Running an Online Business Is Much Like Running an Offline Business

By Stephanie Foster

When most people look at their online business, they see all the differences between it and an offline business. Online businesses are cheaper to run most of the time, for example. You usually don't have much direct contact with customers, and it's easier to run a small online business by yourself than it would be to run a similar sized business offline alone.

Despite the differences, there are many things that are true for your business no matter where you run it.

1. You must offer something that interests your niche.

There's no point in offering a product or service that no one is interested in. It doesn't matter where you run your business.

Online businesses can, however, often target a smaller niche than an offline one can. Online you're pulling interest from a larger area, which is much to your advantage.

2. Good customer service matters.

When a customer needs your help, especially if it's a problem with their order, you need to pay attention to their needs. It shows when you don't care about your customers, and word gets out.

The internet has made this particularly true for all businesses, online and off. If a customer has a problem and you just ignore it, you don't know who all they're going to tell. Might be a few friends locally; might be their thousands of friends and followers online. Even someone without a large following can post a complaint that people will find when researching your business online.

Complaints posted online are really hard to hide. They don't just go away in a short time. A complaint from years ago may still be pulled up in an online search.

3. Success is hard work.

Too many people start online ventures thinking that success will come easily. For the vast majority, that's simply not true. Success with an online business is most often the result of years of hard work. It only looks instantaneous when it hits a sudden increase in visibility.

This is true in all kinds of business. Offline, you could compare this to starting a business in a major mall. There's lots of foot traffic already in the mall, but if there isn't something about your store that draws customers in, you aren't going to succeed. You have to do the work online or offline to appeal to your niche market.

4. Marketing matters.

Some people have a rather... interesting... view of online marketing. That's why there's so much email spam, spammy forums posts and spammy blog comments. People take the view that any attention to their site is good, no matter how bad it makes you look to potential customers.

Certainly there's some benefit to getting links from other sites, but forum links and blog comment links tend to be pretty weak. They may have some benefit with search engines, but spammy comments and posts make you look bad to customers who see them and get an impression of unprofessional behavior.

This is why, just as with offline business, it's vitally important to do a good job with your marketing. Make your business the one people want to go to. Stand out in a positive way.

Blog commenting and forum posting is better used as a way to build relationships, not just for links. Show yourself as an expert and these are less likely to be a waste of your time. You also won't lose so many posts to spam filters.

Stephanie Foster offers more tips at Home With the Kids about owning an online home business. Learn more about running an online home business at http://www.homewiththekids.com/home-business/running-home-business.php

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E-Commerce Website Development - An Approach To Enhance Your Business

By Abhimanyu Sharma

Use of Internet is increasing exponentially and it has created a class of buyers with great potential. If you want to exploit this opportunity you should have your own Internet presence. You can assure your online presence through website, a website for your business, called e-commerce website. There are reasons that people prefer online shopping instead of visiting brick and mortar store. First of all they don't have to do exercise to find the appropriate store and they additionally save their fuels. There are limited options in case of brick and mortar store while on the online purchasing you can visit any store which may not belong to your country means your reach would be world wide. You don't have to carry your goods and online store do shipment at your door.

Developing e-commerce website is not an easy task you should take help of professional e-commerce website designer to develop professional e-commerce website. This professional website designer will take care of your site navigation. You will have your expected products or services within few clicks. You can navigate for categories easily. You can search your product with the help of search function. You can add to cart your product on any page and at anytime for that you need not to go for shopping cart page. You will have as many as possible payment options as shopping cart is boast with all possible payment gateway options. Your e-transactions are secure enough.

Your e-commerce website should be search engine friendly means it should have all Meta tags needed. Its images have alt tags so search engines can find them easily. Your web pages should generate search engine friendly URLs. This way you can get maximum traffic from search engines and your business will develop at infinite rate. E-commerce website development take care of landing pages because landing pages are more important to create your first impression. Brand management is vital in any business so e-commerce website development take care of your branding effort and give unique experience of branding. Customer satisfaction should be ultimate goal of your business and it should be reflect in your e-commerce website development.

You should use standard CSS so your development would be with latest technologies. You should use clean code so maintenance would be easy at later stage. Your e-commerce websites development should be cross platform means it can run with any OS and should be cross browser compatible means it can run on any browser. You must optimize the images so your website can load faster.

