5 Ways To Make Your Business Tech Savvy In 2016 

1.) Build & Maintain Your App

Think of a mobile app as the post-2015 website. As in, your business pretty much needs one in order to be as accessible as possible to a large percentage of customers who would rather use apps than websites to shop and gather information. There are a lot of tools available that are specifically designed to help the average small business develop a capable app. And once you have one, you’ll enjoy all the benefits that come with a direct channel to your customer base.

2.) Embrace Digital Security

While it’s common sense to secure your business in a physical sense, a lot of small businesses in recent years have still been playing it loose and fast with regard to digital security. That means using unencrypted emails and mobile messaging, relying on a cloud provider to keep things protected, and allowing websites to be easily breached. Addressing all of these concerns is increasingly vital for small businesses moving forward.

3.) Enable Contactless Payments

If the nature of your business allows for in-store purchasing, you should be considering the ways in which that purchasing is done. You can now easily equip your business with tools to accept modern payments, from card reader machines that accept contactless transactions, to digital readers that allow for services like Apple Pay. This has become a simple matter of catering to customer needs. As fewer people carry cash or wallets, we’re only going to move more in the direction of contactless and digital transactions.

4.) Create Written Content

This may not seem like an entirely tech-related idea, but when you consider blog content as an extension of your web or app platform, you can begin to see the connection. Simply put, writing about your products and services, your business’s utility, or any relevant news gives people following your business something to share, talk about, and cite. Posting just a few written pieces a week can end up being one of your best online marketing initiatives.

5.) Use CRM Software

The majority of small businesses still don’t make use of CRM (or Customer Relationship Management) software, despite the fact that it holds incredible potential to help you evolve and improve your company. This type of software tracks interactions and help you gain access to valuable customer data, effectively analyzing how and why you’re able to make the sales you do and what you could be doing better. Once considered an advanced and occasionally inaccessible concept, CRM is now available through a number of affordable and manageable software programs.

The wonderful thing about all these ideas is that they’re all relatively easy to implement, meaning that it’s not too late for small business owners to get up-to-date (at least, technologically speaking).