1. Virtual Office
   Your website provides your potential customers with a first impression of your business, similar to them actually coming to your place of business for the first time. It offers 24/7/365 availability, and customer support. A website for many people is a low pressure, time-efficient way of gathering pertinent information about your business, such as business hours, directions, contact method, and general product/service information.
2. Expanded Services
   With a professional site, you have the ability to offer your customers a whole range of additional services for their convenience, and ultimately your profit. Whether they be basic features like directions, and contact forms or more custom features such as application forms, progress reports, order tracking, weekly ads/coupons, client discounts, or weekly newsletters, these features provide for many small companies a whole new level of professionalism for a relatively low cost.
3. Enhanced Marketing
   Promotional websites offer a unique opportunity in marketing. A product or service can be fully expounded upon on a website much more than practically any other form of marketing. It is for this reason that websites are increasingly the intermediate goal for many other marketing campaigns. Many tv, newspaper, mail, and radio ads are referring their customers to their websites for more information. This tends to work better long term for sales, due to the inherently low pressure, information rich nature of the web.
4. Efficient Services
   Web based services can bring a critical element of efficiency to many small businesses. Communications can be simplified, and everyone is kept in the loop so much easier than with traditional memos, and time consuming conference meetings. You and your employees are then free to do what you’re there for – to make money. Online applications and forms for clients and prospective employees can reduce the time from request to implementation, further making your company look good.

“The plans of the diligent surely lead to profit; and everyone who is hasty surely rushes to poverty.”
Proverbs 21:5 (WEB)

Planning is the key to any successful venture, and e-commerce is no exception. This article will look at some of the key areas to plan for when getting into e-commerce. These areas include marketing, maintenance, shipping, and payment gateways. Naturally, this is not a comprehensive planning guide; just some ideas, and questions to get you started towards a good digital business plan.

Marketing

Products and services don’t sell themselves. Keep in mind that when you go online, you are then competing with every online retailer in the world! Welcome to the global economy. Sound depressing? Don’t worry, it’s not all that bad. Advertising on search engines are a good place to start. This gives you immediate visibility to people looking for your category of products.

Setting aside a certain amount every month for paid search advertising should be the first stage of any online marketing budget. As sales start to come in, it is advisable to start putting a percentage back into marketing. This contributes to the desired upward spiral in sales.

Putting links to your new site in your email signature, on your business cards, letterheads, and any print advertising you may do are all great ways to get the word out about your site. Never underestimate the value of local advertsing or word of mouth in driving business to your site.

Maintenance

Just like a local business, online businesses can take a lot of maintenance. Someone has to answer the phone, process and ship orders, add new products, remove discontinued products, deal with vendors, handle customer complaints, update sales, and manage advertising campaigns. Consider whether you have the time to do this yourself, or the funds to hire someone to handle it. Taking into account the time needed for even a small site, can prevent burning out or providing poor service to your customers when the workload becomes too heavy.

As most entreprenurs will anticipate, during the start-up stage, you will have a disproportionate amount of work compared to the level of sales. Many business experts recommend that you have the funds to maintain the business for one year, before you begin. Obviously, this is not always possible, but it is a good rule of thumb when it is possible. Many small businesses are lucky to break even the first year, and show a small profit the following year.

Shipping

“Many find it simpler to just offer free shipping on all, or most, of their products.”

How will you calculate your shipping costs? Your choices depend on your product lines, and your e-commerce software. Should shipping be calculated based on weight, dimensions, or price? What carriers should you offer, UPS, USPS, FEDex? What options for each carrier should be offered, Ground, Next Day? Do you ship orders internationally?

Many find it simpler to just offer free shipping on all, or most, of their products. This provides an added marketing bonus, since studies show that free shipping is extremely popular with customers. The key is to calculate what your average shipping cost will be for each product, and then increase the cost accordingly.

Regardless of your choices, no one shipping choice will be perfect in every situation. Shipping calculators don’t always calculate correctly, and adding a little to compensate for free shipping doesn’t always quite cover the true cost. The trick is to find the solution in which the cost averages out correctly over time.

Payment Gateways

How will you accept payment? Will you process credit cards manually? Will you accept C.O.D. or money orders. Will you use popular payment gateways like Paypal, or Google Checkout for your customers convenience? Choosing your payment gateway and understanding the charges with each is important when you’re trying to maximize your profits.

Debunking the Myths of Online Stores

Myth #1: “It’s easy”

Starting an online business is no different than starting a typical brick and mortar business. It takes planning, investment, time, and a viable product line. This is true even if you already have a brick and mortar business. In fact, if you do already have a local business or franchise, you should consider an online store to be exactly the same as opening another business location.

Myth #2: “It’s cheaper than opening a local store”

Nope. Unless you are prepared to build your own site, and do all the maintenance on it, you will have the expenses of hiring a competent developer to do all the work on it. If you will be doing all the work on it yourself, you have to consider the value of your time, as well as your opportunity cost. Either way, there can be significant cost involved in going online.

Myth #3: “You can just build it and leave it”

Perhaps this one needs some explanation. Many people think that if they can just get a good site built for them, then it will keep making them money without any more maintenance, updates, or expenses. This doesn’t work any better online than it does at brick and mortar store. Any good businessperson knows that any store that’s not improving what it’s offering, updating product information, keeping their store clean, fixed up, and fresh, offering sales, and adding new product lines, will eventually die off. A business that’s not growing and improving is bound to fail.

Myth #4: “If my site ranks high on major search engines, it will be successful”

If only this were true! The reality is that search engines are a very small part of a successful site. Even if someone finds you via search engines, it doesn’t mean they will buy from you. Factors such as poor site design, difficulty finding a specific product, bad splleing, and lack of good information/pictures, all make your site look like that run-down gas station down the road (the one you would never go into!).

“…and never discount the power of word of mouth, and small beginnings.”

You should also take into consideration that just because you have a good site, doesn’t mean it will rank high on the search engines. Every major search engines goes to great lengths to make sure that sites(even good sites) can’t manipulate their way into first place. Therefore, you must realize that your site will be competing against every other site in the world that is selling similar products. Your best marketing tactic, just like a local business, is to advertise in as many different ways as possible, and never discount the power of word of mouth, and small beginnings.

The point that I’m trying to drive home is that a website business is functionally identical to a brick and mortar store. The website itself is much like the building, and obviously a building does not a business make. A website is just the “container” for your business, and creating it without a solid business plan, or perhaps with unrealistic expectations, is a recipe for disaster. Good planning with some common sense is the best road to having a successful online business.