Are you going to open the store and wait for the customer to walk in?

Taking a business online does not guarantee success more than opening a store and waiting for your customers to walk right through the door. You must identify your customers. There should be a marketing effort. You have to determine customer needs and then develop methods of producing appropriate services and products.

Ask these questions and find answers to them first.
Who are my possible customers?
What do my customers need?
Where are my customers located?
What motivates my customers to buy?
When do my customers buy?

You need to identify marketing trends. You have to change with the changing environment and be prepared to change accordingly.

Branding your product or service is very important. People trust branded product or service than a product or service without proper branding.

Improve your customer awareness of your business by the appearance of your website and its association with desirable traits such as great prices and neat content.

Offer free stuff like e-books, software and offer something free if the customer purchases an item for a certain value. You can also offer gift certificates, prizes and free samples. For items like software, free trial versions will be very effective. But keep in mind that software must not effect other applications in the customer’s computer. Your customer will not return to you if that happens.

Provide how to information, and easy to use help

Ask customer feedback and suggestions about how to improve your service.

Create products designed to customer specification.

Offer an e-newsletter.

Provide each customer with an individual shopping experience.

Maintain a good and friendly relationship with your customers.

Customers will start to walk in through your door if you make the right effort. I wish you the best with your website.

Storefront services

Storefront services provide you with a number of services including software to build an online store instantly in your browser using onscreen instructions, Website building software, e-mail, transaction processing and Web hosting. Some of these services are so simple that you do not need special technical knowledge. Storefront services provide you with online tools such as selecting a suitable template for your website and also you can enter information about your products and services and select the products you want to sell. You can select payment and shipping options as well. These services may charge you with a set up fee and a monthly fee for hosting your storefront. Notice the storefront services provided by smallbusiness.miva.com. and merchandizer.com

To host and create a store using a storefront hosting service, you will have to complete a series of forms. You can create a serviceable online store in few hours if you have products to sell and can supply all the information about your company that the storefront service requires.

Once you have set up the store, you can do website maintenance such as editing and adding new content and pictures to your store using your browser. Your activities may depend on the plan you purchase. You can select plans which will suite you the most.

As payment options, you might not need to obtain a merchant account depending on the service you select. Some services provide you payment options as well as their services. These storefront services are ideal for small business people. You do not have to be a computer geek to perform changes in your store front.

The main disadvantage of using some storefront hosting services is the lack of design flexibility. In addition, not all services can be easily customized to meet the specific needs of every business.

MIVA Merchant, with Store Morph Technology™, provides you with Powerful Store Design Tools, Catalogue Management, Inventory Tracking and Product Merchandising, Order Processing and Customer Management, Shipping Calculation and Payment Processing, Data Access and Storage, Affiliate Programs and Marketing Services, Easy-to-Use Administration Tools, Modular Architecture and also Documentation and Support. This again depends on the plan you purchase.

Merchandizer.com also provides you with rang of services for a monthly fee that varies on the plan you select. They provide you with Setup Features, Customer Support Functionality, Store Room & Inventory Controls, Store Interface Features, Promotions, Order Management, Customer Management and Product Management. They provide you with different shopping cart solutions, and their Digital goods support enables merchants to sell non-physical items such as software, documents, graphics, or any product or service that does not require shipping.

These are two services I have noticed as good service providers. But you can select the service provider according to your requirements.

What is the most important?

Hi friends, I am a bit busy these days. I am trying to write at least two articles a week.
For the present, I would like to ask three questions. These questions will be important to you in your work and everyday life including business. Please write your answers in the comments area. This is not a challenge; I just want to know your answers. Please feel free to answer these questions

1) What is the most important time?
2) Who is the most important person?
3) What is the most important thing to do?

My good wishes will always be with you.

Preparing to go online

Always we talk about marketing and planning sticky websites. But before you set up an online store of any kind, you need to access internet and obtain a web host. If you are doing serious business you cannot depend on public computers. You have to have your own computer system. There are Internet Service Providers, (ISP) to connect your computer via a cable or telephone line to Internet. Secondly, you need to find a web hosting provider to store the pages of your website for users to access. Your website services depend on the web hosting provider you select. It is very important to do primary research before you choose one.

An Internet Service Provider (ISP) connects your computer to the Internet. ISP provides you with an e-mail address and limited or full features of the Internet depending on the plan you purchase. Some plans are for limited downloads and limited services. Other plans include unlimited access. If you are doing serious business, unlimited access is the best plan you should choose.

