7 Signs Your Business Is Stuck In The Past

For any business to thrive, it needs to keep up with current trends and technology. Fail to keep up and you’ll find it harder to win the trust of customers or deliver the efficiency of competitors. Here are a few clear signs that your business is stuck in the past.

1. You haven’t got a website

There’s no reason to not have a website in 2020. Without a website, you could be viewed as illegitimate – for many people, it can be an indicator that you’re an official company. The best way to get yourself a professional-looking website is to hire a website developer. That said, there are free drag-and-drop website builders that you can use if you’re on a tight budget – they’re not ideal for building a professional website, but they’re better than nothing.

2. You’ve got a website – but it’s not mobile-friendly

Nearly half of all web traffic nowadays is on mobile devices. If you have a website, but it is not mobile-friendly, you could be losing out on a huge proportion of traffic. Most sites are mobile-compatible but not all sites are mobile-friendly. Sites that are over a decade old and have never been updated are the most likely to not be mobile-friendly.

3. You have no other online presence

On top of having a mobile-friendly website, it’s important to have a presence elsewhere on the internet. Social media pages, online reviews and high search engine rankings can all make a difference too when it comes to generating new customers. It could be worth outsourcing a digital marketing agency to help you establish an online presence. This could be particularly useful for those that aren’t digitally savvy.

4. You only accept cash

Portable card readers and greater wi-fi connection have made it possible to accept card payments from any location. In fact, market stall vendors and driving instructors are now adopting card readers as a way of expanding payment options. This is important for making more sales – fewer people carry around cash nowadays, and you could find that you miss out on attracting customers by not having a card reader.

5. You still do your accounting manually

There’s no need to spend hours manually working out your tax with a pen, paper and calculator. Accounting software has made bookkeeping much easier and is now widely adopted by most businesses. Not only could you save huge amounts of time by moving to accounting software, but you could also minimise potential errors.

6. You don’t use the cloud

If you still store all your files on a hard-drive or a local server, it could be high time you started using the cloud. Storing information on the cloud has so many perks – it means that your files are always backed up (even if there’s a fire or a burglary) and you can access them from any device from any location. All in all, it’s secure and convenient. There are many guides to cloud storage online.

7. You rely heavily on printing

There’s very little need to print off physical documents in today’s working world. Most documents can be read online. There are even tools to sign documents digitally. By going paperless, you could save a lot of money, as well as saving the environment.  

This is a contributed post.