It’s nice to be able to walk into a store and buy exactly what you want, when you want. However, with some products that isn’t always the case. Specialty items like gourmet foods, regional delights, and organic health and beauty aids might not always be readily available at your local grocer. Those handmade crafts and dolls you admired on a recent trip to the country, too, more likely not be found at Wal-Mart. So what do you do? If you want more, you go to the Internet to find it.

More and more, businesses turn to the Internet as a means of increasing customer base and global brand awareness. Consumers, too, turn to major shopping portals and smaller, specialized stores for unique items and gifts. If you have something to sell, but don’t have it in your budget to distribute through major department stores, an online boutique and shopping cart provides an affordable solution.

If and when you do decide to set up an online business, you want to be certain you have all the proper elements needed to succeed. As you shop for a designer or web hosting, take care to note the following essentials for your store:

Custom Storefront Design – If you have an existing color scheme and branding for your retail business, make sure a designer can integrate your logos seamlessly into an attractive storefront template. Logos and graphics should also be updated to celebrate your store’s emergence as a virtual storefront, satisfying regular customers and drawing in new ones.

Your front page is also your big sell page, what attracts buyers to the product. Highlight what you sell with crisp photos and detailed description, making point of sale links easy to find.

Search and Structure - Your store should offers categories and subcategories for products, allowing you to set products to multiple categories and increase their visibility. Look for shopping cart software that will allow you to automatically create category pages with ease, and give customers search functions to find what they want without having to browse extensively. Side navigation menus offer the user easy access to your entire inventory, so be sure to offer them.

Individual Inventory Pages – Showcase each item in stock with its own web page. Offer an extended image gallery for displaying color and size options, and allow customers to submit reviews. Individual pages may also allow for sections to display similar items for products that come in a set, so you are continuously selling to your customers. Look for a shopping cart software that allows for “smart URL” functionality, too; unlike other online carts where the item URL is an endless string of jumbles and suffixes, each item in your store gets a unique URL for easy off-site linking. Great for affiliates!

Discounts, Gift Certificates, Coupons – Just one click of the mouse allows business owners to set closeout prices on any item in their stores. Find a program that lets you set special promotional codes for newsletter subscribers, offer buy one, get one free incentives, sell gift certificates and accept coupons online.

Customer Database – Keep track of customers. Use a software that records information on all customers, so you can create opt-in newsletters and direct mail promotions. Offer incentive coupons and sales for returning customers with ease.

Affiliate Programs – Turn customers into salespeople by offering an affiliate program through your online store! Affiliate marketing counts for a large number of Internet retail sales; website owners act as third-party e-tailers and receive commissions for every sale made through their own sites (Amazon.com Associates is an excellent example). With the right software, you can customize your own affiliate program and allow other webmasters to sell your products for you. You pay a small percentage per sale, and in return your brand visibility and link popularity explodes!

To be a good salesman, you must first be a good shopper. Find the proper software to meet your e-commerce needs – user-friendly and functional, and compatible over many browsers – to help your online business succeed.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer and SEO consultant who works for CINIVA Systems, a provider of e-commerce solutions for businesses.

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If you are trying to make money online, your website should do more than present a nice picture for people to look at before moving on to the next website. If your aim is to foster a community of regular subscribers and increase sales and visibility, your website needs to stand tall and tower over your competitors. Interactive functionality and user-friendly Web applications designed to hold existing visitors and attract new ones provide an affordable solution to online marketing and longevity. Why have just a website when you can offer users a place to go and a place to stay?

When you search for a website company to handle design and development, here are a few tools to consider to add this functionality to your online presence, to maintain a strong customer base and win new patrons to your products, subscriptions, and news.

Online transactions and payments – Sell products online, accept credit cards and Paypal, and allow for customer interaction.

Events Calendars – Let the world know what you’re doing, where it’s happening, and when to be there. Community and travel sites in particular can take advantage of custom event calendar functionality from CINIVA to enhance the interactive usability of their sites. Post information on concerts, sporting events, charity events, and parties.

