You have launched your online business and the internet is full of advice. However, there are four fundamental pillars of online business that can never be stressed enough.

Success of any business, especially internet based business, solely depends on certain basic principles. They can be listed as under:

1. Plan your marketing strategy before launching a product. Failing to plan is like planning to fail. Do some market research to find out suitable product/service that people are looking for. Some product demand may be local, some may be global. Does your product have a global market? Is your business poised to cater to the demand? For example customized tee shirts are in demand globally. However locally, people would like tee-shirts customized for their own teams. Plan your strategy. Do you have the resources to target all markets or will you start locally expanding to global markets later? Are the shipping costs feasible? Identify such groups of prospective customers by visiting different online forums. Get familiarized with the common keywords that people use. You may also visit your competitors’ website to find out the features of their products. Now you know the product or service in demand and you are ready to introduce a product better than your competitors’ products.

2. Get creative Your website is virtually your office or showroom. It should display ample sale-appeal to inspire your prospects to visit your site. It should describe the features of your product/service and how it can help them. Do the usual-emphasize on your credibility; add testimonials from your existing customers. You may add after-sales-service or some sort of guarantee to win your customers’ confidence. Your website should convey that your product or service is the best choice for your customers. But most important, it should involve visitors in a feedback-idea circle. Get your visitors involved like launching a 100th visitor coupon, a shipping discount to a certain area and so on. Your creative efforts will get written about and will result in publicity for you.

3. Be professional. Have a professionally designed website. It adds to credibility and this is the most important factor for building successful online businesses. Your website should be simple and customer-friendly. Internet users are impatient by nature and you have very little time to grab their attention. Get a professional and experienced web design company who can design and build your website based on latest SEO principles. Contents and keywords selection are main features that will attract your customers to visit your site.
         
4. Relevant Information. Don’t cheat on information. This is the one and only reason a person visits your website. Enrich his experience. Give him more than he imagined. Don’t promise something that you do not provide. Provide useful information on your website. Internet is a powerful media for getting information. Your website should furnish valuable information for your customers and other sites – by way of link back to your site. This will increase traffic to your website. It will improve your online business. If you get associated to different forums and social networking sites, you can share your views as an expert in your trade.       
                            
There is a lot more to internet business. This post on internet strategy for online businesses is worth a read.

Google does a googly and keeps changing its search parameters; SEO is no longer as predictable as before.

But, an online business is a survival business and to survive the fundamentals must be strong.

I was analyzing a few sites yesterday for the keyword “custom frames”. From the onset it was clear that the good old sites were at the top. But Surprise! Deeper analysis showed that the traffic to the ones at the lowly #5 and #7 were more than those at #2 and #3. How could this be possible? I did some research, could they be on #1 for dome other keywords?

No they were not.

So the logical deduction was that they were getting better referral traffic- either through some other site, WOM publicity or social media sites. What made others refer those sites?

The on-site analysis showed that the sites were well constructed and one could navigate them instinctively. This means that they were friendly. The first step in Great Customer Service! Their feedback section was easy. And it seemed that they were really incorporating those feedbacks.

There were no broken links, no ads popping up. No unnecessary pages and the checkout was easy.

To me it was a back to basics lesson. Search engine optimization has moved focus from customer experience to search engine experience. The only thing that this website did was to maintain their website very well. The rest followed.

Have you ever outsourced your website job only to find the website limp or worse? Many of you have. Jack Levisan a business friend of mine is totally against outsourcing any website work. He has an in house team to do it personally under his supervision. The last time he outsourced his website for routine maintenance work the outsourced company made a mess of it. He had to pay another company a huge amount to rectify his website. Jack is not alone. Lot’s of business owners have had the same experience.

Most website maintenance and design companies work on low profit margins per client and make their money by attracting volumes. In fact, many well known website companies outsource their work to smaller companies and make bigger margins. These small companies have low skill sets because they are not paying much to their staff.
So, low quality work is a natural outcome of this process.

