10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 9 and 10) | Promote and Evaluate Your Online Business

9)      Promote Your Website

Promote Your Website

       Promoting your website is another crucial component that must not be neglected when starting your online business. Your website is the cornerstone of your business and it is mostly likely that you will succeed if you are able to spread word of your website to your target market.

High traffic – Generates huge pool of potential customers – Increases the possibility of increasing number of sales – leads to increasing revenue – Eventually leads to success in your business

As I have already discussed the topic in my earlier posts, I shall not skip the further elaboration here.

Click on the links to read how to effectively use your blogs to market your online business and learn how to drive traffic to your website.  

10)   Review and Improve Business Performance

Evaluation

When starting your online entrepreneurship, it is also recommended to cultivate a desire to constantly improve your business. It is a good habit to evaluate and take stock of your business performance so that you can take the necessary steps to do bring your business to greater heights.

You can examine the performance of your business by assessing your business goals with the actual performance as-to-date. Next is to give yourself a grading for each of the objectives that you have set earlier.

This will help you to identify the aspects that are doing well and also recognize the areas that your business is lagging behind so that you can devote more time and attention to find appropriate solutions to boost your business performance.

Below are some key components that you may wish to focus on when conducting your evaluation:

Traffic Generation

       (1)   Website Content

Determine if your website content is relevant to what your potential clients are looking for and up-to-date.

       (2)   Design of website

Seek feedback regarding the ease of navigating within your website and find out whether your customers are able to find the relevant information and products easily. It is also useful to find out if your website template is appealing to your target audience as a pleasing design is more likely to encourage your customers to remain longer on your website.

       (3)   Promotion Strategies

Conduct a regular assessment to determine if your free and paid advertising is effectively in generating the desired flow of traffic to your website.

Sales Generation

      (1) Sales Copies

       Evaluate if your products are competitively priced as compared to your competitors and more importantly if the prices of your products are acceptable to your target consumers.

       Find out whether your sales copy is effective in promoting the attributes and enhancing the attractiveness of your products and services.

       (2) Pricing

       You can also further study if your products are competitively priced as compared to your competitors. More importantly, seek market feedback if the prices of your products are acceptable to your target consumers. 

Relationship Building

        (1) Customer Service

       The last thing to look at is to assess the standard of your customer service and evaluate if you are able to handle enquiries and how long you take to answer your customers.

       It is recommended to reply your customers within 1 working day. In the event that you require more time to look into your customers’ enquiries, it is advisable to give an interim reply so that your customers are aware that you are looking into the matters. This will highlight your company’s efficiency and helps in the positive branding of your business.

Highly recommended reading on 'How to Start an Online Business':





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10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 8) | Provides Excellent Administrative Support

                          8)      Provides Excellent Administrative Support

Customer Service

Good customer service is all about going beyond your customer’s expectations.

Short Introduction

In your website, you should incorporate a short introduction about yourself and your business missions in the ‘About Us’ Page so that your customers can learn more about your business. This aids to build up the credibility of your website when the clients are convinced that you are running a legitimate business and not a scam.

You can further enhance the personal touch in your website by adding an audio or video presentation as your welcome message. This is an excellent way to introduce yourself and your products. Clients are then more likely to remember and leave a good impression of your website. Furthermore, these audio and video presentations can serve as powerful sales messages to persuade your clients to explore your websites and eventually purchase your products.  

Help Customers Reach You

It is strongly advisable that you also include a ‘Contact Me’ page in your website to provide the relevant information for your customers to reach you. In your contact page, do indicate information such as your email address, phone number or fax number to ensure ease of contact by your customers.

You can create a ‘Contact Form’ to allow your clients to email you regarding their enquiries. Do note that some customers are wary to furnish too much of their personal information to a stranger. Thus, ensure that your contact form requires minimal information from your customers.

Another suggestion is to design an informative signature when replying the enquiries. You can include the following details in your signature:
- Name
- Company Name
- Phone Number
- Fax
- Email address
-Webpage

This is another indication highlighting the willingness of your company to remain contactable.  

Good Communication

Communication is the most efficient way to ensure excellent customer service. You can provide a list of FAQs to answer some common enquiries of your clients. This is also a strategy to reduce your workload when customers are able to find answers to some of their queries in your FAQ list.

When replying to your customers, you are also encouraged to quote the original questions that your clients are asking when replying to their enquiries. This helps to remind the recipients of their earlier enquiries and clearly refer to the exact questions that you are answering. This will promote a more efficient communication and avoids the potential of a misunderstanding in the process.