Web hosting company that hosts a web site is a ‘web hosting provider’. You can select your ISP to host your website or select a different company to be your web host. Most Internet Service Providers give you limited amount of storage for your files that make up a website. But they do not provide you with necessary e-commerce facilities. You can set up a free website with a free web hosting service such as Free Server. But again you will not be allowed to conduct business on these free websites. They are limited in space and you might be allowed to have only two pages. It is advisable to select a web host carefully. It may depend upon what you really want to do with your website and the facilities your web host allows you according to their different plans. For example, Network Solutions describes the different plans that are available with them. You can select the plan according to your need.

Using web hosting services, you can create you web pages and upload them to your website using your computer. Your website is stored on the server, (web hosts computer) and connected to the internet. FTP is the commonly used protocol for exchanging files over internet. There must be two computers involved, your server (Web host), and your computer (Client). Once connected, you can do a number of operations such as uploading files to the server and downloading from the server including renaming and deleting files using your secure code. A full web hosting service will allow you to use CGI scripts. CGI script is a custom written common gateway Interface used in connection with other computers such as ordering information. Many web hosting services also provide multiple e-mail accounts, Shopping carts and a secure server to handle credit card processing. They also provide you with web page templates so that you can quickly create your own site. Other advantage of having a web hosting service is that you can have access to technical support when you need it.

Some companies with technical and financial resources, host their own website because they need high volume transactions. They also have sufficient staff to maintain their entire system.

E-Commerce Challenges

Although most companies are anxious to develop an e-commerce strategy, they also have to be informed about possible pitfalls. There are both advantages and disadvantages in e-commerce.

Challenges faced by most web developers are creating a website that would keep the customers on the site until they make a purchase. If the Website is difficult to navigate, products are not described well, and Forms are not easy to fill out. Links are broken, pictures take too long to load or have disappeared; harder it would be to keep the customer. A website that keeps the potential customer entertained is called a sticky website.

Although starting involves some expenses, a brick and mortar store will benefit from a user friendly website and the website will gain recognition to the business not only locally, but round the world. It will be open 24 hours a day and every day. Online presence is an advantage for any business to be recognised.

Traditionally many businesses operate as middle men between a business and the consumer. Agents, brokers, and sales representatives are all examples of middlemen. Authority of these middlemen are fast being made obsolete because consumers can go directly to a company’s web site and purchase products and services without help from an agent or other intermediary (disintermediation).

Intermediation is not going to finish yet. While traditional intermediaries are made obsolete, a new kind of cyber intermediaries that could not have existed before the internet has immerged. Cyber intermediaries include auction sites, payment – processing sites, and web site store front services.

When a website displays a Buy it! Button and a customer clicks on the button, credit card information is processed by an online processor company and the vendor pays the processing company a transaction fee. This is a Cyber intermediary

For E-Commerce, There is no world wide standard established yet. From a vendor’s point of view, a website is an advantage to advertise worldwide. A website can reach narrow market segments regardless of location. E-transactions can reduce costs related to processing orders. Internet presence can streamline business operations by incorporating business to business transactions and form virtual communities.

High start up cost is a disadvantage. Difficulty of keeping data current and upgraded can be another disadvantage; this becomes more when there are few available trained employees. E-Commerce transactions are sometimes difficult to combine with current systems. Language barriers might cause difficulty in doing transactions. Government tax regulations are different from country to country, and it always is confusing. Identifying a world wide standard is the main solution to these problems.

Tips to enhance your sales on eBay

There are certain criteria that will increase your popularity as a good seller. To get there it takes time and dedication. There are certain tips and tricks in the web to enhance your sales. If you follow these tips you will be able to win your customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is your key to success. These tips and tricks are as follows.

Take a good picture
A good quality picture can enhance your sales. Better the quality, better chance for a sale. Before uploading the image, take a look at it and ask yourself if I see this picture listed, will I be tempted to investigate? A good picture is one thing that will start earning the trust of your customers.

Clearly list the item
Describe the item in short sentences. Use bullet points. Do not make your bullet points into paragraphs. This will confuse the customer and draw attention away. Use bold and underlining only when necessary.

Be truthful and state the condition of the item clearly
Your customer will always trust you once satisfied. If you are selling an item that includes additional accessories, be sure to mention that. If you are selling software or related product, make sure you describe in what type of programmes it is compatible with. Always keep your tone positive and buyers will trust that their business with you will be positive.

Clearly state your terms and conditions
Always state your return policy. If your policy is no returns, put that in your return policy. Always win your customer by stating the truth. Do not hide anything. State the payment method. If your price includes the shipping cost, say no shipping cost. If you have not included the shipping cost, state that shipping cost will be added. And include a shipping cost calculator of some kind so that your customer will not get a shock when they see the final cost.

Include a currency calculator
A currency calculator is very helpful to calculate the actual amount a customer will be spending on his or her currency. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and sure you will be really happy and confident to do a purchase.