Abhimanyu Sharma is eCommerce website developer
at IndiaNIC - a leading top outsourcing eCommerce website development firm present quality and cost effective web site design development services across the globe. For any queries related to eCommerce website email us at enquiry@indianic.com.

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Finding a Host That Fits Your Business

By Noel Agnote

Once you have already decided to launch a website for your business the next important task to do is to find the company to host for your E-commerce site. A good company will make a big difference in how the website performs, how frequent it goes down, the service provided and how quickly a customer can take action through the information on the site. Most of the time when a website is hosted with a poor service, it discourages the customers to seek for their service because the website is too difficult to explore.

It is important when selecting the right company to employ in hosting for e-commerce that you take into consideration several factors that will directly affect how powerfully the site works for your business. The first is bandwidth. For a company just starting out this may not seem too important, but as the business grows, it will become more and more important that you have sufficient bandwidth so that numerous customers can access the site at the same time. In addition, realize that your site is most likely sharing its bandwidth with the other customers that hosting company has. If they have more customers than their bandwidth will support, all the sites on that service will be slow.

The hosting company should also provide good support to you while you are setting up your site and as long as you use it. Do they respond promptly to your calls and issues that arise? Are they friendly and helpful? Do they recognize your account or are you an anonymous user to them that has to go through account verification every time?

It is very important that they have an open communication with you. It is important that they take prompt actions in case you have questions or problems about the technicalities of your website.

An important factor in hosting performance has to do with how many sites they allow per server. Are they packing thousands of sites into each server to maximize their resources while increasing the likelihood that your site will crash or be slow?

Finally a good hosting for E-commerce Company will actually have experience with credit card transactions. They can advise you on how best to accept credit cards online, how to secure the transactions and how to ensure that your customer's data is never compromised. PCI compliance is an essential part of transacting business online and a good hosting company will know how to help you be PCI compliant.

Learn more about the ins and outs of web development and get higher profit from your business or company websites. For more information, please visit Web Design Santa Barbara.

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How Do I Ship My eBay Item?

By Margaret Ross


Many eBay entrepreneurs and other small business owners increase their profitability by offering to ship items for customers. When doing this, it is important to properly package those items. If the product arrives damaged, the sale is lost. Whether to use corrugated shipping boxes or flat ones is a necessary and important decision.

The kind of box is a factor which could also affect the shipment of the item to the customer. Corrugated shipping boxes are a good option since a corrugated boxes will add extra protection and "shock absorbency" to the box and thus more protection to the item. Ultimately, the a thicker shipping box works best for items that need more protection and the flat shipping boxes or a padded mailer works best for items which are neither unbreakable nor fragile.

Steps for Packing Your eBay Customers, Shipping Box

The kind of item to be shipped and where it is going is determinant of how to ship it.

Shipping Like An eBay Pro Check List

1. The kind of corrugated box needed and the size is a good way to start. Once the box is gathered, it is important to pack the box properly.

2. If the item is fragile with any possibility of damage or breakage during the shipping, extra care is required in packing the item.

3. Bubble wrap is a great packing material to use as protection for the item from any damage during shipping. Also lining the bottom of the box and the top of the box with newspaper or Styrofoam peanuts is another protection for the item.

4.Packing the item in the box tightly is another essential step in maintaining that the shipment will arrive unscathed.

5.Include a professional packing slip. Free templates for packing slips are available online. 5. The final step to packing boxes for shipping is the sealing of the box securely.

Packaging tip: Make sure your box passes the "rattle test." Gently shake the box. If you can feel or hear the item moving, add more packaging material.

A clear heavy-duty packing tape is all that is needed to properly and securely seal the box at top and bottom. Nothing more is required. Moreover, many times the postal service will not accept a package with the incorrect tape on the outside of the box. Once the box is sealed, it can be weighed in order to determine the amount of postage or fee that will be needed in order to ship the package.

Options on mailing are also available. The package can be sent through the USPS in a variety of ways, media mail, first class, priority, or express mail, or the package can be sent through UPS or FedEx. However the package goes to the customer, packaging it properly is important. In this way, the customer will be pleased not only by the product they have ordered, but that it came to them undamaged.

Doing the shipping correctly will increase chances of a repeat order. Mastering packing, communicating with packing slips, and shipping like a pro should be part of all small business marketing plans.