Jack has an excellent website. It works well and he has become a success story. But friend don’t see him enjoying it. He is always supervising and overlooking xyz aspect of his business. He is never around for a drink or a tee or to a movie. His friends have moved on and he is not making new friends. I met him when a common friend told me that Jack was becoming maniacal.

When I met him he looked too harried and was not so pleased to meet me. Here’s a brief transcript of the conversation

Jack: I wish I could take you to lunch but I’m tad busy today.
Sangeeta: Sorry, we are going for lunch, we’ll take a grab and be back in 15. I’m sure your business can do without you for 15 minutes?”
….
Sangeeta: So, how do you spend your day? Do you still make those exquisite miniature landscapes. I still have the one you gifted to me on my wedding.

I hear Jack mumble that he longer had the time to be bothered with such things.

Sangeeta: Oh yeah, how do you spend your mornings then, are you working out?
Jack: No longer. Need to check mails and other stuff. My day begins very early.”
Sangeeta: How early?
Jack: 6 AM
Sangeeta: Phew!
…………
Sangeeta : Tell me, you are a success story now. Did you and Renita go to Bahamas on your dream vacation?

He looked stricken. They were on verge of a divorce.

It is hard to look at a miserable friend and leave him at it. I dug deeper. He was in office 15 hours a day!

Sangeeta: Jack, You are working too much. You need to give yourself some time. Your family needs you.

He said he could not. His business flourished because he was involved in all aspects.

Sangeeta: But look at others. They outsource their work to others.

It doesn’t work he fumed. “I had tried it early.”

But I knew it worked. I had done it myself.

Sangeeta: It does, you just need to do things properly.

Jack: What things?

Sangeeta: Verify the antecedents of the company you are hiring.

• Do they have quality control?
• How many years have they been in business?
• Talk to them over the phone or video conference with them?
• Get their background information from them and verify it online.
• Ask for testimonials.
• If a service is cheap, ask them how they manage it and why it is cheaper than other websites.
• Do they have a money back option in case you are dissatisfied?
• Look at their range of work, is it basic or is it a wide range?

Jack I’m sure you made a mistake in selection of the company. You can free yourself for 6 hours if you don’t manage this web thing yourself and outsource customer service.

I left after that. My 15 minutes with him were more than over.

I don’t know if Jack took my advice, but a common friend told me that he had met Jack and his wife in the Bahamas.

Moral of the story is that control and detailing can give you success but you’ll burn up. Delegation and outsourcing help to keep creativity alive within a company.

Fortunately Jack did not burn out.

Online markets revolve around search engines. Your competitor is optimizing their online business too. It seems like there is no longer a niche. The competition is intense and nerve racking.  So getting a target audience is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea.

The only way out of this competitive market is a killer campaign that will enhance your position in search engines. SEO services are not that important these days rather what holds importance is effective SEO techniques. Gone are the days when hiring a professional who could make your website search engine optimized, was enough. Today’s world calls for exclusive and successful SEO techniques.

Persuasive SEO content has been of prime importance in improving search engine results of a website. Search engines are fond of original and fresh content. By putting new content you ensure that search engines come to your website. If you add relevant and targeted keywords, you can get better search engine rankings. You would need a professional for assistance because these keywords should not be stuffed and should look irrelevant in the website. Apart from using apt keywords, other optimization techniques like text optimization, image optimization and flash optimization can be used. It is generally known as on site optimization techniques.

New trends in SEO include geographic optimization. It includes web pages that are apt for search engine rankings for users that look for services in a specific geographic region. Include your address in your website footer. Signup here at the mother of all search enginesà www.Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter

Social bookmaking is another trend that has been there for a while now. There are endless social media websites that can be helpful in improving link popularity. You will be able to get quality and focused traffic by doing so. Use of social bookmarking sites ensures that you are being read. So get your team into bookmarking your content!

Tweeting is a good SEO technique. You can capture your target market well by using twitter. Twitter provides valuable search engine tools that can help you find potential clients easily. Make use of keywords that represent your business and get a list of prospective consumers as your followers. You can start following them and there would be a lot following you too. Start posting information about your services and products once people start following you. This is a great way to create awareness about your brand while improving your search engine rankings. So get a Tweeter account today.
 
