There are many examples of business owners who have tried their hand at expansion and have suddenly found themselves in a pile of massive debt. If this story sounds similar to you, then it might be a good idea to read on, to discover the ways of bouncing back from this crisis. It is not uncommon for small businesses to be impatient about their expansion plans and proceed with that same impatience. Let us assume this in the form of a story of a couple called Akshita and her husband Sohail, who faced this situation and accumulated a huge amount in supplier debt.

Luckily for them, both with their business acumen decided to convert their business into an online one and sprang into action, in order to build and optimize their website. What happened in the next 3 years is both of them converting their partially failed businesses into 2 successful ones and repaying all their creditors. Let us look at how this couple turned things around:

Revamping their business model:

This was perhaps one of the most difficult decisions to make. When they realized that they were losing a chunk of their business to online competition, they decided to change their overall strategy. They understood that investing in making their own online business might not be a feasible option so they started researching online, making their inquiries, reading various kinds of blogs and eventually figured out how to get their keywords on the first page of smaller search engines.

Within a few months, they were able to crack virtually every search engine and their Google AdWords ranked so high that they appear on the advertising feeds of most search engines.

Maintaining a transparent relationship with suppliers:

Many times, you might think that disappearing in front of the suppliers at a time like this might seem like the only option but this is not something you should indulge in. This is not what they did as well. They were upfront with their suppliers and kept them abreast with the new changes they were adopting and in return, got their suppliers trust and backing at a time when they most needed it and kept their inventory going.

Looking at set-backs as a part of the learning process:

One needs to understand that set-backs are a part of the learning process and doesn’t always mean the end. For example- Sohail had paid a certain amount of money to an outside consultant to get better rankings for his website and found that the person had disappeared with the money. Instead of focusing on what has already happened, he decided to look to the future and figured out a better approach to achieve the desired results.

Learning is key to success:

This is where one needs to understand that just because your website is doing well, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop innovating or have to stop looking at different ways of optimizing your website. Akshita and Sohail spend a considerable amount of time on testing different pages and elements on the pages including photographs, colours and even call-to-action pages. He found that experimenting with different designs for his pages could significantly increase sales and that’s exactly what happened.

Sometimes, optimizing your website is the only way you can look at expanding your business and making it successful. When you decide to invest in your online business and realize the opportunities that lie along the path of doing so, you will find that you are running a far more efficient business.