Include shipping details
As described above; include the shipping cost, include the carrier that you are willing to use and describe whether you wish to insure the item or not.

Be flexible on payments
Always make sure that you provide multiple options of payments like PayPal, Cheque, Money order, Credit card and any other methods at your disposal so your customers will be at ease.

Careful packaging and shipping after payment
After making a sale, you have to maintain the customer’s faith. Developed customer faith will bring you sales many times and they will introduce others to your website also. Carefully pack the item and ship it as quickly as possible to reach the customer within the days promised. If your item is broken when it reaches your customer or you fail to deliver in time. This will be a disaster. Higher a good carrier and always take care in delivering the item.

Maintain a friendly relationship with your customer
When dealing with customers, you must always make sure that you send polite e-mails and your communication with the customer is maintained in a friendly manner. Buyers that have good buying experience will leave a positive feedback. Buyers who have had poor buying experience with you will leave a negative feedback and they will never buy from you. So be careful and always maintain a friendly relationship with your customers.

Priority Considerations

Starting a business can be very exiting. A successful business will be a good accomplishment in your life. You need not work for someone else any more. With that excitement we tend to miss things that are essential in starting a business. Do not hurry. We all know the feeling of wanting to be there as quickly as possible. Before jumping to the water, you must consider some important things that you should not miss. Most businesses tend to fail because of simply not doing the initial preparations carefully.

It is important that you been able get approval from your bank for possible funding. Because you will need funding for your business sometime or the other, for very few people can do business without funding. Even if you do not need funding, you have to meet the tax and other requirements of the government and other relevant occupational bodies.

Finding the right business for you can be a daunting task. First you will have to organise some research relating to possible opportunities and make sure you can do it. Ask yourself the question can I do this? And what are my abilities when you find a possible opportunity.

Make a list of possible opportunities and check what are the ones that suite you the most.

You have to write your resume and check the relevance of your previous experience to the opportunity.

Are you familiar with the daily operations of this type of business?

Do you have the financial stability for this business? You will have to do some investments to achieve possible income goals.

Ask your self, will this opportunity be a profitable one? Some businesses are profitable only in certain environments and in certain times. How do these apply to your possible business opportunity?

Will you be happy doing this business? You have to consider your personal fulfilment.

What is the risk level and can you manage to face it in a difficult condition.

Will you have sufficient funds to overcome such a situation?

How many hours you need to work in order to succeed in this business?

These questions help you to select possible business ideas. From these business ideas if you have selected the business opportunities that will meet your target, now is the time to check the marketability of the product for each of these business ideas.

Considering your target market, what is the probability of your product being popular?

With the products competing in the target market, you will need to develop an image desired by your possible customers. Think of the possibility of achieving this.

Your product must be able to compete with the prices in the same niche market.

What can you do to keep your prices competitive? If the price is higher than the production cost; you will have no problem with this. If otherwise, you will have to minimise your production costs. And you have to consider how you are going to do this.

Prepare a budget for a set production goal.

How are you going to promote the product? You might need some expenses allocated for your marketing campaign.

Consider the possibility of the products demand in future too. Some products go down in demand with time. Read magazines and articles in relevant areas. Then you know the possibility.

What is the uniqueness of your product to your customers?

Do you have the possible equipment needed to start this project?

If you can afford the development and production of this product, it is worth while trying. The business idea that brings the highest possibility of all these criteria will be the likely business for you.

You have to consider funding, licensing, government rules and regulations.
Write a business plan. This plan should include all the above categories and how you are going to overcome possible situations and what will be the benefit of your business to you and the community. A well presented business plan will no doubt get the approval for funding.

Here we go for an ISP

A web site offers more advantages over other modes of marketing. You can change contents very easily and quickly without spending much money. Printing catalogues are more expensive. You can easily provide your customer with more information of your product or service through a website. You will be targeting your market all over the world and at the same time tracking your competitors. Through a website you can easily track results of your marketing efforts and decide what method is appropriate for your business the most. Your business can be open 24hours a day and 7 days a week. You can build and enhance your customer loyalty through a website more than you do otherwise.

Before setting up a web site think about your business and consider the types of customers you get. Do you really need a website? Do not go for a website because everybody tends to. Just think and sometimes you will be well off as a simple villager than a townsman. Some businesses do not really need a website.

There are number of ways to do business online as I have stated in my previous articles. You can use low cost methods of advertising such as e-mails, forums, free article submissions, setting up an auto responding service and so on. You can use an affiliate marketing program and register as a vendor. This is a very effective method of marketing your business via an army of affiliates and you are not given the facility to track your visitors. Best thing is you can use this free web space as yet another way of advertising your business.

