The Best way to Start an e-Business

Before you officially “open the doors” of your e-business, you need to create a business plan. Turn your business idea into a plan that will help you succeed (or you may find it’s better to scrap the idea and come up with something better).

Putting a business plan together may seem like a daunting task. Our next few blogs will take you step by step through the process of creating a business plan, making the process a little easier for you.

Putting a business plan together will include completing a market analysis, a competitive analysis, an advertising plan, pricing, branding, a sales strategy, and much more.

You will want to consider marketing, financing, your target market, distribution of your product, finding out who your competition is, etc. In addition to considering these factors, you will want to set realistic goals for your small business.

Learn more about starting an online business here.

For more information, please visit www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

More Common Site Design Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

You’ve spent a lot of time designing your site and marketing it. It is hard work to market your site and has probably cost you a lot of time and a lot of money. You are getting visitors now – and no one stays to see what you have to offer/sell/say. There are a lot of reasons this might be so but today I want to go into a common mistake that costs people a lot of visitors – slow loading pages. The number one reason people get annoyed and leave a page is because it takes forever to load. Making them wait for graphics isn’t going to wow them; it is going to irritate them.

Graphics aren’t the only thing that can cause your site to load slowly though, and are also not the only thing that can annoy your visitors to the point where they want to leave. Slow loading and distracting flash banners and entry pages, music that you force them to listen to and slow loading java scripts are all killers and will turn your viewers/buyers away quickly. Unfortunately we have social networking sites these days like MySpace that have made these kinds of things popular – believe me there is a world of difference between a MySpace page and a page you are using for commercial purposes. Under no circumstances should you use annoying animated gifs or bright and flashing Flash banners – nothing screams out “leave here immediately” more.

Don’t mistake me, MySpace can be a great tool and can be a form of marketing for you in itself. You can and should make a MySpace page to network and promote your regular website. I would have it designed so it matches the look of your webpage, but don’t base your website design on the design of a MySpace page! Looking through MySpace pages you can see in any five pages pretty much every violation of good website design. Why spend all that time and money to get people to your site so you can then hold them captive and make them watch something that you think is great but they may or may not is interesting. Just let people get on to the business of buying something from you. Make it easy for your customers to spend money with you.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Avoiding Common Mistakes in Marketing Your Website

Today’s topic is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Looking around the web at different professional sites and keeping track of trends is sometimes a full time job in itself. I’ve seen a lot of sites out there and many different approaches to marketing them. One thing I see over and over that makes me want to leave a site immediately is obvious misspellings. Nothing turns me off faster and makes me trust someone less. Why would I trust someone to perform a service for me or sell me a product if they can’t even take the time to spell check their website content?

Grammar and punctuation mistakes can be forgiven. Much of the time I don’t even notice them until or unless I’ve read the material several times. However, misspelled words stick out like a sore thumb. They are distracting and unprofessional. Whenever I see them I think to myself how sad it is that the person doesn’t care enough about their reputation or their customers returning to take the time out to use spell check.

Use a spell check in your word process program, hire a professional writer or just take your time and check each word, but whatever you do, avoid misspelled words on your site. There is absolutely no faster way to turn your customers away from you than to have blatant misspellings. At least let someone else look at the text you’ve written and proof read it for you. There’s absolutely no way you can build credibility and a reputation for reliability unless you show you’re willing to go to the work of making sure the text on your site is correct. After all, if you go to a site and the first thing you see is “Welcom too are websid” believe me it says worlds about the care you’ve taken and what a customer can expect from you. Leaving a detail like that unfixed can make someone believe you are trying to run a scam or rip them off. HIT Web Design employs a staff of full time writers who do nothing but spell check our customer’s content and our own website content as well. This is the least I can recommend to someone wishing to look and sound professional to their customers and site viewers.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Marketing Your Website - Tips and Tricks

There are definitely a myriad of ways to market your website and your web based business. Some of those you might overlook because you may not think of a website as part of a traditional media campaign. Some of the least expensive and yet surprisingly effective ways of marketing your sites are some of the oldest in the book. Some things you can do that are commonly overlooked –

Make sure your website address is on all brochures, business cards, letterhead, email signatures etc. Basically anywhere you print your business address and phone number needs to have your web address as well.