Here is a Case Study of how Twitter helped a small business owner:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/twitter-drives-traffic-sales-a.html

Here is something very interesting happened with the help of Twitter:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/08/06/travel.social.media/index.html

Videos get organic traffic to one’s site too. Now, marketers look forward to universal traffic. Websites these days need to contain more than just text- more content and even videos. Podcasts let the marketers beat competition with flying colors. These podcasts are part of audios and videos and are present all over web. A website is required to fill up the niche and provide high quality and useful content in order to taste success. Using podcasting can be useful as means of delivering content while assisting webmaster to meet both these goals.

You can easily increase your authority by podcasting. You will be able to be the market leader. Podcasting lets you connect with the new audience. You will have a great opportunity to connect to a new type of audience. A lot of people are not interested in blogs and information on your website. By podcasting, you can connect with this set of people.

Wait no more, if you want to rule the search engines, do not just use SEO techniques rather make use of revised SEO techniques.

SEO is a process in which websites are optimized for improving natural rankings on the search engines. Need of SEO came to fore after boom in online business. Increasing popularity of ecommerce and marketing along with more companies jumping in the ecommerce bandwagon, SEO has become need of the hour. If you want your website to skyrocket in the leading search engines without burning a hole in your pocket, use the following tips.

You can initiate by researching for an efficient niche. It is important to develop yourself as an expert in your field. You will get more traffic on your website if you are the leader of your niche.One should have complete information about the competitors to make improvements in the website. You should plan the website in accordance with SEO guidelines in order to make it search engine friendly. It should be convenient to crawl; addition of the sitemap can be helpful in easing up things.

Conduct a capable keyword research for your website. Rather than going for the keywords that are most searched, look for long tail keywords. For the development of any website, keyword research is a crucial step. If you are looking for good results in search engines, carry out the keyword research properly. With inculcation of appropriate keyword in your web pages, your website can jump to better rankings in leading search engines without any hassles.

Fresh and unique content is also of prime importance in making your website reach high on the search engines. Visitors are not interested in stale content; they want something that is refreshing and informational to grip their attention. To survive the high competition in online business, it is important for the business owners to update their websites with refreshing content every now and then. You can have more traffic on your website with the regularly updated content. Submit your website to directories to gain link popularity. There are many online directories where you can submit your site for free. You do not need to pay a penny for enhancing your company’s visibility now.

Try forum posting which helps in link popularity too. You can actively participate in different forum discussions and get traffic to your website. Choose the forums that go with the subject of your website. By being an active participant in a related forum, you can attract other members to your products and services. Just by dropping the link of your website as signature in the end of your posts, you can get traffic on your website, you can get traffic on your website. Forum posting is one of important link building techniques that can be used by business owners. You can also become a member of many forums at the same time.

The popularity of social networking sites has provided the business owners with an effective way to increase their website’s traffic. You can participate in the sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter for interacting with people and increasing the awareness about your brand.

In a press event held on 12/07/09, an announcement of Google adding real time results to its Internet search engine was made, channeling feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other fresh content into responses to queries. Users will get results on results page as they are being produced out there. This is the first time ever that a search engine has integrated the real time Web into the results page. Twitter feeds were in Google real-time results on Monday, but Facebook and MySpace updates will not be integrated until possibly as late as February of next year.

We all have been turned off by websites that take forever for getting loaded. In this fast paced world, who has to time to sit back and wait for the slow websites to load? Loading time has a great impact on ecommerce. The websites that take much longer to get loaded lose their traffic that in turn affects their business. Quick loading time has been found as a key factor for loyalty of online clients. Most of these online consumers who are dissatisfied by a particular website are least interested in buying from the same website again. Some of them also form a bad impression about the physical stores of these online companies.