Set up a Discussion Group

Having a discussion group in your business website allows your clients to discuss and comment on your products. Positive feedback from satisfied clients in the discussion group is a powerful free advertising for your products and your customer service.

From the discussion group, you can also gather useful feedback regarding your product attributes & customer service and discover the area of interest among your customers. With this information, you can then identify the required area of improvement in your business to better serve the needs of your customers.

Learn how to set up the Yahoo! Group.

Suggestions to Ensure Excellent Customer Service

Good customer service will encourage your clients to leave glowing feedback, boosting your reputation and helping to grow your business in the process.

You can do so by:

1) Send ‘Thank You’ cards to your customers after their purchase to help them feel valued by your company.

2) Ensure that your products are shipped on the same day of purchase to reduce delivery time.

3) Handle enquiries promptly. Make yourself available and check your emails regularly to responds to any enquiries quickly. Adhere to your company’s service standard of responding within a specific timeframe.

4) Highlight your refund/exchange policy and adhering to it. Do include detailed instruction on the refund and exchange procedure.

5) Have your customers’ interests at heart. Be willing to effect refunds if required to build up credibility and loyalty among your customers.

Remember that a good customer service can be your competitive edge over your competitors.

Go back to Part 7 (Set Up a Payment System).

Go to Part 9 and 10 (Promote and Evaluate Your Business)

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 7) | Set Up Payment System

7)      Set Up a Payment System

Payment System

Sealing a deal and getting paid for your product is the ultimate aim when starting your online business. Without payments, any business is bound to fail. However, much has to be done to instill confidence in your clients before they are willing to take the step to make their payment even though they have decided to purchase your product.

Secure Payment Line

The top priority of all clients is the security of the payment line. Customers need a reliable payment mode without getting their credit card information stolen. A secure online payment arrangement will also safeguard your own interest without getting your credit account being hacked into and causing huge financial losses to your business.

Thus, you should find a web host that is able to provide you with a secure server even though it is likely that you have to pay an extra fee to your web host to allow your customers to submit their credit card and personal information to this secure server.

Customers will know that they have entered a secured area when the security key is shown in the browser window.

Ease of Payment Mode

Online shoppers are often in a rush when making their purchases. As such, it is advisable to make your payment as simple as possible so that your clients can successful complete their transactions with a few clicks and in a matter of seconds. A complicated payment arrangement that confuses your customers may cause them to change their mind in buying your products.

Variety of Payment Options

You should also provide your customers with a range of payment choices such as paying by credit cards, cheque or direct transfer to your business account.  This is to allow your customers the freedom to choose the best payment mode according to their preference.

a)      Payment by MasterCard and Visa

You can now open a merchant account with a bank to become a credit card merchant so that your customers can make payments via their credit cards. Nowadays, there is no need to have a physical store in order to get your application approved. The approval process may take days or weeks and involves certain administrative charges.

Banks will typically charge a merchant application fee during the application. Transaction fees (normally 1-4 % of the transaction amounts) and monthly service charges are also payable.

b)      Payment by American Express

You can apply online to be an American Express card merchant at their homepage if you wish to accept payments from American Express Card holders.

c)        Payment via PayPal

As direct payment via an online payment service such as PayPal is becoming more frequent, you may also wish to accept credit card payments from similar payment service providers without having to apply a merchant account.

You can visit the online tutorial to learn how to set up your PayPal Business Account.

Transfer Credit Card Information

You need to transfer the credit card information to the banking system during a transaction.

You may choose to do it yourself in which you will require a point of sale software/terminal that is authorized to transmit data to the bank. The bank will then credit the amount into your business account within a few working days.

Alternatively, you may opt for automatic processing and engage an online payment gateway to process the transactions on your behalf and transfer the sum into your business account.

Other Useful Advise

a)      Shopping Cart

It is recommended to install a virtual shopping cart on your website to provide ease of shopping by your customers. You should sign up with a web host that provides the shopping cart software as part of their service.

b)      Information on Shipping Services

It is also advisable to provide links to shipping services in your website. These linked websites should list down the available shipping options, the cost of each option and estimated shipping timeline so that your customers can make an informed decision on the best shipping option.

