Online business accounts for billions of dollars in product and service sales annually. Are you getting your share? Are you making best use of the power of the Interent to create and expand your business? There are a few basic things you can do to make it work for you.
First you need to build a website that reflects good design and content. What people see on your site, what they find there, will fuel their first impression. If your site is attractive, well-oranized, easy to navigate, and contains the information or products they are looking for then you have made your first step on the road to success.
Your site needs to make your customer comfortable and want to stay around. The old saying, "Pictures tell but words sell," is never more true. You need pictures to show (and tell) what you offer but you need words, particularly "calls to action" to lead visitors to the buying decision. Provide clear, easy to understand, useful information that will encourage your visitors to purchase from you.
Next, and no less important, you need to provide a suitable process to allow customers to buy from you. That sounds obvious but you might be surprised to find out how many sites don't take this into consideration or, if they do, make the process difficult thus turning away potential business. You need to accept credit cards, checks and other forms of payments online. There are millions of consumers ready to spend billions of dollars each year. You want to make it easy for them to do business with you.This is what e-commerce is all about.
You can use a secure connection to a credit card gateway, offered by many of the shopping cart systems like Mal's Cart and Cool Cart, or you can use one of the online payment systems like Google Checkout or PayPal. Whatever you choose you want to be able to process credit cards easily, quickly, and securely.
Once your site is ready to transact business online you will want to be sure you can be found by those using search engines. A significant majority of people shopping online use search engines or directory sites to find places where they can purchase the things they want. More than 50 percent of regular online shoppers use search engines to find a product or service they wish to purchase online. The majority of those use Google.
You should probably submit your site to at least the top three search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. There are others you might consider as well. In addition to submitting your site directly to the search engine, getting a link back to your site from one or more popular social networking or community sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Squidoo, will result in faster indexing as these sites are spidered more frequently than regular sites.
Email, used by over 95 percent of all Internet users, is the ideal tool to advertise your Website. You certainly don't want to spam people but you can target your email to past customers (did you sell previously on eBay?) or to lists of people who have requested to hear more about the kinds of things you sell. An email marketing campaign is easy, inexpensive and quick. It tends to get better response then traditional direct mail promotions.
Using an auto responder lets you automatically reply to email requests. By setting up a topical mail form on your website you can provide specific information to your customers instantly.
Consider these elements when designing your website. If you already have a website consider adding any of these now. They are basic, easy to implement, powerful concepts that can lead to more sales.