The basic reason behind the website with a lower traffic is lower loading process. Clients become impatient and prefer using the website that is user friendly rather than waiting for long. As we all are aware there is no dearth of websites that offer products in a particular niche. The cut throat competition increases the chances of losing prospective clients to the competitors. Online shoppers often get distracted if the page takes a longer time. A disappointing visit can lead to losing of prospective clients. For maintaining a good reputation among target audience, online companies should make sure that their websites load faster.

Consumers these days are looking forward to an engaging, secure and fast online shopping setting while shopping online. There is a direct relation between the website performance and revenues, so owners should make special efforts to rope in prospective consumers rather than losing the existing ones also. They should ensure that your website performs properly and loads faster to make a positive impact and allow shoppers to return to your website for shopping again.

As of week of 12/6/2009, the WM100 Benchmark compared the top industry leaders’ page load time, and the result of the top ten is:

10: craigslist.org                        1.65               1.24

If you long to have your customer loyalty, you will have to work towards it. Site content, usability and speed play a crucial role in attracting clients to a website. By investing some time in making improvements in functionality and site content, you can conveniently bolster overall image and brand of you company. Unless your clients are satisfied, they will no come back to you again. If you do not want your business to experience a downfall, it is necessary to match up with this fast paced age by enhancing your website. Do wait for your visitors to lose patience, look for ways to cut down on your website’s loading time.

Forrester Researcher and Gartner Group report that e-commerce

sites in the US alone are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue annually to customer click-away caused by slow-loading websites.

A lot of times, graphics used on the web pages complicate table layouts and are culprits for slow loading website. Try to use limited graphics on your website. While using these graphics, make sure that you specify their dimensions. By including width and height of graphics in HTML code, you can make the website load much faster. The top of the web pages should have some catchy and interesting stuff. Even if one of the pages takes a little longer to load, it is wise to make its top interesting so that it grips the visitor’s attention while the page loads. If there are some irrelevant ads and meaningless graphics, visitors are likely to switch on to some other site before reviewing yours completely. Experts advise to have web pages load in less than 12 seconds in a 56k modem and include JavaScript which speeds the loading time and benefits indexing.

Web pages takes longer time to download if they are in a single layout. It is better to break the layout in small tables which will surely decrease the downloading time of your website.

Eric Ward, also known as the Godfather of linking, describe it best:: “Link Bait is more or less anything you create anywhere on the Web that inspires other people to link to it. They can link to it via a Web page, a blog, social bookmark site, tagging site, e-zine, newsletter, IM, email or any other method that tells others about the bait..”

Link bait is the matter on your website that is linked with other sites. They are linked with the consent of other websites and not because you want those websites to do so. In the past, it was difficult to get these links and you had to link back their websites in your content. This was a negative factor for the search engines. Bait means attracting links to the website. In this process, all you need to do is to make the content attractive or bait the content and wait for the results to come forth.

Every website trusts link baiting and indulges in it. There are websites that are created with the objective of attracting readers. The content of these websites is such that it automatically attracts incoming links to their website. There can be different degrees of link baiting. One can direct a personal attack on the owner of the website or write some useful guide. There can be some tactics that turn out to be very aggressive and even people who support the process of link bait find this to be unethical.

There are two categories in which we can place link bait. One is positive and other is negative. The positive link bait is the one appreciated by the other users on the web while the negative ones are not. There can be different flavors and types of the positive link baits. Most of them are interesting and exciting and can bring in a variety of incentives for the people who visit your website.

The web developers use the written applications as a method to attract links. This is done because the web users can link to such applications. Negative link bait, as the name suggests, is focused on material that can even bring up controversies. You need to know that even this type of material can bring in effective results even though it can sometimes be in bad taste.

Click on the link below to see a Link Baiting Case Study from Search Engine Journal

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-baiting-case-study-from-search-engine-journal/2823/

With the help of link bait, you will be able to get more links to your website. This is going to help you in the long run and bring positive response even from the search engines. You can try links like ‘click here’. The best thing about link bait is that the links come to your website automatically and you do not have to beg or ask the websites to put them in their content. Potential customers can now come your way and this is what you were aiming at when you created a website for your business.