If you have a yellow page ad, newspaper ad, TV and/or radio ads…all these should include your web address. Television and radio ads can be very effective especially in a local market. Newspaper definitely shouldn’t be ignored, and a yellow page ad can often be invaluable.

If you don’t have one already, develop some kind of free gift that you can give to your customers that has your web address on it. Pens, key-chains, refrigerator magnets, plastic squeeze bottles, hats, bags – a nice item that can be fairly inexpensive if you order them in bulk and has great keeper value are small thumb drives. Give these out at every opportunity and have your branding and web address all over it.

Develop magnetic signs and/or vinyl lettering for your vehicle with your web address and your branding on it. Not only does it get your branding and your web address out there, it gives you an opportunity to speak to people about it if you do it uniquely enough to grab people’s attention. It also might give you the ability to deduct business expenses involving your automobile. Check with your tax professional for details.

Ads on local movie theatres ‘between show’ slides can have a surprising return if the ad is effectively done. Other ways to get your site out there are billboards, mobile billboards, flyers, grass roots word of mouth campaigns, ads in trade magazines or specialty magazines can be effective too. The bottom line to advertising and marketing is doing whatever gives you the best return on investment. Keep track of where your customers come from in order to decide in the future where your precious advertising dollars and energy need to go in order to get the best return on your investment. It takes a lot of hard work and energy to make a business work and a website is no different.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

Email Marketing - What Software Should I Use?

E-mail marketing is a great way of reminding your customers who you are, getting your brand in front of them, providing them with useful information and helpful tips as well as great deals you might be offering. How do you implement it though? That’s where a great software program can be invaluable. HIT Web Design has an easy to use and easy to understand piece of software we can install on your site called the Stay-N-Touch. After researching different options out there on the web I would have to say this is definitely the standard that all software should be judged by.

The Stay-N-Touch software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists. All known e-mail lists file formats are supported so compatibility isn’t an issue. The Stay-N-Touch Marketing program includes advanced reports on mailing campaigns, click-throughs, new subscribers and more stats. It also gives you the ability to create custom forms for any mailing group, use custom fields, and custom design- the advanced online editor allows you to build cutting-edge newsletters and emails using both HTML and Text.

I will list the qualities of Stay-N-Touch and say that any software you decide to go with to help you with your e-mail marketing program needs to have these functions to be of true use to you.

• Create and manage highly targeted mailing campaigns
  Mailing list builder, newsletter editor, subscription forms, auto responders, tracking, reports and more. All in one place.
  
  
• Customization and Personalization
  Send personalized and customized emails to all recipients, groups or to custom mix of mailing groups.
  
  
• Custom fields
  Create multiple custom fields and use them in the newsletter body, mailing lists and subscription forms.
  
  
• Advanced tracking and reports
  Track mailing campaigns, click-throughs, and get detailed mailing reports.
  
  
• Automatic bounced emails
  The system will automatically move bounced email addresses to a special folder. You can make these emails active again or delete at any time.
  
  
• Multi-language support
  Supports over 50 main world languages. These include European, Asian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other languages.
  
  
• Advanced auto responder
  Create a series of unlimited follow-up auto responder tasks. Choose basic, multiple or mailing campaign auto responders. Choose a start point: any date/time or deliver emails once a user joins your mailing list.
  
  
• Full support of huge mailing lists
  This software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists.
  
  
• Easy-to-use interface makes administration a snap

For more information as well as a complete demonstration, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call your customer service representative at 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - Tips On a Successful Campaign

You’ve decided on an e-mail marketing campaign through your double opt-in, offering bonus services, discounts, helpful information and tips to all your customers. This can be very successful or it can be downright frustrating, and a lot of what happens with it depends on you and avoiding some common pitfalls that can take the energy out of your campaign before it even begins.

One of the first things you want to do make sure you’ve put an obvious “call to action” on your e-mail that cries out to the customer as soon as they open your e-mail; this is the same concept we talked about when creating your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customer to buy from you so in order to capture their attention you need to provide them with an easy to understand opportunity to buy as soon as they see your message. If a customer doesn’t see what you want them to do they usually won’t search; they will close that email and go on to the next one. Also make it easy for them to understand what they are getting out of doing what you’ve asked them to, otherwise, what is their motivation?

