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.

Vlog is the abbreviation for video blogging that makes use of video as the primary content linked with video blog post. Vlogs go together with supporting images, text, along with added meta data for providing the context for videos. Vlogs are considered to be a great marketing tool that can be used for attracting traffic to the website.  

Like blogs, vlogs are also updated on a continuous basis that can include personal reflections and comments of the visitors. Vlogs can prove to be extremely effective and beneficial for the businesses as there are targeted audiences who prefer watching short video before they make any decision whether they want to visit the company’s site or not.  

Unlike blogs, vlogs can be used for conveying additional information in an interactive manner that can be entertaining rather then just reading the textual matter presented in blogs. There are researches conducted that have revealed that the targeted audiences tend to grasp and preserve the information offered in a better manner when both video and audio components are engaged that is made available with the vlogs.   

Video blogging can offer feelings, emotions and most importantly the visual aspect that cannot be provided by the blogs that are merely textual presentation of content. People like entertainment thus video blogging is considered to be an effective and efficient way that can make available for them adequate information and entertainment at the same time.

Blogs are written for providing information regarding a specific topic, video blogs work in similar manner when they are used for marketing the businesses. Videos can be produced in infomercials, interview styles, how to videos and TV show formats. With more creativity, vlogs can be used for conveying useful information. The more creativity used, more are the chances for the blogs to be passed to other people.

Vlogs offer numerous advantages with one of the major one being enhancing the blog post. The followers and other bloggers can easily associate the content because videos add enhanced value for reinforcing the writing.

Video blogging can also offer better search engine optimization. With the video embedded in the blog posts, the business can have an additional competitive benefit in search engine marketing.                    

With the effective search engine optimization, people can find the videos with ease even before they can find the blog. People search for the particular keywords and that can only obtained with the well optimized video titles. With this strategy, the businesses can help in dominating the beginning pages of search engines. Service professionals and network marketers can be highly benefited with video blogging as it is considered to be an excellent way for gaining an edge over the other competitors.    

Vlogs are more effective than simple blogs as the people tend to skip the textual mater in the blogs and they might end up missing the company’s essential selling points. With the short videos that take two to three minutes, the services and products that are offered by company can be highlighted along with their benefits that can let the visitor take a decision of visiting the website.   

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.