In addition, you should highlight shipping services that allow tracking of shipping status to your customers so that they can be constantly updated.

c)       Customer Service

After a transaction, you should provide a receipt for the purchase to safeguard your customers’ interest. You should also verify credit card data by checking both the billing address/shipping address and alerting your customers if there is a discrepancy in the addresses to prevent fraudulent orders as part of your valued customer service.

Go back to Part 6 (Website Content).

Go to Part 8 (Provides Excellent Administrative Support).

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 6) | Website Content

 6)      Website Content

As mentioned earlier when drafting your business plan, do ensure a personal touch with your customers by providing an introduction of yourself and summarize your business & business missions. This will help remove lingering doubts that your customers may have when they first visit your website. It is advisable to have a contact mode such as an email address or contact number to help to improve your credibility. (Learn to create your customized contact page)

Text Content


Text Content



Text content is the most important component of your website. You should update your content constantly to alert search engine crawlers that your website is active and also to provide your viewers with up-to-date information so that there is a reason for them to return to your website.
You can consider using auto blogging softwares such as Auto Blog Samurai and Auto Blogging Software to help you generate unique posts for your blogs. This will greatly enhance your efficiency in generating content rich articles on your websites.

You can also sign up an account with an email marketing service provider such as AWeber to send daily email newsletters and autorespondents to your clients to further promote your products. Email marketing has proven to be an efficent method to increase your sales conversion rate. Explore more regarding email marketing with AWeber.

Also learn how to promote the content of your blog. 

Product Advertising

You should explain your products’ attributes clearly on your website and highlight to customers how & what they can gain by buying your products. Always emphasize on the end benefits that your customers will enjoy so that they can make an informed purchase decision.

You can further promote your products with visual enhancing images or video presentations which is likely to have a greater persuasive power to convince your customers to make a purchase.

Another suggestion is to be proactive in approaching your previous satisfied clients to get their testimonials in order to enhance the credibility of your products. Customers are more likely to buy from you if there is evidence that you are selling a product that works.

Learn from Other Websites

You can also visit other related websites to get inspirations on how to improve the layout and design of your website to enhance its functionality and to identify the topics of interest among your target market for your subsequent posts.  

Go back to Part 5 (Form a Business Team).

Go to Part 7 (Set Up a Payment System).
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 5) | Form Business Team

5)      Form Your Business Team

Business Team

I remember reading “Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires” by Adam Khoo and in one of the chapters, Khoo recounted how he first rejected the notion of engaging people to do the administrative, logistics and accounting works as he viewed any potential hiring as additional costs to his business.

However, he eventually understood that by doing everything, he is actually losing money as he had to give up the time to do these non-revenue generating activities on his own. He could have earned more by focusing more time on the income generating activities, which is to conduct trainings for his clients. After realizing this point, he then changed his mindset to hire assistants and his business improved tremendously.

Similarly, you should also seek to form a team of technical experts (can be your family members/friends) to help lessen your workload and to give you valued assistance in areas that you are not strong in. You can hire:

i)       A programmer to handle issues on web hosting and website design,
ii)      A good writer to write persuasive and content rich sales articles,
iii)     A marketing consultant to promote your business,
iv)     An accountant to keep track of your financial performance

while you source for suitable products & suppliers and negotiate deals with potential clients. Everyone has a role to play to make your business successful.

Go back to Part 4 (Choose a Business Mode).

Go to Part 6 (Website Content)



10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 4) | Choose Mode of Business

4)      Choose Mode of Business

Once you have settled on starting an online business, the next step is do is to decide either to only promote your products on a blog or to use a blog as the traffic generator to direct your viewers to your main business website.

For new set-ups or small businesses, it is advisable to first promote your business on a blog. Once you have generated sufficient interest and loyal followers, you may then wish to create an additional business website to further expand your business. You may want to refer to Get My Business Site to help design an appropriate website for your business.

Choose Domain

Choose a domain name that is eye-catchy and easy to remember. Next, decide on the domain extension that is suitable for your business.

i)   .com – represents commercial which is widely used by business entities

ii)  .net – represents networks and is widely used by Internet network providers

iii) .org – represents organization and is widely used by non-profit organizations

The most important thing to note when deciding your domain is to ensure that your visitors are able to derive what your website is about just by looking at your domain name. This is to pre-empt your visitors on the nature of your website and also serve as an additional branding for your business.

If your domain name is the first thing that your visitors think of when considering the purchase of a particular product, it means that your business is now one of the leaders in the mentioned area of focus.  

