Saturday, February 7, 2009

Profitable Website: A Key Ingredient List

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.wealthyways4you.com/online-business/profitable-website-a-key-ingredient-list)
by Angie Sandy


The key to internet marketing success is to attract website visitors and convert them into loyal and paying customers. This is accomplished with a variety of strategies and tactics which all begin and end with your website.

A Memorable Customer Experience

Think about what matters to you when you shop online " its your experience as a customer that matters most, right? The same holds true for your website visitors and customers. To create a powerful customer experience you must provide everything necessary for your customers and visitors to make a quick and easy buying decision.

FAQ pages, for example, are a great resource for all those common questions. Shipping charges and easy to find product descriptions are also a must.

For many customers, it also means feeling a sense of connection to the store. Frequent buyer programs help create that sense of community, however free content, superior customer service, a fun and friendly about us page as well as unified branding images like your logo, all help to tell customers who you are and what youre about.

Article Management And CMS

For business owners, in order to provide your customers and visitors with a fabulous experience a CMS, content management system or article management system will make providing valuable content quick and easy.

A CMS enables you to create, edit, password protect and delete content without the assistance of a webmaster and without needing any programming skills or knowledge. You can upload and manage a high volume of content quickly and easily.

Simple Checkout

The checkout process is where many businesses stumble. Customers demand, and deserve, a simple and very secure system and many shopping carts just dont measure up. Items are dropped, customers are asked to jump through too many hoops, and quite often all of the information they need, like shipping charges, isnt apparent until they hit the pay now button.

A quality shopping cart system will provide your customers with an easy and secure transaction and you with valuable data and reports at a moderate price.

Easy Navigation

Include a search function on your site and give your visitors and customers the ability to instantly find exactly what they need. For example, a pet store owner with this search feature on their website makes it easy for a prospect to find that dog coat theyre looking for. Forcing them to search throughout pages of items is a sure way to detract from their shopping experience.

Offering your visitors a search tool tells them you respect their time and value their business and the keyword information the tool provides gives you valuable insight.

Search Engine Traffic

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an important part of any profitable business yet it can be complicated without a website builder that handles tagging and linking automatically.

Dont forget to include a sitemap in your website. Sitemaps will help you stay at the top of your search engine rankings by informing the search engines each time a change or addition is made to your website.

Branding

As internet marketing becomes more and more competitive. If youre a solopreneur that means your personality is in large part your brand. While logos are important, its often more effective to demonstrate who you are and what youre about in the content and design of your website.

Not all website builders are the same. In fact some are downright difficult to use much less profit from. Make sure the website builder you choose not only provides all the features you need to create a powerful customer experience but also tools and features which make owning and operating a profitable website as quick and simple as possible.

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