Another tip is to make the e-mail (if it is an HTML based e-mail especially) consistent with your corporate look, website and other marketing, no matter what media it is. This helps with branding and helps your customer understand immediately it is message from you. Inconsistency in marketing messages can look ‘messy’ and can have a detrimental effect on the message you are trying to convey as well as an overall harmful effect on your corporate image. It makes you look unprofessional, inconsistent and can portray you as an entity that can’t be trusted. A unified look in marketing efforts provides instant branding as well as a sense of security in the reliable look.

You should also be consistent with the times you send out e-mail messages. If you do it too frequently you will run the risk of alienating your customers, but not often enough and they forget who you are. There is no real rule about it but putting your name out there in front of your customers at least once a month should be considered your minimum. Any other kind of time line will have to be determined by you and how often you feel your customers need to hear from you or can tolerate yet another marketing message.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - How To Do It Right

As I mentioned in Friday’s web log, E-mail marketing is an extremely efficient means of keeping yourself in touch with your customers. You can use it to give your customers helpful hints and tips, answer frequently asked questions, as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a helpful, non-intrusive and generally inexpensive way. But how do you get that list of customer e-mails to begin with? If you’ve sold to them, as part of the process you can ask them for their e-mail address, but it is critical that you ask the customer if it is OK for you to send them e-mail messages from time to time, otherwise you run the risk of alienating them. But how do you get e-mail addresses from people who haven’t purchased from you but may be interested in what you have to offer? There is a simple way that is easy to implement on your site and relatively inexpensive; it is called confirmed subscription opt-in, or, the “double opt-in”.

Confirmed subscription opt-in or double opt-in is a method for those seeking information from you to confirm with you that it is actually them asking to be included on your mailing list. The customer or potential customer fills out a short form on your website asking to be included in your mailing list. Once they submit the form, the form sends them an email that they have to respond to in order to complete the subscription. They are confirming, twice, that they actually want to receive the e-mails from you that you send out, be it informational, marketing or otherwise. This prevents anyone from posing as someone else and entering their email address as one that wishes to receive the information you send to your email list, be it marketing information, FAQ’s, a newsletter or sales opportunities. The potential abuser may put in a second parties email but doesn’t control that person’s email address therefore eliminating this particular scam. Not only does it confirm that they want to receive information, it is also a way of confirming that someone is likely to spend money with you and is genuinely interested in your products or services.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - What It Is

E-mail marketing is an enormously effective tool to keep yourself in touch with your customers when utilized in a legal (non-spam) way, and can benefit your customers as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your existing customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a positive and cost effective way. Depending on how effective and helpful you make the message you’re trying to get across you can significantly increase your bottom line. In reality e-mail marketing is so inexpensive even if it doesn’t have a significant return; almost any amount of return becomes worthwhile.

The great thing about e-mail marketing campaigns is it doesn’t matter what size business you are, it is just as effective for a small business as it is for a large business; in fact, sometimes it benefits a small business considerably more. A good e-mail opt-in database can be worth infinitely more than what you spend on it to begin with as it can be used in so many different ways. Not only can you use it to get a marketing message across, you can use it as an ambassador of good will to your customers, sending them out helpful hints and tips, as well as utilizing it to follow up with customers who have purchased from you lately. It can have many, many different uses. However, with all that said let’s examine and define exactly what a decent e-mail marketing campaign is, and what it isn’t.

Wikipedia defines E-mail marketing as –

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

You can find that definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing. This definition pre-supposes that you are not e-mailing people that haven’t asked to be included in your mailing list. Sending unsolicited e-mail is called ‘spam’ - so what is the difference between e-mail marketing and spam? E-mail spam is defined loosely as unsolicited, bulk, commercial e-mail. Most people find e-mail spam to be distasteful at best.

HIT Web Design offers an easy to use email marketing program called Stay-N-Touch. For more information on Stay-N-Touch, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call 1-866-211-0743.