Introduction
Mint Cleaning is a Canadian-based small and medium business enterprise that deals with the production of eco-friendly luxury cleaning products made with pure essential oils. Mint Cleaning products include a range of household cleaners, disinfectants, and other specialized cleaning solutions. These products are offered in the Canadian market for both residential and commercial markets. The business SEO report on the SEMRush tool indicates a significant online presence. The organic traffic on the company website http://mintcleaningproducts.com is more for informational and transactional purposes. Suggests an online presence (Mint et al.). The website searches are optimized as the business organic traffic positions the company at higher levels than its competitors.
The website serves as an essential platform for customers to learn about products, make purchases, or contact the business. For example, the unbranded searches have increased to 200%, an indication of success in penetrating the website into the Canadian market. Mint Cleaning has an active social media presence to connect with its audience (García et al., 2021). The business uses Facebook and Instagram to reach the market, increase customer engagement, and showcase products. The online presence competition between the company and its closest competitor indicates a widening backlink gap with a wide authority score of 22 against two and a referring domain growth from 18 in December 2022 to 180 in November 2023.
SWOT-TOWS Analysis
The tool is necessary for assessing the issues surrounding the main website and hence contributes to the reduction of threats, taking advantage of opportunities provided and exploiting the strengths of Mint cleaning company. In addition, the analysis stimulates the development of strategic thinking to remove weaknesses.
Strengths
The website growth from December 2022 to November 2023 is an indication of its ability to reach a loyal customer base. The growth is a result of positive design, functionality, and customer engagement strategies, which increase user experience. In addition, the website layout is easy to use, with ease of access to valuable content (Costa & Castro, 2021). The website showcases various Mint Cleaning Products with product pages with unique visuals and descriptions that create more value propositions for the cleaning products in a compelling manner.
Additionally, the navigation is easy, has fast loading times, and is adaptable for mobile responsiveness. The website has 322 words that are optimized by search engines to enhance visibility. This involves using relevant keywords, creating valuable content, and ensuring technical aspects such as page speed and mobile-friendliness are optimized.
Weaknesses
The main page, which serves as the first point of contact for many visitors, lacks detailed information about the product. While the importance of using the pouches is well explained, key features uses, or benefits of the cleaning products are not prominently displayed on the main page. The website has displayed a limited number of products and missed opportunities to meet a broader range of customer needs (Krüger & Meyer, 2021). The links to connect to the company’s social media are uniquely missing on the front page. Interaction between social media and a website forms a powerful tool for brand promotion and customer engagement. The lack of social media engagement on the website can be attributed to the -43% of branded visits to the website.
Opportunities
Mint Cleaning Website can attract more traffic by diversifying the product line and capitalizing on trends such as eco-friendly or pet-friendly cleaning solutions. The pouches that are used are refillable, which has a sustainability component. Target marketing for these products would promote the website by educating customers about their applications and advantages. Corporates and businesses rely on influencers as access points of information. Mint Cleaning’s partnership with influencers can significantly amplify the brand’s visibility and credibility (Krüger & Meyer, 2021). Influencers can provide authentic endorsements, reaching their followers with product recommendations and reviews.
Threats:
The cleaning business has large-scale competitors with considerable abilities and resources to compete. The industry has brands vying for consumer attention, which creates a challenge in differentiating Mint Cleaning from other brands and maintaining market share. Their websites are developed and have large teams of developers and administrators engaging their consumers online and on social media platforms.
TOWS Recommendations:
Strength-Opportunity (SO) Strategy:
The Mint Cleaning website has an established online presence, and the business should use its strength as an opportunity to expand its product line. For example, the business can add more pages with new, specialized cleaning products to meet evolving customer needs and preferences (Park & Namkung, 2022). The website can also adopt the use of visually appealing banners, images, or interactive elements to attract attention. The engaging content highlights the unique features, benefits, and applications of the specialized cleaners. These strategies will align the established online presence with the opportunity to diversify the product line, creating a synergistic approach to attract and retain a broad customer base.
Strength-Threat (ST) Strategy
As a strong brand with reputable accolades in Canada, the business can use positive customer reviews to address the intense competition that poses a challenge. The website can increase the description of the product to emphasize high product quality. Ensure that Mint Cleaning products consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. Customer satisfaction has an overall contribution to competitiveness and optimized SEO, and the website should include sections for reviews, comments, and suggestions (Costa & Castro, 2021). Therefore, to challenge the intense competition, the business should provide a clear pathway to mitigate the threat and foster long-term customer loyalty.
Weakness-Opportunity (WO) Strategy:
Mint Cleaning websites should address the limited product range to offer a more diverse selection. The opportunity lies in actively engaging with customers through social media to gather insights and suggestions for new products or improvements to existing ones. For example, the integration of social media platforms into the website can solve the lack of diverse products and turn them into an opportunity by actively involving customers through social media.
Key platform
Instagram is a powerful social media platform that Mint Cleaning can use to create a successful ecommerce platform. The advantages of Instagram are based on the visually-oriented presentations that align with the business need to showcase its products competitively and effectively (Park & Namkung, 2022). Moreover, it provides opportunities for engagement, influencer collaboration, and direct interaction with the audience.
Brief Plan for Successful E-Commerce Presence on Instagram:
The first step is to create a precise bio that is a reflection of the brand’s mission, values, and product highlights. The next step is to include contact details and an extension link for the website. High-quality pictures and high-definition visuals that appeal should be used to engage in stories and Q&A sessions. Mint should identify social media influencers to work with and use sponsored posts for content and insights on cleaning products (Akkol, 2021). For example, they can use #MintCleaningxInfluencer to tag all influencers in the cleaning niche. The stories and posts should be enabled for Instagram Shopping tags to allow followers to explore and purchase seamlessly. Feature positive customer reviews or testimonials in a visually appealing format and Run a poll or quiz in Stories, engaging the audience and collecting valuable feedback.
References
Akkol, E. (2021). Analysis of Customers’ Reactions to E-Commerce Companies Using Instagram Data. Proceedings, 74(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2021074012
Costa, J., & Castro, R. (2021). SMEs Must Go Online—E-Commerce as an Escape Hatch for Resilience and Survivability. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 16(7), 3043–3062. https://doi.org/10.3390/jtaer16070166
García, M., Carrillo-Durán, M. V., & Maia, J. (2021). The Maturity of Corporate Websites as a Digital Communication Channel in Portuguese SMEs’ Process of Adopting E-Commerce. Sustainability, 13(21), 11972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111972
Krüger, N. A., & Meyer, N. (2021). The Development of a Small and Medium-Sized Business Risk Management Intervention Tool. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 14(7), 310. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14070310
Mint Cleaning. (n.d.). Mint Cleaning Products. Mint Cleaning. Retrieved November 30, 2023, from https://mintcleaningproducts.com/
Park, C.-I., & Namkung, Y. (2022). The Effects of Instagram Marketing Activities on Customer-Based Brand Equity in the Coffee Industry. Sustainability, 14(3), 1657. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031657
write