Choose Webhost

After deciding on your domain, you would also need to find a webhost to host your website. You may wish to sign up with Hostgator or Arvixe as your reliable and efficient webhost.



Go back to Part 3 (Draft a Business Plan).

Go to Part 5 (Form a Business Team).

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 3) | Draft Business Plan

3)      Draft a Business Plan

Introduction of Company

When you first start your website, you should present a brief description of your company what you hope to achieve in your business. This is to give your customers some information about yourself and to increase the credibility of your business. By telling your clients the nature of your business, it will also provide them with a clear picture on the type of products you are selling. This will aid in driving the desire traffic to your website.

Marketing Strategy

The next important thing to do is to promote your website. You should devise a marketing plan in order to increase the publicity of your website. The ultimate aim is to make your website known globally to enhance the profitability of your business. It will be ineffectual if you are unable to reach the mass market to sell your products. (Learn how to use your blog as a marketing tool to promote your online business)

Budget Planning

With your marketing plan in place, you should now decide on your budget and clearly allocate this sum to the area that you need to spend on such as monthly web hosting fees, buying of domains or monthly fees payable to email auto-respondent providers. This is to avoid overspending and allows you to have to a firm control on your business spending.   

Specific Goals Setting

Goals setting serve as a performance indicator for your business.

It is advisable to determine the total costs in starting up your online business and doing a calculation to find out the breakeven period based on your estimated profit margin and number of daily sales of your products. Do update your financial statements regularly to keep track of your financial performance.  

Other useful indicators include:

§  To have XXX unique visitors to your website by XX days/months/years

§  To generate XXX numbers of sales by XX days/months/years

§  To add an additional product to your business by XX days/months/years

§  To expand your business regionally/globally after XX years

Go back to Part 2 (Product Identification and Selling Techniques).

Go to Part 4 (Choose a Business Mode)

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 2) | Product Identification and Selling Techniques

2)      Identify Products to Offer 

Product Marketing

  

After identifying the needs of your niche market, note down the list of products and services that you can offer to your customers. The next thing to do is to source for available suppliers for these products. You can approach the supplier directly to request for direct stocks or to apply for the affiliate programme offered by the supplier (if available). You can also become an affiliate marketer by selling products from Internet Retailers such as ClickBank, Commission Junction or AffiliateBot.

The ability to find a supplier that offers you a competitive pricing will help enhance your profit margin and also gives you the flexibility to sell your product at a lower price, giving you a competitive edge over your competitors. 

4 things online shoppers look for when making their purchase decision.

a) Cheap products

Customers are always looking for discounts in their purchase. You can then arrange sales during certain periods of the year as part of your marketing strategy.

b) Persuasive Advertising

Customers are attracted by eye-catchy sales copy. You can promote your products by writing compelling sales copies with captivating title headings in blogs, magazines, newsletters etc. Customers are further convinced and compelled to purchase a product after watching a persuasive video sales presentation on the product attributes.  You can also further arouse their desire to acquire your products by including testimonials from previous satisfied buyers to enhance the credibility of your items.

c) Convenience in Shopping

One of the main reasons why online shopping has gained popularity in recent years is due to the ease of online purchases. Customers are looking for ease in the buying process and the convenience of receiving their purchase via delivery to their mailing address. Thus, you should simplify your ordering process and to ensure that there is easy-to-understand instruction to guide customers in their purchases. It is also important to provide delivery service to deliver the orders to the doorstep of your customers.   

d) Unique Products

Customers are more willing to purchase unique and hard-to- find products. Thus, customized and differentiate your products from your competitors. You may even wish to sell only a limited number of a particular product to increase its exclusiveness to enhance its market value.

Go back to Part 1 (Identify Niche Market).

Go to Part 3 (Draft Business Plan).

10 Easy Steps to Start Your Online Business (Part 1) | Identify Niche Market

The subsequent pages provide a more detailed guidance and highlights the 10 easy steps that you can follow to start an online business.

1) Identify a Niche Market

Identify Exact Target Market

Identify your exact target market in terms of their demographics such as their gender and age, locality and spending power. Next, determine the problems that they are facing (e.g. facing the issue of chronic fatigue) and then providing the exact solutions to the concern that they are facing (e.g. Identify symptoms of fatigue and finding scientific answers to overcome their tiredness)

Knowing Market Place

Just identifying your target market is not enough. You need to understand their expectations and then meeting these expectations before your customers will buy from you. You can gather much information from other related blogs, chat rooms and online forums to find out the key discussion topics among your niche market. By noting their comments and opinions, you will be able to identify the area of the interests and concerns of your target market.  You can then focus the content of your website to address these identified interests and concerns by providing the suitable products and services to resolve the exact needs of your niche market.

