Starting an online business can be one of the best decisions you ever make and you can start your online business in your spare time while you are still working another job. Online business gives you the flexibility to work from a variety of locations and at a time that it suitable to you. However I see a lot of new online businesses that are failing withing the first  year.The reason for this is that they are starting off very small, usually just one person and then they are not growing or getting anywhere.

Growth is crucial to any online business if you want to remain competitive online and it does not matter your business is a blog or an eCommerce store because the same principles still apply; You want to increase your traffic and convert visitors into customers. In this post I am going to share five ways that I have managed to grow the size of my online business.

Use social media

Social media is crucial to all internet business and without it you are going to be missing our on a huge online audience. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook allow you appeal to a large new audience online and maximize your online exposure. For me social media drives a lot of traffic to all of my websites and without using social media this blog that you are reading would not be as successful today.

Twitter is probably the best social network to use to drive traffic to your website and find a load of new customers online. However to be successful on Twitter and take advantage of this free social network it is well worth learning how to use social media.

Use a business consultant 

One of the largest problems with starting your own internet business is that you need to be an expert in a lot of different areas to make your business grow at the rate that you want it to . For this reason I would recommend using a Good Business Consulting firm who are experts in online business and can help you find new customers and engage with existing ones. By doing this you can vastly improve your knowledge of online business and also grow your internet business at a much faster rate.

Invest in a premium and updated website design

The design of your website is one of the most important elements to your online success. A website with a poor design is going to look unprofessional and turn potential customers away from even going any further on your website so investing in a high quality and up to date website design is crucial. There are a few different methods to get a professional design for your website. The first is to find a freelancer or professional design business to design your website for you so that you do not have to do anything but this can often be more expensive. The next option is that if you are using a CMS such as WordPress then to buy a professional theme from places such as Themeforest.

Pay for some advertising and SEO

Once you have created your website online most people do not want to spend anymore money investing into their website. Everyone just expects that customers are going to come to them and buy their products. This is where a lot of people go wrong as when your first launch your website no-one is going to know about it and it is not going to be ranking high in search engines.

For this reason it is well worth investing in some search engine optimization and paid for advertising. By doing this you can begin to make potential customers aware of your business and start to actually get traffic to your website.