With 2016 just around the corner it’s always good for your business to reflect on the previous year. With 2016 just around the corner it’s always good for your business to reflect on the previous year. Looking at the highs and lows can help you realise what you need to improve and focus on for the coming year. This leads to a more efficient, profitable and productive business.

Review

Reviewing your businesses progress or lack of it, can be a learning curve, but it can be of huge benefit to your business. To get the most out of it for your business, you should review and evaluate on a regular basis.

What to Review

Goals

Have you reached your goals for this year? If not, why not? 

Setting goals is a great way to stay focused. Without them your business is like a ship setting sail with no destination. Review your goals regularly to make sure you are working towards them.

Finances

Have you reached your financial targets for 2015? Are there ways to reduce the costs next year? Could you earn more next year?

Reviewing your accounts regularly can let you know what financial state your business is in. Doing this often can help you keep the ship on course and can alert you to any potential difficulties.

Social Media

What platform worked best for you last year? Where do you feel you could improve? Did you make any sales through your social media platforms.

Most social media platforms like Facebook offer the chance to review your social media analytics using Facebook Insights. There are also many other tools available like Twitter Analytics and Iconosquare for Instagram. Make use of these tools as they offer valuable information that can help your business progress.

Website

How did your website perform in 2015? What was your traffic like? How many conversions did you have? How does your site rank in terms of loading times? What could you improve?

Your website needs to be reviewed as often as possible. Google analytics is great for allowing you to analyse your website’s performance and traffic. You can see where your visitors came from, how long they stayed on your site and what pages they visited. You can also look at the loading times for your pages. Make sure they are loading as fast as possible. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see what could be improved.

Newsletter

How many subscribers did you gain last year? Did you stay consistent? Have you asked for feedback? Are your newsletters being opened?

A newsletter is a fantastic way to stay in front of your potential clients or customers. Send out a regular newsletter can help strengthen brand recognition and build a relationship with your audience. We use Mailchimp.

Work / Life Balance

Have you made time for yourself last year? Did you spend enough time away from work? What could you improve?

Balancing your work life and personal life can be a bit of a challenge at times. Being an Entrepreneur allows us very little time to stop and focus on other things. Things like ourselves. But making time for this is just as important, otherwise productivity and motivation can suffer which lead to negative effects on your business.

Try to take breaks away from your workplace. Also, try to set specific working hours for yourself and be disciplined! Its important to look after yourself too. You are the engine in your business. No engine, no business.

Here’s a few small things you can do:

• Exercising more.
• Having a healthy balanced diet.
• Get enough sleep
• Allow for some “You” time. Read a book, meet friends for a coffee, watch a movie, go for a walk etc.

Update

As well as reviewing what changes you need to make to your business it’s also important to keep your website up to date.

If your website is built using WordPress make sure it’s updated to the most recent version. Check that your themes and plugins are also updated. This reduces the chances of any potential hacks and can help your site run more efficiently.

Keep up to date with the latest tools social media has to offer and make use of the ones relevant to your business.

Check that your branding is consistent across all of your social media accounts . Good branding can be a huge selling point as it reflects positively on your business.

If you’re services, products or any relevant information has changed make sure that you have this changed on your site, social media and branding. Having the wrong information could potentially lose you customers.

Create a Content Calendar

Plan and create your content calendar for the next year, it’s never too early to make plans. In fact, you should probably be planning at least 6 months prior to an event or occasion. This isn’t necessary for all events but it could save you time and effort in the future.

Millions of people are blogging and posting online each and every day so to have a better chance in getting found you need to be organised and ahead of the game. That way you won’t miss out on important events and dates.

Set Goals

Setting goals lets you visualise and challenge the future of your business. It’s not easy to stay motivated all of the time, especially when you don’t have a clear path or direction lined out for your business. Ask yourself where you’d like your business to be this time next year, where would you like it to be in 5 years and set realistic goals to reach that mark.

Don’t just set long term goals, create short term ones also. They’re often more achievable and give faster results. Some short term goals could be :

• I want to get up earlier
• Learn a new skill
• I want to exercise more often
• Improve my diet
• Create a daily/weekly plan
• Which  increases motivation and drive to complete long term milestones.

Have you start preparing for the new year? What other tips would you include?

Let us know in the comments below.