[IMAGE CREDIT:  Maurizio Zanetti]

In physics, a body in motion tends to stay in motion. With business, however, the law of diminishing returns seems to apply. Every business runs the risk of becoming stagnated, especially if they experience at least some degree of success. With online businesses, this stagnation quickly leads to decline. The highly-competitive online marketplace doesn’t allow for that kind of laxity.

When your online business gets into a rut, it’s time for some rejuvenation. You’ve got to breathe some new life into your business if you want to continue to grow into the future.

Here are five steps you can take that will get your online business growing again:

Get an influx of new website traffic.

The fastest way to breathe new life into your online business is to get a ton of new website visitors and customers. There are a number of ways you can go about giving your business a traffic boost, including:

• Implementing a new SEO strategy
• Starting a paid marketing campaign
• Offering a new component to your website, such as a blog

There are many others, as well. Check out some of the latest trends in SEO, or experiment with a variety of traffic-generation methods. Find new ways to drive traffic to your site and you’ll be surprised just how energizing it can be.

Implement a new web design.

In the same way that a retail store might remodel their interior from time to time, you should occasionally consider a website redesign. A redesign will do several things for you. It will:

• Allow you to take advantage of new styles, trends, and design techniques.
• Make regular website visitors stand up and take notice, rather than just passing by.
• Allow you to feature new products or services, or bring attention to a specific product or service.

In many cases, something as simple as changing your banner and your color scheme may be enough to see at least a little bit of a bounce. Give visitors something new and interesting to look at and they’re more likely to take notice.

Go social.

Social media have taken the web by storm in ways that no one truly predicted. If you want to expand your online business’ presence rapidly, you can do it with social media.

Start building a base of Twitter followers. Open a Facebook page, and begin building a community there, as well. Social media lets you interact directly with your customers. You can use these sites to build relationships with customers, boost your customer service, and establish authority in your niche.

Rather than spreading yourself thin in the social media space by going after several services all at once, it’s best to start with a single social media site presence and then build from there. Having 1,000 Facebook fans with whom you interact on a regular basis is better than having 3,000 Twitter followers and 3,000 LinkedIn connections who forget  that they’ve connected with you or why.

Offer something new.

Your former customers are happy with what they’ve bought from you; give them a reason to come back and buy something else. You might consider expanding your product line to offer a complimentary product. You might even add in a subscription-based service model, helping to insure on going revenue.

Think outside the box here; just because your site is known for the widgets you sell doesn’t mean you can’t also be customers’ primary source of widget-related materials. Expand your offerings, but make sure you’re still focused on your core business, too.

Repackage something old.

Upgrading an existing product or service can help breathe new life into your online business, as well. It may be something as simple as offering a new use for your old product. Repackaging and even rebranding are tried and true ways to generate new business.
Repackaging allows you to:

• Reach new customers with whom the former version of your product or service didn’t resonate.
• Generate renewed interest in your product from existing customers.
• Experiment with new marketing techniques.
• Make modifications to your overall branding strategy.

Repackaging won’t save a dying business, but it can certainly help to boost an online business that’s starting to stagnate.

Online business success over the long term means being agile. It means responding to technological changes, and it means being ready when the market shifts. Online businesses that make it over the long term are those that learn how to rejuvenate themselves when necessary, and are constantly finding ways to breathe new life and stay current.

Author Bio

Greg Muender is President of of Ticket Kick, a California company that helps drivers to reduce speeding fines and/or get speeding tickets, and other traffic tickets dismissed by helping drivers through the “trial by written declaration” process. The company, which formally launched in 2010 has been providing similar services since 2006 and is the leading company in this location and growing rapidly.

A recent study shows that a lot of bosses aren’t doing a very good job of listening to their employees. In these difficult economic times your small business might not be able to hand out cash bonuses or pay increases, but you can pay more attention to what your employees are saying. It’s bound to be good for businesses.

Survey Results: The more powerful you are, the more difficult it may be to listen to your employees. That’s the conclusion from research conducted by Kelly See, an assistant professor of management and organization at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, along with colleagues from Lehigh and Duke Universities. More than 200 business graduate students were asked to remember scenarios where they felt helpless or where they had power over people and resources. People who recalled times when they felt powerful were less likely to listen to advice. See says, “It’s important to surround yourself with people who are going to disagree with you and to remind you that you’re not always right. Leaders should seek as many opinions as they can get, and they should force themselves to listen to those opinions.” To read more, check out the November issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Benefits of Listening to Employees: In a knowledge-based workplace, you want to take advantage of the experience and insights of the people on your payroll. If employees feel valued, they’re likely to be more satisfied and productive. Employee feedback may also help you to avoid costly mistakes.

Strategies for Getting and Implementing Employee Feedback:

Adjust Your Mindset. Once you recognize the bias that feelings of power can create, you can try to compensate for the effect. It’s good to feel confident but you don’t want to alienate people and disregard valuable input.

Take a Survey. Ask your employees what matters to them. These days, flexible hours and educational opportunities may help to make pay freezes and smaller work forces more tolerable.

Engage Everyone in Brainstorming. Encourage employees at all levels to contribute ideas on how to cut costs, get more customers, improve working conditions and drive growth. Schedule retreats or set aside time in staff meetings. Create an online suggestion box.
Let Employees Know How Their Feedback is Being Used. Employees will feel more motivated if they know their efforts produce results. When you make an organizational change, explain how employee input factored into the decision.

Show your employees you care this holiday season and throughout the year. With everyone trying to do more with less, listening to your employees will empower them to contribute more to the bottom line while boosting everyone’s morale.

Having the right skills, the right experience and the right qualifications are all important in finding your dream job. But, there is one key element of the application process that is all too often overlooked: presentation.

It all starts with your cover letter and CV. The content is, of course, important but the layout, formatting and font are also key. At this stage of the process more applicants are weeded out than at any other stage so you should be doing everything you can to get yourself noticed.

CVs can be difficult to lay out in a way that is practical but also looks professional and presentable so starting with CV templates, which are available for free online, can be a huge help. Some reports suggest that a recruiter will only spend 15 seconds reading a CV on their first look, so during this stage a CV that looks good is extremely important.

Presentation is important throughout the entire application process, particularly when you have your interview. What you wear will depend on the job you’re applying for but, as a rule of thumb, you should always dress smartly. It may sound obvious but pressing your clothes will help to create a smarter look. You can’t go wrong with a simple, neat suit.

A recruiter sorting through responses to a newspaper ad will have hundreds of CVs and cover letters to whittle down to just a handful of applicants, so presenting yourself well can help to separate you from everyone else.

[image via bigburpsx3 on flickr]