Events Registration Manager – Once you’ve posted your schedule of events, now you can let people register for them online! Collect the data and transactions, and keep the customer information for future opt-in mailings.

Weblogs and Forums – Weblogs are a popular and easy to implement way to produce fresh content for your site on a regular basis, with no special skills, equipment, or external software required. Blogs allow you to share your expertise, opinions, stories, company news, etc. and optionally allow readers to respond or even syndicate your information. Blogs allow you to dramatically improve the timeliness and relevancy of your website by helping to keep the content fresh- this not only attracts site visitors who know your organization, but the search engines like Google, which are always on the lookout for ‘what’s new’ as they scan through millions of website pages every day.

Online forums, also called ‘bulletin boards’, are great community builders, which translate into making your website more useful, visited, and visible to search engines. It’s great especially for non-profit organizations looking to enhance member communications and disseminate information. Another good use of a commercial online bulletin board is to improve communications among sales and technical teams (cuts down on email traffic) , as well as customer help forums.

Customer Response Forms – A relative straightforward way for website visitors to communicate with your staff – better than simply posting e-mail addresses, forms allow you route inquiries, require specific information, and collect data, including marketing information that users may wish to provide in exchange for some type of information or newsletter subscription. Dynamic forms can range from short and simple to complex multi-part applications which include photo submissions complex scripting.

Image Libraries and Photo Galleries – A great way to provide visual content to visitors in a directed way.

Create the site with the proper tools to allow customers to not only purchase, but interact and continue to do so in the future.

Kathryn Lively works for CINIVA Systems, a Virginia Beach web design company.

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With every website you own, naturally, you are going to need a corresponding e-mail account so customers can contact you. When you sign on with a website design company for development, it is important to check for a user-friendly, Web accessible e-mail package. Whether you need just one e-mail address or one hundred for your employees, the ability to create the online mailboxes you need to do business. Keeping up with customers via e-mail newsletters and alerts is one of the best ways to strengthen your customer base, but following up is the key to keeping your online presence strong.

Attractive HTML templates, for one, allow for effective e-mail newsletters and opt-in advertising to turn first-time visitors into regular customers. It is important to recognize the need to keep consumers informed about new trends and products and activities involving your business.

Why is Following Up with Website Visitors Important?

It’s a common fact of business: out of sight, out of mind. If your business is not in the forefront of consumer memory, chances are you won’t get much business at all. To build a customer base, and to maintain that customer base, your voice must be heard. Build your brand awareness and maintain visibility, and you will build credibility and trust.

Most website visitors don’t order on the first visit. Not unlike a trip to the mall, consumers like to comparison shop online. You may find you have good traffic but low sales after your site’s launch; more than likely people are checking out your prices before moving onto competing sites for comparison. Here presents a good opportunity to capture visitors on site with an alert to sign up for e-mail discounts and sales. Keeping in touch with new visitors can turn them into repeat visitors.

Visitors won’t know enough about your offer to order during the first visit. Despite all assurances of security and protection from fraud and identity theft, online shoppers may still exhibit some skittishness when dealing with a new retailer. Companies like Amazon.com do well in e-commerce, yes, because they are established brands that have built trusting relationships with customers over the years. Of course, Amazon.com started small, like any other business, but managed to rise to prominence as an e-commerce force, eventually gaining partners in established companies like Toys ‘R Us.

E-mail marketing helps establish the trust you need to secure business. Create a professional news alert or regular newsletter to highlight your expertise and knowledge. Opt-in advertising means the consumer wants to know what you have to say, so wow them with an eye-catching campaign.

The bottom line is: if you don’t ask your website visitors to opt-in to e-mail alerts when they visit, and if you don’t follow up with them or send a newsletter, you are losing a significant volume of sales. Experts have shown that it often takes seven or more marketing exposures before prospective customers purchase.

Kathryn Lively works for CINIVA Systems, a Virginia Beach website design company.

