Why Did Your Business Fail to Perform Well On the Internet?

Updated October 6, 2023

Starting a business was different a few years ago compared to what it is now. Thanks to the internet, and the wide range of digital assets it offers to masses, anyone can do wonders in the business world.

But ever wondered how many of that internet powered businesses actually make it?

A statistic reported in a study by Internet Retailing revealed that around 90% of all businesses on the internet fail within the first 120 days.

Startup Per Outcome

But why such a big percentage of businesses fail to perform well on the internet?

Let’s dive right into it and find out;

Table of Contents

Not having a legit product/service

Let’s face it; competition is out there in any market today. With internet being more accessible for the public, everyone wants to give it a shot. A wide range of industries are filled with tremendous amount of companies & start-ups trying to gain their part and it are really hard to bring something different.

If your business wasn’t offering something unique & different then probably your “innovative & game changing” idea wasn’t as revolutionary as you believe.

By innovative I don’t mean crafting some out of the universe product. You can mold previous successful (or even unsuccessful) ideas to make something useful out of them.

Let’s take some co-working space & a coffee shop for example. We know these are two businesses in which one offers working space & other offers various kinds of coffees. Now one can simply mix them too and develop a creative shared office space which offers a wide range of coffee flavors as a complimentary service.

With just one thought we’ve formulated a profound business idea.

Not Investing in a Website

One practice which many businesses indulge into is not investing their resources in their website. Especially small businesses like to rely on social media accounts and specifically Facebook page is often seen as a substitute to a website. However in reality it’s not even remotely close to being a substitute.

First of all a facebook page is dependent on Facebook. It means that Facebook can bring any random change to its platform and your business could be badly affected by it overnight.

Secondly, it doesn’t offer you customization. From the whole layout design to content distribution a symmetrical and appealing design is a must.

When it comes to a social media page, it gives you the same layout and you cannot customize the design around your brand’s identity.

Another important factor is that only relying on a Facebook page (or nay other social media page) will cut your search engine visibility. Your Facebook page cannot appear in search engine results the way a website can and that’ll limit your reach vigorously.

Not Exploring Digital Marketing in-depth

If your business is on the internet, it’s already in the right direction to make an impact. However in 2020 you cannot expect your business to skyrocket just because you post on social media daily or publish an article every week.

There’s a lot more to digital marketing services than that and you’ll only see prominent progress when you’re on exploring it in-depth.

But the question is; what exactly in-depth means?

It means analyzing your business category, determining your ideal customers, finding the places you’re ideal customers would spend time online and then reaching out in a useful manner.

This doesn’t mean just one practice, or one platform to market on. For you to take your business on another level you should be indulging into things like;

Social media advertising & retargeting
Funnel creation & visitor’s tracking
Search engine optimization
Content marketing
Promotion through Email Newsletters
Outbound offering through outreach etc.

But the key is doing it all together in an integrated manner where each aspect is in coherence with the other.

Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

It’s not new that businesses ignore or don’t invest much in SEO even though search engines are one of the biggest traffic sources today. In fact according to the research done by Brightedge organic search traffic makes up to 53% of all the traffic on the internet.

Why Business Fail

The reason SEO turns off most of the business owners is that it’s a longer term game.

While on social media you can put some money on ads, set your targeted audience and wait for 3-4 days for potential customers to come in. In SEO one has to put continuous effort for a pretty long time before some traction is noticed.

However at the same time one thing most of them miss is that SEO also brings in a higher return. This means one might need to invest a lot of effort for around 5-6 months but once your website gains some links, and start ranking on the first page, you’ll be getting continuous traffic which you just now have to sustain.

Also it has been studies that traffic coming from Search engines has higher conversion rates and no doubt it’s a game of user’s intention.

When on social media a user wants to socialize, not to click on some ads. While on search engine the user specifically wants to dig out information on some particular subject which could lead to a conversion ultimately.

Not Scaling With Content

With all the digital marketing tactics all a business expects is more customers. However even if things go right and the business see some growth, there comes a point where the growth stops.

If we’re representing our growth on a graph, we’d soon seem like a straight horizontal line as logarithmic growth.

That’s where content marketing should kick in. Content marketing can be done in various forms, through search engine in the form of blog posts for additional search traffic & on social media as informative content for more social shares etc.

In either way your business is getting scaled, receiving potential customers on different level of purchase’s intent. For example, if you sell gardening services, your content can solve people’s problems around gardening.

This will make your business website a hub of gardening information and tips and meanwhile your brand will be scaling itself every day itself in terms of visibility.

Conclusion

No business starts as the most successful one. Ideas fail, businesses shutdown and still many of them makes it through. The key is to not rely on one medium or a single practice as marketing. Instead you should be ready to experiment & test new things with your approach and eventually your business will find what work’s the finest.

Usman Akram is a digital marketer and SEO specialist who’s passionate about experimenting and discovering new SEO tactics and strategies to dominate search rankings while bringing an unmatched user-experience. As of now Usman is serving Buzz Interactive, a leading digital marketing agency as the head of SEO.