For some reason many people have the mentality that creating a website to sell a product or service online is easy.
Whether they have received this advice from an internet marketing seminar telling them they will make thousands almost overnight, or have read about the online stores reaping in huge profits.
People hear about the billions that are being made online by Google, Facebook and other mainstream sites and somehow build up the picture in their head that the information super highway known as the internet is paved with Gold.

I agree wholly that there certainly is a lot of money to be made online, just as there is with creating any successful business.
Take Coca-Cola for instance, they make hundreds of millions every single day, so why not set up a soft drink company? Because it is extremely hard work!
There are reasons businesses success, both in the traditional form and the online form, and this all comes down to a few key ingredients

The 7 Most Important Factors to a Successful Online Business

1. If you’re planning an online business, you need a business plan!
This sounds so stupidly obviously, but the fact is almost 70% of all websites and blogs have no plan in place, and the major reason online businesses fail within the first 12 months, most times, even quicker.
If you plan on setting up an online business, treat it like a real business. You don’t just suddenly wake up one day and think ‘I might open a shop today!’, and then go purchase a shop and fill it up and sit there until someone walks in the door. this approach would lead to failure within the first month!
A website is no different. Your goal is to make a profitable business online, so plan it out like a business. Think about everything involved in setting up a standard business and pretty much the same will apply for a website.

Firstly you need the basics. A business plan to work out a realistic timeframe, investment costs for the development for the website, hosting and domain name registration, etc
Work out the initial timeframe to get online and then set your goals for 3 month, 6 month, 12 month, 2 year plan, and then every 6 to 12 months after so you can review your website. internet technology moves at a faster pace than traditional business, so any advantage you might have over a competitor can lead to a much healthier income for you.

2. Researching your niche.
Before racing off with the brilliant idea of unleashing your business online, always do market research first. This could save you a lot of money or even possible failure online.
The internet is full of businesses trying to make a success of online business ventures. Some do succeed, and very well too, but others fail purely because they forgot to look at the marketplace first and check out their competition.
Always check who your main competitors are, their target audience, what they are selling and for how much. If they are selling the same as you, work out a plan that you can out-sell them. A smart bit of marketing either in the initial stages of the design of your website or your marketing can make all the difference.

3. Plan your website development
Many people take the totally wrong approach when planning their website, and base everything on getting their website built for the cheapest price possible.
Many people are shopping around offshore to India, Malaysia and Pakistan to find web developers that will work for $9 to $15 an hour. Now I’m not saying you won’t get a quality job done for this rate as I have many friends that are web developers in these countries, but finding the good web developers amongst the bad ones is hard and time consuming. You might also find it could cost you more than you initially budgeted if you don’t spend a lot of time working out exactly what you want the site to achieve, and how it functions, and then can successfully relay this information to your new developer. And remember, there is always a chance that if you require any updates to your site in 12 months the developer of your site may have moved on to a different company, which could end up costing you much more on re-development costs rather than a simple job from a local web developer you know. So this is something important to keep in mind before basing the website purely on getting the cheapest job possible. Like anything often you get what you pay for. If you get $9 an hour labour don’t always expect a million dollar job.

4. Functionality
As I mentioned in the past 2 points, keep functionality in mind when planning your website before rushing in and getting your website built. Some simple smart thinking can be the difference between success and failure online.
Talk to a professional web consultant and also review other successful websites of the major companies in your trade and look at what they do to achieve online success.
For example, just small editions to your site such as a mailing list form so people can subscribe to your mailing database can turn into thousands of dollars every year on email marketing up-sells. Adding social media buttons for Facebook and Twitter can not only spread your online brand like wildfire, but have people recommending, ‘liking’ and tweeting about your products to their friends which will almost definitely return sales for you.
These take a web developer only a few minutes to add but can make you thousands of dollars. Unless you are a web developer yourself, don’t try and plan, or worse, build your website yourself, Spend an hour or two with a real consultant who understands social media and online marketing techniques, not just web development.

5. Branding
There are so many ugly websites online! These websites are representing your business, your product, and most importantly – you!
If your website looks like a steaming pile of shite it sends out the message that you don’t really care about your business brand, your products you sell or your clients, and you will probably turn away more people than make sales.
think about all the successful brands both online or offline, not think about their branding. Most you will be able to automatically visualize their logo in your head, or their slogan, jingle or catchy tune on their advertising.
This is smart branding and smart marketing, and a good part of their success.
If you don’t have a professional looking logo, go get one! A professional logo doesn’t have to cost the earth, and a good logo designer will provide you with a visual style manual of your logo upon completion, providing you with full ownership of your logo, plus provide the logo in all the different formats you require and details of colours used, etc so your logo will always remain consistent at all times no matter what the medium it is being used in, web, advertising, tv, signage, etc. If your logo designer didn’t provide all this, ask for it. You need it and it saves you money getting it redone later.
The more professional your online business looks, the more trustworthy you appear and the more confident the customer is in handing over their hard earned money for your services or product.

6. Marketing Budget
Probably the most important aspect of any business, yet people never seem to leave enough dollars for marketing.
People often tend to think you can just throw a website up onto the internet and it will have people flooding your website with wads of cash in hand. Unfortunately this is not true.
You need to have a marketing plan in place before even building your website, and more importantly have the money available. Put aside some cash for launching the website, allowing for spending on Google Adwords, Facebook ads or pay for links and hits just to build up the traffic to your website. Maybe even look at buying spots on some website directories with banner advertising. Also do the traditional marketing of flyers, business cards and even radio and tv just to get your business name out there until you get found easily on the search engines. But also plan every few months to do a few campaigns, some email marketing and other savvy marketing to keep drawing in fresh crowds, and get the old customers back again.

7. Creating a Mailing List
If you have a tight marketing budget, the number one way to attract and retain customers online is through a mailing list. By simply adding a mailing list on the homepage of your website, or even throughout the entire website, can see you gathering a list of potential clients you can market to in the future.
But if you are going to do this, do it properly! Use an email marketing system such as Aweber, Constant Contact or iContact, create your email templates and automate emails that will send out to new signups while they are a fresh hot lead, then set the system to send new campaigns on a timed basis of say every 3 weeks or so. This keeps your brand awareness up and the potential to make additional sales.
Getting people on your mailing list is easy if you dangle a ‘carrot’. Add a special offer, like a 10% discount coupon code if they subscribe, a free downloadable e-guide, or to really attract them, a real valued giveaway. Giving away something might cost you a few dollars initially, but the returns will outweigh the costs fast.

Author: Chris Bourke of WebSEOCoach.com and Devision Design Australia

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