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These days, it seems you have to do more than just launch a website to attract potential readers, customers, and devotees. As technology progresses and allows the Internet to become more interactive, website owners strive to keep up with the times. Browse your favorite websites today, and you will definitely notice the changes since you first visited them a few years ago.

You may find now a favorite website offers an RSS feed, so you can subscribe to certain articles or news. Some sites might release a regular podcast of information. A music group, for example, can now provide entire songs for listening enjoyment rather than ten-second clips. Message boards, chat rooms, and social networking options allow for more interactivity with site visitors. Yet for a site that does not require so many bells and whistles there is still a way to keep in touch and remain effective in marketing. A well-designed, opt-in e-mail newsletter is just the ticket for the small business, book author, or consultant who seeks to expand reach.

If you enjoy writing, then creating a monthly or twice-monthly newsletter to send to regular visitors will provide you with a strong creative outlet for your skills. More than that, it enhances a personal voice that may not always be detected on your website. There are many advantages to offering visitors to opt-in to regular e-mail correspondence:

E-Mail Newsletters Are Fun! Like writing a lively letter to your grandmother, or addressing a multitude of admirers, the e-mail newsletter allows you to create an endearing persona for the purpose of marketing your books, music, or products. Fill your newsletter with personal anecdotes about your business or writing, brief histories of how you came up with your best ideas, or inspirational vignettes for your readers to live by.

If your website sells cookies, share a recipe. If you are a novelist, talk about a recent book signing or write about another author you admire. If you are a consultant, talk about what motivates you to help others. Taking the time to write one newsletter a month of quality content can work wonders for your site’s traffic.

E-Mail Newsletters Are Inexpensive! Unlike hard copy newsletters, which can become costly with production and postage expenses, the e-mail newsletter takes only the time to write, edit, and distribute. Whether you wish to create one in text or using an HTML template, you can find a suitable text editor like Notepad or HTML editor freeware to create your masterpiece. Distribution is a snap, too, when you utilize a third party site specializing in such communications. Yahoo Groups, for example, allows users to set newsletter options, so you can collect e-mails and send your newsletters out with one click of the mouse. If you are looking for something more professional to suit a business, a quick Internet search will lead you to helpful freeware or shareware designed to handle bulk mailings. The simple act of setting up a script on your website (and tutorials for this sort of thing are available online) to allow visitors to opt into an e-mail newsletter can be a boon for your Web enterprise.

E-Mail Newsletters sell! The personal touch and genial quality of a newsletter can enhance your products, books, and services. Let the content you create for site visitors draw them into the finer, unique attributes of what you have to offer. A consultant may wish to include stories of how his/her expertise led to great success for clients, while a book author can share fan mail from readers about how his/her book was an inspiration. What is so special about your book, your music, your products that people have to have them? Flesh out the finer points for copy that not only entertains, but sells, too.

In addition to your own items, offering a newsletter increases your opportunity to earn income in other ways. If you are familiar with Internet affiliate programs, you will know that many companies that affiliate offer creative and affiliate links designed especially for e-mail marketing.

Let’s say you write a monthly newsletter about your mystery novels. By joining affiliate programs of national bookstore chains, you can advertise your book for sale through these outlets and provide readers with the affiliated URLs. As readers buy your books after clicking through these links, you get the royalty AND the affiliate fee associated with the link. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Say your mystery novels are centered around a particular theme, perhaps your sleuth is a pastry chef. You can join affiliated programs associated with products your sleuth might use. Mix up the links with some compelling content and your simple newsletter is a potential moneymaker!

Yet, it doesn’t happen overnight. To win readers, you have to dedicate yourself to writing the content and enticing first-time subscribers to become regular customers. More importantly, have fun with the newsletter. Make readers feel at home with your style, and they will want to keep coming to see what more you have to say.

Kathryn A. Lively is a freelance writer specializing in search engine optimization and social media optimization. She also assists with Virginia Beach website design.

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