Carrying out an ecommerce website successfully is not easy as there are a lot of pre-requisites. Before you move forward to the next step in e-business, prepare a checklist of what all things you need to do and what all requirements you are going to face in the coming time. There are different considerations like sales, payment and preliminary considerations that you need to fulfill.

According to U.S Census Bureau , U.S. retail e-commerce sales reached almost $127 billion in 2007, up from a revised $107 billion in 2006?an annual gain of 18.4 percent. Rapid growth in e-retail has been the norm. From 2002 to 2007, retail e-sales increased at an average annual growth rate of 23.1 percent, compared with

5.0 percent for total retail sales. You can see the complete report at http://www.census.gov/econ/estats/2007/2007reportfinal.pdf

Here is a look at what all you would need to know before you are set to go on with your business on the internet.

Prerequisite #1 - The preliminary considerations consist of information about marketing of the product. You need to know if your product already has a customer base or is it on the web to make a new clientele for your business. You should know that a website should be created only for the products that already have a few buyers so that you do not have to incur losses. This is also because if you have a credit card company accepting the payments for you, they would want you to have a minimum sale amount that needs to be processed. You may have to project the sales and how you are going to manage it.

Prerequisite #2 - The next decision that is the amount of stock you need and the amount of sales you can handle through your website. You will also have to make arrangements for returns and customer complaints and for that you will also have to hire staff so that your customers can have access to better customer service. If you expect your customers to come back to your website and make purchases again, you may give your customers an option to make an account.

Prerequisite #3 - Just like the customer account on your website, your merchant account too holds much importance. You need to know what kind of merchant account is best suited for your business and what will be the expenses associated with it. It is possible that you may need to have a paypal account so that the transactions can take place in an easy manner and you can receive payments securely. The products you sell may have some taxes that need to be paid. You will have to calculate those taxes and see if there are some other special taxes and issues that may affect your product sales.

Prerequisite #4 - The shipping considerations are also important as this shows your responsibility towards your customers. If you have an online business, customers will make purchases from you and you would have to ship the products to the specified addresses given by them. You will have to compare the different shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL to know which one suits your needs the best. There are various sites like http://www.shipwizz.comcom to compare shipping rates.

Prerequisite #5 - You have to make clear if you will go to drop off the products at the courier company or will the company people pick up the products from your company or home. As your products need to reach your customers safely, you will have to track the shipments. Other things that need to be put into your checklist for shipping are the need of labels, shipping discounts and cost involved in shipping.

Prerequisite #6 - There are product and design considerations for your products that you must address. There may be different types of products and variations in the same product and you will have to fix prices and accessories that need to be given with them. Discounts, services and packaging options are also to be decided upon. Make sure you consider all these prerequisites and give the right direction to your e-business.

A well designed and regularly maintained website brings in loads of traffic thereby great revenue. Your website primarily is your representative on Internet or it can be said that it is the mirror image of your business. A messy, tattered website with incorrect content, missing database, broken links is simply not worth visiting or considering. This is when it becomes compulsory to think about website maintenance outsourcing. There are host of reasons, which make it almost a compulsion to take website maintenance outsourcing. Maintaining website is one of the most laborious tasks and frequent changes are needed to the existing website. 

The most crucial aspect about taking professional assistance to maintain your website is that the service provider will take this weighty responsibility at an affordable price and assist your site to be refreshed continually as well as grow with your business.

The company to which you outsource your website maintenance will let your current web application fulfill your business needs in an effectual manner and assist you surpass the growing demands and requirements of your clients or customers. With outsourcing your website maintenance, you will get to access cost effective service in a quick turnaround time.

Site maintenance encompasses numerous actions required to assure the operational integrity of the website. This means frequent checking for:

• Missing content
• Broken links
• Grammar and spelling of the content
• Missing titles of the page
• Missing metadata
• Page’s file sizes in order to make sure that they are not extra large
• Applications are correctly functioning such as online forms
• Browser compatibility
• Languages and server side scripting function properly
• Regulatory and legal guidelines are adequately adhered
• Product updation

Go to http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/ which graphically displays the most common mistakes made by webpage designer.

