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By 2004 Forrester Research, Inc. estimates that business-to-business commerce on the web will hit $2.7 trillion. It's true that the web can be a highly profitable venture, but without careful planning, your business may flounder before it ever makes money. Following these seven steps can help you plan a cohesive strategy before you sell your first product. Identify Your Internet Business- Ask yourself why customers would come to your web site. Is it an extension of your bricks and mortar store? Or will it be a stand-alone operation? What can you provide that no one else can? Of what value is your site to customers? Even if you don't sell online, you need to answer these questions. Customers don't always come to a web site to buy products. Sometimes they come for information. Tell them about the products you sell, give them your store hours and phone number, provide a map so they can find your shop. Even though you haven't sold them anything, you've given them value. Customers will come back to your site if you provide value. Create a well designed, easy-to-use, fast, and functional web site- Your web site should have a clean, straightforward design. Customers don't like busy, cluttered web sites. A customer should be able to find a product in two mouse clicks. Any more and they feel like they're being led through a maze. Or worse, they may lose interest and leave. Keep the graphics and text simple and small. Animation and sound files can be interesting, but don't force customers to view these items in order to buy a product. There are many options for managing orders. The most popular way to manage orders is through shopping cart technology. The customer goes through the site and picks items s/he wants to buy. At check out, s/he fills in billing details and purchases the items. Building a shopping cart requires programming knowledge or a software package that can manage the behind the scenes work. Can customers pay online with a credit card? They increasingly like the convenience of this. The order is placed quickly and they receive an instant confirmation receipt. However, your store must be enabled to accept online credit card purchases. This requires both a merchant account that accepts online orders and an electronic gateway that facilitates the transaction. Select the right domain name- A domain name is an extension of your store. It is the first thing people learn about the store, so the name should be relevant to the business. If you own a store or a brand name, this should be the domain name as well. Many single words have been registered as domains already. New domain names can be up to 67 characters long, so choose a combination of words that describes your store. Post your site to a trustworthy web-hosting provider- Your site is effective only when people can see it. If your web site is inaccessible, you can't do business. Use a web-hosting provider that guarantees a high level of service. They should have daily backups and redundant systems. A good provider gives you access to web statistics. Statistics can tell you where customers are coming from, what they look at and what lead them there in the first place. Because you are dealing with sensitive information, your provider should use state of the art security to protect your site from hackers. Promote your web site- Promote your site every chance you get. Search engines are a great way to do this because they bring in a target market. Add relevant keywords and a description to the metatags and then register with the search engines. If you are unfamiliar with metatags, some software packages will help you add them and submit your site to search engines. Put your web site on your business cards, print it on receipts, put a sign in your store window, tell people you've started a website. A link exchange is useful. Make sure your links are relevant and compliment your site. Place ads in papers or trade journals targeting your audience. Write a column for a local newspaper. Offer a free web seminar at a library. Go where your customers go. Stay informed about your web site- Provide a form or an email address so customers can include comments. What do they want from your web site? Are they complaining about the pages or images? Can they order the products they want? Can your server handle the web traffic? Web statistics can provide important information. You may be getting a lot of visitors, but very few orders. Look at your site from a customer perspective and review the tips about web design. Change your business based on the information you receive and know- Customer feedback is like a free business consultation, if you know how to use it. Even angry letters can serve a purpose. When customers take the time to give you feedback, the underlying message is "We want to order from you, here's how you can let us." Pay attention to their comments and give customers what they want.
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