Best way to successfully sell online, is to sign up with a web hosting service that provides site storage, shopping cart and various other services you can benefit from. You can find such web hosts from $9 and onwards according to services and space they provide.

Search for web hosting services to find the most suitable service for you. Investigate and inquire about rates, years in business the different modem rates they support, security features and all other services they perform. If you are going to sell products, see if the service provider offers features like electronic ordering. Do they provide daily reports and also customer feed backs.

This is the preliminary set up for your online selling. Design your website in a way that your visitors can easily navigate. Online selling will start afterwards. Here we go again.

Instant Messaging

MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Messenger, Skype and many other types of instant messenger tools have now become a powerful productivity enhancing tools for many enterprises. In a few years time these instant messaging tools will be used by employees and enterprises more than e-mails as a base of communication via Internet. Of course most of these messengers are free of charge.

Benefit of using messengers over e-mails is that your e-mail can be ignored by the recipient while instant messages take place in real time. They offer real time monitoring and participants can see who is online and who is away from the desk whether you are communicating internally or internationally.

There is no effective way of preventing spam e-mails, instant messaging tools allow users to customise their preferences and accept messages only from contacts. Sending and receiving messages take place in real time and also only after the recipient at the other end has agreed to receive the file. You can send files in a similar way to e-mail attachments here.

You can hold conferences over the web no matter where ever your contacts are. Instant messengers allow you to communicate using voice and video. You can invite your business contacts to participate in discussions at a set time and you will experience the real value of it. Conferencing this way is cheaper and very effective. This will save your telephone and travel costs.

These instant messages can be a wonderful tool for employees in a workplace. They can swap messages; ask questions in a collaborative team environment which is more effective than e-mail messaging.

The disadvantage is; one instant messenger is not compatible with the other. A better way of performing is downloading all of this software and using them with your contacts preference. You will find almost all of your contacts do the same. But in an office environment it is different. In an office environment one such software is used. These are ideal for small enterprises than a corporate environment. With the use of instant messaging, there is a possibility of transmitting viruses. It is advisable to ensure your virus protection software is up to date and overall security measures are taken and improved to work with your messenger tool. Yahoo! Messenger has advanced features such as encryption of messages, control of user access and advanced logging and archiving features.

When you use these tools you have to be careful that you do not provide your important information to anybody via instant messengers. Never include you credit card information, bank details and any passwords in your messages. Do not give any of your personal information that you do not wish the public to know. Choose a user name to identify yourself. Always customise your settings to accept messages only from your contacts. Keep your messages pleasant, short and to the point. Never use messengers for big decisions and agreements. If you are in business, always start your instant messaging software when you start your computer and set it as “busy” or “away” when you are not able to respond to messages.

Software like Yahoo! Messenger can be used by outsourcing businesses and freelancing. If you are a freelancer; you can talk with your client and set your working hours. If you are charging for the hours worked, Yahoo! Messenger can indicate the hours and your client can monitor you working on his or her project at a given time. If you tell your client, “I will be working on your project at this time of the day”. They know your hours worked is correct and you can develop their trust.

It is advisable send big decisions, important agreements and sensitive information via Fax, e-mails and letters than instant messaging.

Testing new methods

Success with an eCommerce website needs lot of thinking and hard work. No doubt advertising is expensive, and you can minimize this cost by link building, Writing articles and submitting them to websites with a link to your website. Affiliate programs and free services can generate huge amount of traffic to your website. Succeeding in this competitive environment is very difficult if your website is not well organized and intentional business creation. Your site should be organized exactly what you want it to be, what kind of visitors you want and what you want them to do. Every thing should be tested to attain maximum efficiency.

Consider how you can provide personal attention to each visitor. Let the visitor develop a unique experience in your website. You can provide free interactive forums in your eCommerce website, free e-books, questions and answers sections which will make the website more interesting to your visitors. Offer these services in return for registering. For e.g. name and confirmation email. This way you provide a service that can impress your visitors. The more value service you offer, the more willing people are to provide their information. Careful structuring can collect information about your registered users which would allow well targeted marketing campaigns. This is a reportedly good way of making friendly relationships with your visitors. Remember, more the visitor stays in your website, more chance of you being able to do a sale.

Always maintain a database of your customers with the purchases they make. This way you can know their personal interests and you can allow personalized purchase suggestions and special offers. It is always better to keep good contact with your existing customers than forcing new customers. Trust and faith of the existing customer is one of your very powerful assets.

It is very important to make it easy for your customers to find the product they desire. Provide a good search facility. Make sure that you have chosen good keys and descriptions. Check that the links from search results to pages work properly and easily.

Always test new methods to improve your chance of doing sales. With careful planning and attention to detail you will be able to make changes that will vastly improve the productivity of your website.