10 GOLD advices before starting an ecommerce business

An e commerce website can be the next step for your business strategy to increase your sales and presence in your specific marketplace. Implementing an e-commerce site represents a new strategy for business growth. You have an opportunity to expand your marketplace and reach new goals with your company, do not hesitate, let’s build your online store! If you’re still hesitant, take the time to read about the mistakes other companies have made in implementing an e-commerce website.


Advice 1: Targeting Internet clients
Positioning your online business requires the same type of strategy planning as with any offline business. You have to market your products to the correct target market. This must be clearly communicated on your website.

Advice 2: Increasing your sales
Online communication with yours customers is essential to attract their attention. You have to figure out their needs and address them online.

Advice 3: Importance of your online operation
Your online operation must be ready before you start attracting clients. Things to keep in mind include: how your shopping will operate, integration with fulfillment systems, and customer service. Make sure that you have over these things and have established a process; any problem with one of the elements above can crash your business online.

Advice 4: Where do you plane to sell?
Your decision is to sell overseas. Before crossing any borders, make sure to know the how business is conducted in the location where you will be selling. Each country has in own rules.

Advice 5: Technical issues
There are lots of prepackaged e-commerce solutions out there. Before you decide which one makes the most sense for you, take a look at the technology issues related to doing business online.

Advice 6: Build your website
Now that you’ve gained knowledge on how to establish an online business, you still have one problem: How do you develop it?
One way is to hire an internal web development. The other way is to outsource the development to a company experienced in building online businesses.

Advice 7: customer relationship
Your clients must believe in your services and products. The only way to achieve this is to provide superb customer services; whether by phone, email or through chat. You are only the one that can make them feel comfortable in buying your products or services.

Advice 8: Maintain Constant Contact with your Customers
Keep in contact with your customers on a regular basis through the use of online tools such enewsletters, e books, email offers, etc. This will help you maintain a relationship with them and have them come back to purchase on your site. Anticipate their needs; give them a reason to come back and buy online again!

Advice 9: Build new professional partnerships
Find partners that can offer products or services that your customers would be interested in. This will help you increase the number of services or products you have to offer.

Advice 10: Be an innovator
The Internet is a new technology. Find creative ways of using this new technology to take your offline business and expanding it through a virtual world. Use your imagination to expand your business with this new technology.

Martin LEMAIRE
WMG - http://www.webmanagementgroup.com/

eCommerce retailers takeoff, how do you join them?

The ecommerce retail market is increasing and is taking a new business dimension as reported in the US Census Bureau News August, 2006, article titled “E-commerce retail in the second quarter 2006 estimate increased 23.0 percent ($26.3 billion) from 2005 while total retail sales increased 6.6 percent ($984.9 billion) in the same period.” Ecommerce retail sales are still only 2.7% of overall retail sales in the US. This represents a great opportunity to increase your company’s revenue through online sales.

So you are a retailer who wants to sell online? But, you don’t have the resources to launch an online retail operation by yourself. One option that you have is to outsource the development of an online operation to a company that specializes in doing this. This will help you stay focused on your business while you open up another sales channel.

The difficult part about outsourcing is who should you contact?

Before you start looking for an outsourcing partner, you must define:
- What should you expect an outsourcing company?
- What are you expecting from your business online?
- Do you want to sell online or just have an online presence?
- If you chose to sell your products or services online, what kind of sales strategy will you need to implement?

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to look for the cheapest way of setting up an online store such as using a freelance web developer. This is a BIG mistake and WRONG strategy!!!! As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. A freelancer is more economical upfront than a professional company. However, following are some freelancing scenarios you should consider before you go this route:

- An undergraduate or graduate student who is trying to make some extra money during his studies. If you hire this person, what will happen when he graduates? Will he continue working for you as a freelancer? What will you do if he decides to leave your online business and he’s the only one that knows everything about your website?
- An independent who controls your entire website. What do you do if this person gets more clients and is no longer able to make your website a priority? What if he or she disappears and you can’t reach them anymore? What if he or she gets sick and isn’t available to take care of your site?

These are very important issues to consider for your online business. You could lose more money through one of the scenarios listed above because of not wanting to pay for professional website management assistance.

You use professional services for your offline business. Why should it be any different with your online venture?

Martin LEMAIRE
www.webmanagementgroup.com

WMG Presentation

Hello everyone, my name is Martin LEMAIRE and I’m the web marketing & sales associate at Web Management Group (WMG). Our company provides website management services to businesses that are interested in taking their business to the next level through the internet. If you want to expend your business through the fantastic tool that is the Internet but don’t know how to do because it is not your core business, let us do it for you!!!

If you are interested, please visit our website to learn about our different solutions:

http://www.webmanagementgroup.com/

In the first edition of our blog, I will describe for you:

- What the WMG Company is

- Our Customers

- WMG services

1. WMG

As mentioned above, WMG wants to help small businesses that are interested in increasing their revenues through the web. Today, the internet is an indispensable tool in terms of communication and you are able to gain information all over the world. Why don’t you take your chance to sell your products through the internet and specifically your website? You’ve heard that you can gain different business opportunities in extending your marketplace oversea or in other parts of the US! Only ONE problem faces you: your business core is not the web technology and you have no idea how to build a reliable and efficiencient website to increase your business.

There’s a solution for you: an outsourcing web management company!!! Here we come to help and follow you like a partner in your online business or not only like an outsourcer.

2. Customer Profile

WMG specializes in website headache relief for small businesses. People often find us when they are desperately searching for a "cure" for their biggest headache: unreliable website service. Read their stories and find out about the WMG cure.

http://www.webmanagementgroup.com/clients.aspx

3. Services

Our goal is to help clients increase their revenues and realize the perfect online tool to increase their visibility and sell in their market.

- Web Management

Turn over to WMG the day-to-day management and maintenance of your website, and you're free to concentrate on running and improving your business.

- Website emergency support

Whether you're calling us for the first time in a crisis, or for a problem down the road, we'll be there for you when you call and give your emergency the quick attention it needs.

- Search Engine Marketing

We know how to strategically position key words and phrases within your website, so that your site is one of the first to come up on the popular search engines.

- Web application development

We utilize today's best business practices in design and functionality, to ensure that your website meets your business's unique needs.

After this brief presentation if you are interested in more information about what services Web Management Group can provide you & how we can help your business take on another dimension, click on this link:

http://www.webmanagementgroup.com/

Martin LEMAIRE

Marketing & Sales Associate

mlemaire@webmanagementgroup.com