Some examples of well created websites are:

a) Google: The king of simplicity and usability. You can get anywhere from here.
     http://www.google.com

b) GrowingFamily.com: Warm and friendly looking. Easy to navigate:
     http://growingfamily.com/ 

c) Monster.com: Lots of info without feeling cluttered:
    http://monster.com/ 

Website maintenance outsourcing can be really beneficial as the service provider focus over four main areas, including:

1) Technology: Since the technology changes at a very rapid speed, a website starts looking as well as acting old when not updated regularly. Also, the components of a website can malfunction, thus require maintenance. The company maintaining your site will use all the latest developments and tools so that you can remain one level ahead from your competitors and does not lack in technology.  

2) Content: For sure, the content of a website requires being accurate, current and alive. With novel and fresh content, individuals will have a good reason to get back to your website. Also, old comments, articles or other information must be archived and when you do website maintenance outsourcing, all is done on regular basis.              

3) Community marketing and development: The activity and the number of visitors must increase. This building of community requires regular inventive improvement and promotion.     

4) Customer service and response: Site customers, visitors and the members often require a reply. They might have queries, comments, suggestions, complaints and questions.    

When you outsource website maintenance, you can enjoy numerous benefits, including international delivery standards that further ensure superior website maintenance, high return over investment via reduction in site maintenance costs, attained by exercising an experienced website maintenance service provider. 

Standardization of publishing process and content creation, content versioning, classification and identification of retired and valid content, introduction of technological innovation, chain innovation and process innovation for improving your company’s productivity and agility are various other benefits that you can enjoy as a website owner while taking website maintenance outsourcing services.    

One of the fundamental attributes of a well designed website is its easy navigation. It is the important aspect to be considered so that the users visiting the website enjoy easy and customer friendly browsing. An effectively designed navigation website gives a reason to the visitors to stay on the site and enjoy reading what the site has to offer.

Clarity is the prime consideration as far as navigability is concerned. Here are vital tips necessary to be considered by website designers so as to make the navigation experience great for the visitors.

Clarity #1: Understanding the importance of the effective website navigation is a must for the website designers so that it can be created effectively. Only clear effective website navigation can let the visitor find the product or service that they are looking for without wasting much time.

Clarity #2: It is essential for the website designers to make the navigation easier to use and understandable. People coming online do not take time to shift to the other website if they find difficulty in navigation. Clear labels are a must that can give explanation to the user whenever they click on it.

Clarity #3: It is fundamental for the navigation to be clearly visible on the site. People find the websites boring and irritating that have navigation on the side bars as it vanishes once the visitor scrolls down. Thus having consistent top and bottom menus become pivotal while designing a website. The menu should have the links that are connected to each other and most importantly the home page. This makes it easier for the visitor to move around the various categories or shift from any page to the home page without any inconvenience.    

Clarity #4: If the site has a wide variety of product categories or services to be offered, or a variety of brands or products, it is considered important to make use of the navigation layers as well as facets. The site visitors want the search to be simplified so that they can easily browse by price, colour and brand or the other product attributes that are applicable. The search options should be at the right place so that the visitor has no inconvenience while they visit a site.      

Clarity #5: For the ecommerce site, it is required to let the visitor search for the products or services that they wish to avail. Thus adding a search box on every page of the website can do well and let the shoppers search for the particular product easily.

Clarity #6: Web designer should also ensure that the links that are placed at the website are placed in an organized manner in accordance with their importance. This becomes important so that the visitors can easily find what they are searching for in variant categories. Main links can be placed at the top of the page and the other links that the web designer finds interesting can be placed at the right side of the web page. But they have to make sure that the links that are placed are universal and remain consistent all through the site.   

For examples of bad navigation websites checkout www.webpagesthatsuck.com and avoid the mistakes