Another suggestion is to visit other competitors’ websites or E-commerce websites like eBay and Amazon to establish the accuracy of your market research. You can ascertain that there is indeed sufficient demand for your identified products if these websites are selling similar items as your area of focus.     

Research on Competitors

In a competitive market, you need to do better than your challengers. You need to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately aims to imitate your competitors’ strengths and strives to do better in their area of weaknesses to gain a competitive edge.

Competitive Pricing


Pricing Strategy

You also need to research on your competitors’ pricing as most products are price sensitively. If you are able to offer similar products at a lower price, it increases your likelihood of outperforming your competitors.   Perform your market research and size up your profit potential. Determine if you can still remain profitable after matching your competitors’ pricing.

Alternatively, justify your higher pricing by marketing and emphasizing the better attributes of your products.

Content of website

Text content is the most important component in generating traffic to your website. You should provide useful information with regards to your customers’ area of interest or concern and ensure regular updating of the information to attract your target market back to your website.

Customers Profiling

After several months in business, you can then identify the demographics of your main customers so that you can focus your future marketing efforts on this target group to generate more sales.

Go to Part 2 (Product Identification and Selling Techniques)...

Step-by-Step Guide to start an Online Business

Online Business

Starting an online business is not as easy as many thought it would be. It is something that requires much research and certain amount of capital investment.

Firstly, you have to determine what item to sell. It could be a physical product, a digital product, a service or selling other people’s products known as affiliate marketing. This product or service should be something that is related to your interest or expertise such as your hobbies, talents or areas of knowledge.

Next, identify an existing niche market within your field of interest by checking on the search volume in Google Adwords. It is vital to ensure that there is sufficient demand for the product or service locally and globally.

Having a Global Reach

A good gauge will be to have at least 50,000-100,000 google searches for the identified product or service per month.

Number of Searches for Online Business



Number of Searches for Small Business

Once the niche market has been decided, you must then identify a problem which has yet to be solved. One way is to join online groups to observe what people are discussing and to research on the competitors’ business strategy to ascertain that the problem is indeed real and that there is commercial value to provide a solution to the problem.

Now, you can then size up the profit potential by doing a simple mathematical calculation:

• Calculate number of clicks based on a estimated Click through rate
• Calculate number of sales : based on an estimated sales conversion rate
• Calculate gross profit = Sales X gross profit per sale
• Total pay-per-click (PPC) = Number of clicks X average PPC
• Net profit = Gross profit – Total PPC

After determining the product or service, you can proceed to design your website and blog. It is important to register a distinct URL (an Internet address for search engine to find) that easy to remember and related to the product or service. It is also crucial to find a web host that has fast and secure servers with sufficient memory to allow many people to access your website at the same time.There are many ways to build your website. You can design your own website using HTML editor software or to buy a website template and modify yourself. Alternatively, you can engage a free-lance designer or to hire a professional web design company to design your website.

In your website, you should have a background description about yourself and a contact page to promote credibility. Your website should also have a clear navigation bar and supplemented with strong sales headlines and powerful graphics. Your sales copy should identify the problems that the potential buyers are facing before highlighting the benefits of your product or service and the solution that it brings. It is best that the solution of your product or service is supported by testimonies from previous satisfied clients to establish further credibility.

The next important thing to do is to drive traffic to your website. One method is to boost link popularity by linking to complimentary websites with high traffic or search for backlinks via Google blog alert. Another way is to advertise on free classified ad sites or to pay for traffic through search engines. Alternatively, you can join an affiliate programme to sell your product or service.

Finally, you need to build a relationship with the prospects by forwarding related and valuable information to them on a regular basis until they become your clients eventually.

If you are interested to learn more about starting an online business, you may wish to obtain a copy of "Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires" by Adam Khoo. Personally, I think that it is a very insightful book that provides comprehensive information ranging from managing your cashflow (such as controlling your expenses) to massively increase your income via generating multiple streams of online income and doing smart investing to further build your finances.


You can find the book at all major local and online bookstores. Click here to download the book.

Highly effective DVD tutorials on how to start your online business.

Learn the 10 easy steps to start an online business.