Moving a Brick and Mortar Online

by Jim Kinkade

Putting an already successful small business online may seem like a daunting task, but it is one well worth taking and can be easy, even fun. An Internet presence can increase the customer base, expose the business to new markets and generate a new revenue stream, all for relatively minimal cost. To open a branch office would be a huge expenditure that most small businesses could not undertake, and only reaches another limited audience. Creating a comprehensive website however is relatively inexpensive, and easy to do, and can give a small business worldwide exposure when done correctly. Here are four simple items needed for an electronic entrepreneur to use in order to move a brick and mortar operation online.

Build a website
Most small companies already have a unique name, which can be easily translated to an equally unique domain name. It may be pretty easy to register a company name appended with a .com on it for fewer than ten dollars per year. Many domain resellers assist new website owners with everything needed to create a new website, including web hosting, multiple email accounts and shopping carts. Registrars like www.GoDaddy.com offer everything including a variety of hosting plans, website builders and shopping carts all for nominal additional costs. Getting a site built right out of the box is better than nothing at all, and as the web business grows, more resources can be devoted to nurturing the website to make it truly special. It can even be fun as well as profitable.

Set up a shopping cart
A shopping cart is essential to generating a new revenue stream. Those customers that arrive online can be converted to dollars. As mentioned above, many web hosting services also have shopping carts already available, that are easy to configure. Items sold online can more than pay for the minimal set up costs associated with an online store front. Paypal is one of the more common ways to pay, and has come a long way in respectability and trust. Many shopping carts allow simply plugging in product names and prices making it extremely easy to configure. Money generated can securely go directly into a company bank account..

Email marketing
Traditional small companies usually have no need to collect email addresses from their customers. Even if they keep track of customer contact information in a database, the email address may be the missing piece. Once a company makes a decision to go online, it is imperative to start asking for email addresses, both from online business, and walk in customers. Getting customers to agree to provide an email address may be a challenge, but it is so common these days, it is generally not seen as an imposition. Old data can also be used to find, through public means, email addresses pertaining to existing customers. Services like OptinBuilder.com assist companies with finding the missing email addresses by searching online for that information using the other data that is available, name, company name, phone number and business address. Of course once this data is obtained; utilizing it with Email Marketing Director is easy to do.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Once the site is set up, it needs to be seen. Search Engine Optimization or SEO pertains to methods to getting a website noticed. While many companies pay a lot of money to increase SEO, there are some relatively simple things to a company get started. Registering the new site on the Open Directory Project is the first step. Being listed on this site is crucial for a website to come up on most major searches including Yahoo! and Google. Linking to other relevant sites is also critical. If the company wants to attract local business, linking to the community’s chamber of commerce site, and other sites in the community will help. There are probably a million ways to increase links, but the key is to make link to relevant sites, that have their own high search engine ranking. Also avoiding so-called “link farms” is critical, those will cause more problems and decrease rankings in the long run.

These are the basics, and are just a jumping off point. Future articles will delve deeper into each subject more closely, offering tips and suggestions on all sorts of ways to help a small business compete effectively in the online arena.

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About Arial Software
Founded in 1993, Arial Software, LLC is widely considered the industry leader in comprehensive software designed exclusively for relationship marketing through personalized email messaging. Arial’s mission is to be a universal provider of software tools to automate, personalize, and measure meaningful email communications. Its products include Campaign Enterprise email marketing software, Campaign Mailer mail server performance software and Email Marketing Director desktop software. More information on Email Marketing Director can be found at http://www.Small-Business-Email-Solutions.com/EMD.html.