you have your images and website structure, you need to create the content for your website. Here are some helpful ideas:

Value statement: First impressions go a long way. What is the first message and imagery a site visitor will see when they see your website? Think about your elevator pitch and what your business does that will help you stand out and be more memorable.

About Us: Answer the critical questions of the who, what, why, where, and how of your organization. The prospective client should conclude from the About Us content that your organization is qualified to solve their needs or fill their requirements.

Services/Products: What services or products do you offer, and why are they better than your competition? Describe with common industry terms what you do, get specific client testimonials, and elaborate on why you are better than competitors.

News/Blogs: What has been happening in your business or industry? Come up with some ideas for recent stories and write them for use on your news or blog page.

Testimonials: Get real people to say in their own words why you are so great. If you can get permission to use their name, title, and photo, it makes the testimonial even more powerful.

Other pages: There is no limit to the number of pages on a website, so if you have more content, add it to the site.

4. Get technical with details

Our user experience agency looks forward to going on this journey with you

Creating a successful website for your business doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task. The award-winning team at CTS has years of experience partnering with businesses of all sizes to create engaging websites that convert visitors into customers. If you are ready to grow your business and expand your online presence reach out to CTS for a free website consultation.

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Step #1: Clearly define the goal of your content

To avoid a diluted message, your content goal should not be too vague. General objective statements like, “attract more website traffic” or “inform my customers of a promotion” are too general and do not help develop an effective content strategy.

The real purpose of your content emerges from the questions – why and what?

Why do you want to generate more traffic or market a new promotion? A common response we hear from clients is to increase the number of website conversions, which indicates that the desired audience response to your message is achieved.

What is the action that you would like the audience to take after reading your content?

The call to action, solicited by the content, can be in the form of the completion of a questionnaire providing contact information or the purchase of a product. The desired action should be drawn from the defined purpose of the content. If your content goals are to educate your audience about a new product to generate sales, don’t waste time telling your audience about a recent company event.

Step #2: Identify your target audience and buyer persona

For many businesses, historical purchase records are great indicators of your audience. The demographics associated with your target audience can be collected from past purchase transactions. Useful data like audience age, gender, physical location and other information can be gathered throughout the online checkout process.

Ideally you want to go from your broad target market down to a buyer persona, which is a representation of your ideal customer based upon market research and existing customer data.

To identify your buyer persona, start with the broadest description of your target market. For example, begin with “women that are looking for carpet cleaning services” and filter the demographics or personal attributes to appeal to the targeted buyer persona like “women between the ages of 25 and 70 located in the city of Sacramento, with large homes looking for an affordable carpet or rug cleaning service.”

Step #3: Content word choice and structure

As you review the content, consider the perspective of your target audience to ensure your content can be easily understood. Using language your audience will quickly understand is key to effectively communicating your content but equally important is how your content is structured. Content should tell a story and have a logical progression of information that the intended audience can easily follow from start to finish. The order of your content not only helps keep your audience from getting confused but also helps direct your audience toward your content goals.

Coming in January! Writing Content for Specific Pages on Your Website.

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