The first step to Internet marketing is the creation of your website. This will be your base of operations for all of your online marketing. From your website you will attain your name recognition, your database of customers for email marketing, and your advertisement revenue. Your website can be geared for e-commerce, a showcase for product, or an online service. These are the most successful internet ventures.
Initially, while your website is still in the idea stage, you must decide exactly what your website will do for you. While it is true that the first outline of most websites will be similar, the steps taken to customize your website must mirror the steps you took when designing your business plan. Better still, if you can create a plan for your website/online marketing concurrently with the plan for you business you are putting yourself in a prime position to succeed.
If you decide to gear your website for online purchases of your physical product then you will need to both showcase your product and provide a means to purchase directly from your website. Personally I suggest creating a separate bank account for any business transactions, regardless the size of your current enterprise. Once that is taken care of you must create your e-commerce system. Here are some easy steps to setting up your e-commerce system.
STEP 1: Identify Your Products
You will have to determine what you are going to sell online. The more products you have, the more your shopping cart will cost. You may only have one item, you may want to sell hundreds of items, or you may only wish to place your best selling items online.
STEP 2: Organize Your Products
If applicable, you should group your products into logical categories so customers can easily find what they are looking for. For example, if you were selling music you may wish to group titles in the following groups: country, rock, rap, pop, classical and jazz.
STEP 3: Photograph Your Products
The most effective way to share your products with clients is through pictures. If you want to sell, you'll need a digital image (preferably .jpg, .gif or .tif) of each product. If your photographs are sharp and clear, your website will look professional and customers will want to buy from you.
STEP 4: Receive Payment
You will need to decide how you wish to accept payment from customers. I suggest using pay pal, as it is the easiest to set up, and it does not require a fancy shopping cart program (which is usually pricey).
PayPal:
Sign up for Paypal Account
STEP 5: Ship Your Product
Unless you have a special preference, the cheapest shipping is going to be the united states postal service. They just released a new “Flat-rate box” promotion, which allows you to ship anywhere in the US for one price, which is very useful for the online business. All the USPS information on Flat rate boxes (Or other methods) can be found here:
http://www.usps.com/shipping/prioritymail.htm . Don't forget to include the shipping price into the pricing of your products.
When creating a website solely to showcase your product (This is usually reserved for things difficult to ship. For example: Real estate, Vehicle sales, basically any large big ticket items are included) the aesthetics of your website are your main concern. The appearance of your website should always be on your mind, but it will come directly to the forefront if you are trying to publicize your product. In this type of website your advertisements are going to have to be extremely calculated. Trading banner ads (Which will be discussed at length later in this series) will become important to bring motivated potential customers to your website. Your main goal in this type of website is to get your customers to contact you, so it is a great idea to post a bold link that states “CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION” in big bright shiny letters. While I am generally against it, this type of website can and is often expected to be flashy. Now, I don't suggest that you use cliché flashing pop-ups, but know what you're good at and over emphasize that point. For example, if you sell homes have the text of your heading bulge angularly in the center to create the semblance of a roof. Don't forget that flashy and busy are not the same thing. If your website is painful to look at or difficult to navigate you are going to drive away your customers in droves. While this is sage advice for any website it is doubly so for a showcase website. Making your product difficult to find will not do you any favors when trying to sell it!
An online service website can be many different things, from a blog to a multi-level marketing venture to a social networking website (Like Facebook). The creation of this style of website can be tricky. Your website will need suitable explanation, and more importantly publicity. Your online service can either be free or have a cover charge, but do not assume that because you offer your service for free that you will make less money. Just the word “Free” will increase your 'traffic' immensely, which will allow you to increase your ad revenue comparatively. Most commonly your advertisements will be your largest source of income for your online service website.
Your next step, now that you know what your website will be is going through the construction process. You have several choices when you are building your site. Typically business owners will contract both of the construction and maintenance to a web design company, but that is NOT the only option available to you. Taking a course and building your own website is a viable (and financially cheap) option. A third option is to hire a content management website company, and have them build your website. A content management website is a streamlined website with an easy to edit interface, which allows you to forgo the individual costs of each edit you may want to make to your spiffy new website. All of these methods are simple enough to put into motion, and if you follow these easy steps you will be well on your way.
Steps to Hiring a Web Design Company* :
● Produce a written plan of your website ideas.
● Get estimates from as many companies as you deem necessary (at least three).
● Make sure the cost per hour for website changes/edits are included in the estimate.
● Choose your company weighing both the quality of their previous work and cost.
Steps to Learning HTML & CSS to Create Your Own Website:
● Check into any local colleges for web design classes that fit into your schedule and budget.
OR
● Look online for free tutorials in the subjects your future website dictates you learn.
● Learn Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for optimum website design.
● Pay yourself. Keep track of your hours spent learning and working as if you were being paid whatever you believe you're worth, and if it becomes more expensive to pay yourself than it would cost to hire either a content management website company or a standard web design company it may be time to re-think your strategy.
● Remember to include the potential labor cost of future website edits.
FINAL STEP
● Put your brand new website to good use and START BEING SUCCESFUL.
*= These steps are the same for a content management website or a website from a standard web design company, with the exception of a higher monthly hosting cost for a content management site due to the easy to edit interface usually driving up the monthly price.
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