How to serve your customers & clients remotely
The importance of being online
Having a website for your business is not only an essential part of your marketing and public face, it can also be a really useful tool to help you grow and connect with more people.
It can open your reach up beyond your local area, meaning your client pool can open way up and you have the opportunity to work with more people.
You can make working with you easier for your clients. Maybe you are local but someone might struggle to get out to see you for a variety of reasons, this way you are making it as simple as you can for clients to meet with you.
It can offer you a secondary income stream. If you only offer in person services at the moment you can look at selling a webinar or class on a complimentary topic.
Which businesses can operate online?
You might be thinking, there’s nothing my business can do online, it has to be in person! I challenge that though, I believe almost every business can offer something online with some creativity and imagination but here are a few ideas to get you going.
Service based business
Meeting clients on a video call
Managing your projects through an online project management tool (see my Trello tutorial here)
Sharing your work through a pre-recorded video review
Cafes & Restaurants
Online booking
Delivery services
Build awareness of your business through a blog
Sell an e-recipe book
Fitness
Online booking
Virtual classes
Online fitness course or challenge
Sell an e-guide or fitness planner
Product based businesses
Online shop
Video reviews of your products
Some ideas for any business
Online course
Shop selling a PDF, e-book, something helpful that compliments your core business
Blog
Video meetings
Online booking
Related posts
What you can offer online
I’ve listed a lot of ideas above and as I mentioned I think almost all businesses can offer some element of their business exclusively online to build their audience and add secondary income streams. Below I’m going to dive into a few in more detail.
Online booking
If you have classes, client meetings, appointments or one to one services within your business, you can save a lot of time in your business by implementing an online booking system. If you’ve ever been frustrated with back and forth messages finding a time that works for several people or have missed bookings and appointments you will find using an online booking system to be a life saver!
Video Meetings
Offering virtual meetings to clients can help them when working for you. It can save them travelling to meet you and also allows you to work with people all across the globe. It’s also a great way to connect with your team members or meet with other business owners. A phone call is great but being able to speak with someone face to face can really help to build a personal relationship.
Teaching
Teaching something complimentary to your business online is a great way to offer more to your customers and clients. You may already teach something in person - if you’re a fitness instructor, yoga teacher, tutor, music teacher - so an online version of this will be the perfect fit. There are lots of options for teaching online:One to one training - this is something I have thought about offering in my business by screen sharing whilst I work on their website/show my client how to use or fix something.Live class - a yoga teacher could teach a weekly class at a lower price point that their in person classesPre-recorded tutorial/class/course - if you record a live training or class you can repurpose that into a course or class that people could purchase.
Shop
This is probably the first thing people think about when they are considering moving their services online and you may find it strange that it appears last on my list! That’s not because I think it’s the least important option, I just wanted to bring attention to things you may not have considered before covering the online shop. The online shop may also be the way you will deliver some of the offerings mentioned above so will naturally be the last step.The first, most obvious, use for a shop will be to sell products to typically sell in person at a shop/farmers market/fair/etc. This is a great way to be able to reach so many more people with your products, even if you just start by selling one particular product, such as your best seller or the thing that can be most easily shipped.You can also use an online shop to sell the classes or tutorials we talked about above, or digital products that would go hand in hand with your business and may be a ‘first step’ to someone investing further with you. For example, if you are a wedding planner, photographer or baker, you might offer a downloadable wedding planning guide, calendar or checklist. Something that your ideal client would need before or alongside your main offering.
How to implement on your website
Online booking
Different apps can be installed directly into your website or you can link to an external online booking system. The system I use is by Acuity, which allows you to offer your one on one services or classes to your clients through a timetable or calendar. This can be used to arrange in-person services, meetings or classes and you can take payments when clients book. You can also choose to arrange virtual sessions where clients are notified by email with a link to the video call. Acuity can be used on any website or platform however Squarespace recently purchased the app and now offers this as an in-built block which can be added to any page and managed directly through their interface.
Video Meetings
As I mentioned above you can automatically invite people to join you on a video call if you are using a booking system. In my own business I use Zoom, which is a very simple to use, free video calling software. It’s similar to Skype, which you may be more familiar with, but a lot easier to use and great because people only need a link and they can log-in from anywhere with a link without having to download anything to their computer or phone. Other options are Microsoft Teams, which is great for working together with people on your...ahem...team, or Google Hangouts. Typically you will need to create a room or an appointment and then invite participants or share a link with the person you're working with to get started.
Teaching
Your website can allow you to offer teaching as an additional service by creating a sales page for a downloadable pre-recorded course. This way you can clearly share what is on offer, how your tutorial or course can help and what and how it will teach. Another option for the live classes is similar to the online booking sequence I explained above. They would make their payment when they booked, then the live teaching could be accessed via a link that is automatically emailed to them on booking/purchase.You can also create a step by step course behind a password protected section on your Squarespace website. People would be able to make their purchase of the course and would receive an email with the password giving them access to a full page of videos. You can set this up directly through the built in Squarespace shop, or by using third party systems like DPD (I use this and it’s so easy).A final option for a course is to use a bespoke course provider, like Teachable or Teachery. This allows you to create lessons that have the payment and access handled directly through one service, rather than creating a page on your website.
Shop
Most websites will easily allow you to incorporate an online shop. If you are using WordPress I would recommend using the WooCommerce plug-in. If you have a larger shop I would consider moving your site to Shopify, which is specifically designed for online shops and making them as simple as possible to manage. If you only plan on selling a small number of products, or the online shop won’t be the number 1 focus, I would recommend sticking with Squarespace and using their built in eCommerce platform. The user interface is just as easy to navigate as the rest of their builder and it means everything is in one place so easier for you to manage.
Finally…
I have covered A LOT in this most, nothing in intense detail but my hope here is to get your mind running over the possibilities for your business and how you can move your business partly online or offer more from your current online presence.If you’re ready to get started now, please get in touch at the link below and we can get chatting!