Margaret Ross is president of Visible-Strategies Communications, a leading Small Business Marketing Consultancy and founder of the Kamaron Institute, kamaron.org. An award winning speaker and author, Margaret Ross is a frequently featured guest on America's top radio shows.

For additional small business marketing strategies and ideas visit Visible Strategies blog at visible-strategies.com and click Contact Us.

2011 Copyright Margaret Ross. World-wide rights reserved

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Five Quick and Dirty Tips to Get More Ecommerce Sales Immediately

By Jean C Park

Whether you're a newbie to the world of ecommerce or already have a store running, you could probably use a few of these tips right now to help get more sales. Fantastic ecommerce copywriting can make a big difference, but there's more to it than that.

Ecommerce and selling goods and services online is an exploding trend. Just last year, Forrester Research predicted that "e-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales."

Did you know that 44% of computer, apparel and consumer electronic sales in 2009 were made solely online as well? These numbers are only going to go up!

Take advantage of the trend and get a presence on the web. If you already have one, follow the tips below!

1. Maximize any SEO you can afford up front
Start-ups with a low budget may not be able to afford thousands a month on PPC ads out the gate, but there are definitely ways to use free SEO tactics to expose more potential buyers to your website.

• Make sure you utilize the META tags for each page with your keywords.
• Use friendly URL's like yourdomain.com/category/product/.
• Sign up for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools and use them.
• Use XML sitemaps and robots.txt.
• Use alt text for your images, and H1-H6 tags with your keywords.
• Take advantage of free social media marketing like Facebook and Twitter.
• Write articles about your expertise or store products and submit them to article directories.

2. Web Usability is Queen
Web usability simply means making a website or page easy for visitors to use. Remember, "don't make them think!" The more options or the harder it is for them to get around and find what they need, the sooner they'll leave. This is especially important when they first enter.

• Use the KISS method - keeping things simple will make it easier to use your store. This can and should include the design.
• The three-clicks rule still exists! Remember, customers are there because they're looking for something specific. Don't make it hard for them to find (and buy) it.
• Clearly marked categories and navigation bars are crucial.
• Even more crucial are easy to see Add to Cart buttons and a way to checkout without an account.

3. Security, security, security!

With all the stories out there about hacking and vulnerabilities, customers need to be reassured that their personal info is safe, and that your store is on lock-down and secure.

• Invest in an SSL certificate if you plan to take any sensitive customer information via your store. They're the things that add the little padlock at the bottom of your browser.
• Ensure your store meets PCI-compliance.
• Programs like HackerProof install "trust marks" to alleviate customer concerns about security and gain their confidence.

4. Entice a sale with a discount or deal
Admit it; we all love a great deal. So do your customers! This is a fantastic incentive for first-time buyers, and an even better one for returning buyers. Giving the latter discounts such as free shipping or a percentage off one of your categories every so often will encourage more sales.

Be careful not to give them out too often - you want to entice the hesitant newcomers and keep the older ones interested, not have them solely rely on a discount to buy.

• Make sure your ecommerce platform can easily support coupons and discounts. Ask your developer or provider if you're not sure.
• Free Shipping is the most popular (and one of the most successful) discounts - try to use it! It can even work on specific products or categories, such as ones that don't sell too well.
• If your products are digital, the above won't work. Instead, try specials that extend the time they get to download your product.
• Adding freebies to digital products are easy and can promote more sales. Again, ask your developer if you're not sure how.
• BOGO deals are great, but not all carts can support this. If you're willing to put in a bit of elbow grease, there may be workarounds to it.

5. Encourage visitors and buyers to opt-in to your newsletter
It may sound a bit odd at first, but let me explain. A Newsletter is the easiest form of marketing there is - email marketing. People opt in because they choose to (hopefully). So, you can use this common medium to communicate and remind them of your shop!

It's especially effective when you use it to inform them of new products or once discontinued products being added, have promotions (see number 4) or just a friendly reminder that 'hey, this is XYZ Shop thanking you for opting in! Oh, by the way, the shop's newly restocked so come take a look!'

So, there they are - 5 quick and dirty tips to get more sales immediately! Utilize just one and you should see an improvement, but all 5 would be even better!

Jean Park is a freelance writer in Southern California who does SEO copywriting, web content, article writing, proofreading and much more. She also writes about various topics such as ecommerce, Korean culture, pop culture, geeky things, video games and relationships. You can find her at http://www.rainbowrite.com.

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