If you are looking to start a business online you have come to the right place as in this article we will give you some guidance on how to do it to increase your chances of success. In fact, there is a proven sequence when starting a small business online and this is what this article will focus on.
Step 1: Try to find a need and fill that need
Lots of people are starting out a new business by looking at the product first and only then they are looking at the market. To improve your chances of having success is critical to look at the market first and see what the needs are and how your company can fill them. For example, the creators of Casino Bonus comparison sites have looked first at was the appetite customers had in comparing welcome bonuses offered by casinos and created an aggregator site that does exactly that. So the trick here is to find some people that are looking to find a solution to a problem, but they are not really getting what they are searching at the moment. You can then create a website that answers those needs.
Using the internet, it is quite easy to do this kind of market research: Google offers you the opportunity to see what is the trend of keywords searches and how strong is the competition in search results for those queries. Another way to find this out is to look at online forums where people are asking questions that they need answers about problems they are trying to resolve.
Once you have identified the current competitors take a look at their website and see how you could improve their offering and address the gap in the market. Even if you are going to create a product that is already in the market, you should identify how you can make it better than the competition.
Step 2: Quality Content that Sells
There is a lot of research in the field and it is proven that there are sales copy formula that takes visitors through the selling process and maximise the opportunity that they will actually complete the sale and will not bounce away.
The first thing you should do is to find a compelling headline and also describe precisely what is the issue you are trying to resolve. Having some testimonials will increase your status as problem-solving for that particular sector. Creating urgency and having offers are also beneficial tactics to improve the number of sales.
In your content, you will need to show how your product or the service that you are offering is going to resolve a people’s issue or alternatively make their lives better. A customer will always think what there is in it for me, and you will need to clearly articulate this to avoid losing the customer’s interest in your products or services.
Step 3: Build your website
Once you have identified your market and also your product and also ensure you have a great sales funnel you are ready to start designing and building your website. It is essential to keep it simple at first: don’t forget you will only have a few seconds to attract the attention of someone visiting your site. Look at Amazon for example: the site is not that pretty but sells for millions of pounds.
You will need to make the navigation as simple as possible and only use images, video and heavy graphics if they will really help in enhancing the message you want to convey. To avoid customers leaving your site without leaving any trace, make sure you have an opt-in offer that will allow you to collect e-mail addresses.
Buying only should be really easy, and no more than two clicks should allow your potential customer to complete the checkout. Remember that your website is your ‘virtual’ store and it has to be customer friendly and also be optimised for mobile devices that are more and more used to complete acquisitions.
Step 4: Optimise your website for search engines to get more traffic at low cost
Surely you can use Pay Per Click advertising to get traffic to a new website. PPC activity generally has a couple of advantages compared with traffic that is coming organically from search engines: the first one is that the PPC ad will show up against the keywords you will select immediately and secondly it will allow you to modify the landing page, the copy of the ad, descriptions and so on. So do use PPC but longer-term use the learnings to see which are the keywords that are delivering more sales and focus your efforts to try to acquire organic rankings for those. Remember that the more sales you will be able to do organically, the higher would be the margin you will make as you won’t have to pay for clicks.
Step 5: Become an Expert in the sector
People are going to the internet to find information. If you are able to be an expert in the sector you choose people will not only come to your site but will also advertise ‘indirectly’ to their peers and you can even get free links from social media and other websites. So always make sure you create quality content that people will find useful as this overtime will increase your reputation and ultimately will get your more traffic and sales.
Step 6: Use email marketing to turn visitors into buyers.
It is crucial that you collect customers email address as you can then retarget and try to convert visitors and also upsell. Remember that customers and subscribers will give you permission to send them emails when they sign up on your website. Do not spam them but always keep the email and offers very relevant to them. Email marketing is a cheap and measurable way to increase your revenue.
