Keys to Doing Business Online

Keys to Doing Business Online should be required for all business degree programs because the 21st Century demands that all businesses have an Internet presence. Do you know the "rules" you must know?

Branding -- Okay, chances are good that your business name is not IBM, Home Depot or Coca Cola. Every consumer recognizes those names because of years and years of "brand advertising." Have you ever heard of Aubuchon Hardware, a retailer with over 140 retail stores in the Northeast? Probably not.

In 2002 Aubuchon Hardware decided to join the Internet marketing trend. They followed the keys listed below. Most important to their program was keyword research that allowed them to target over 400 non-branded keywords that people used when searching for hardware products.

Their research revealed that Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware and True Value usually did not appear in the first three pages of search results for those keywords. With that information in hand, Aubuchon developed a web presence. Their online store now generates four times as many sales as their largest brick and mortar store. What are the keys?

Key 1 -- Plan your SITE NAME. Of course you will want the name of your site or page to be as close to your business name as possible. For example, ibm.com is the website for IBM, or International Business Machines. yahoo.com for Yahoo and alltel.com for the cell phone giant of Arkansas, ALLTEL.

Get a .com name. If people actually search for your business name on the Internet, only two or three will try extensions other than .com. Government offices use .gov or .us. Churches and other organizations use .org. Businesses with a .com main site use .net for a secondary site.

For instance, Comcast uses comcast.com as its sales site and comcast.net as its customer service site. Don't let anyone talk you into anything other than .com. If you are contemplating hiring someone to build a site for you and they recommend anything other than .com, that should tell you that the person is not an Internet marketing professional.

Note: Why should you use an Internet marketing professional to build your site? You are wanting to have an Internet presence that not only pays for itself but increases business for you. Internet marketing professionals know how to do this.

While it's true that anyone with a good knowledge of HTML can build a site for you, there are a number of things that a MARKETING SITE should avoid. Excessive graphics, Flash, and Swish are three no-no's. We'll look at more later.

Key 2 -- Make certain you have a reliable hosting service. There are a lot of good hosts available. The best ones include domain registration in the fee you pay, and that gives you one less thing to worry about. There are less-than-honorable domain registration services that will contact you frequently about renewing your registration. The fact is that you are NOT registered with their service, but if they can convince you to renew with them, they transfer your registration and you pay more than you should.

Also, it's best if your domain hosting service and domain name registration have the same expiration date. Trust me, you will not think about either of these items. You have a business to run. A good host that includes domain registration will see to it that you receive plenty of notice in order to renew and not interrupt your Internet presence.

You also want a host who uses the latest technology and makes numerous items available to you like shopping carts, guestbooks, php, etc. PHP, like many software programs, is updated fairly regularly. The last thing you want to face is your desire to add a feature to your site that requires php-4 and your host doesn't support php-4 because they're still tied to php-3. It's okay if you don't know what php is. Just know that you want a host that offers the latest technology.

Two names stand out. Please know that I have used several different hosting services because of previous client agreements or desires, and I've never run across anyone better than DWHS.

Never use a free host for a business site.

Key 3 -- Be customer-friendly. A few days ago my wife and I were visiting with friends who told us about a recent visit to a restaurant. After sitting for five minutes without being recognized, they left. Your Internet business has much less than five minutes to sell itself. Think about why people surf the Internet looking for goods and services: it saves them time. Time...time...time...time.

Show that your site will save them time right from the start. How fast does your site load into their browser? According to statistics most people are just like me. If I hit a sight that says, "Please wait while page loads," I say "No, thank you." The site designer wants me to wait around and see some cool stuff he or she did. I'm not interested in their cool stuff; I'm interested in getting the information I'm seeking.

Note: This is one of the more important reasons to choose an Internet marketing person to build your site. The professional marketer knows the statistics and surfing habits of the world in general. Customers will not buy from you because you have a cool site. They will buy from you because they perceive you have the best product and customer service at a fair price. That slow-loading site might be giving away $50 gold coins for free with a $75 purchase but no one will wait long enough to find out about it.

Customer-friendly means more than a fast-loading site. It means being able to find things without clicking on three dozen links. Remember the "time" thing. As much as possible you should use the three-click rule. The customer can find the information being sought within three mouse clicks. It doesn't hurt to have a search engine for your site. Using the search function engages the customer.

The customer has chosen to seek information on your site using your search feature, and that means he or she has made a conscious decision to spend a little time on your site.

Customer-friendly means no "trap" pages. I feel certain that everyone has visited a web site that forces you to get completely out of your browser in order to leave the site. Do they really think I will buy from them if they try to trap me on their site? Why do you think dozens of companies are selling pop-up blockers? It's because Internet customers do NOT want to be bothered with pop-up advertising. So, don't do it.

Key 4 -- Work for hire or do-it-yourself? This is a personal decision if you have a good knowledge or HTML. Is the purpose of your site to provide customer service and additional sales to your current customers? Or, are you seeking new customers? Are you able to ship your product anywhere in the United States? The world?

There are a number of good do-it-yourself sites. Why would you need a professional? Search engine marketing design is a specialty field among web designers. It involves intensive research into "what people type into their search browser." Once the research is done, the Internet marketing web designer will construct pages optimized for those search words.

Not all search engines read meta tags any longer. They all, however, read content and the revelant placement of keywords within the content. The search engines look at header text and links. The search engines maintain a database of information about all the sites they have crawled. They read your site to see if it's average, below average or ABOVE average.

Your site is ranked based upon the search engine's assessment. And you cannot argue with the search engine. The search engine industry is very competitive. Google, MSN, Overture and Lycos are just four of the major players. Each one tries to outdo the other in providing relevant search results to the person who requested the search information.

Properly designed sites with good content will rank higher than others. You should know that very few surfers ever look beyond the first three pages of search results. Your goal, therefore, is to have your site in the first three pages. So, do you need a professional, or is it something you can do yourself?

Do you have the ability to monitor your site's ranking and make necessary changes?

Key 5 -- Be patient. Spend time planning your Internet business. It would well be worth a couple hundred dollars to meet with an Internet marketing consultant to plan your steps before spending hundreds or thousands and deciding you goofed. Be sure to check some of the resources listed for a better idea of the cost of doing it yourself.

For more information about Doing Business Online, visit www.homebusinessop.com