Saturday, February 7, 2009

Stuff You Need for a Great & Profitable Website

By Angie Sandy

The internet is a growing and booming medium for aspiring entrepreneurs. However with all of the competition, it takes a little more than a basic website to profit. To build a thriving and profitable website, youll need a few key ingredients.

A Memorable Customer Experience

One of the most important aspects of owning an online store is your customer experience. To the customer that means being able to find all of the information they need to make a purchasing 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.

A powerful customer experience also includes feeling welcomed and valued " a sense of connection. This can be provided and enhanced by utilizing frequent buyer programs and an about us page to show them who you are and what youre about.

Valuable and Consistent Content

Any profitable website uses content to both draw traffic to the site and to keep them there. The trick for busy entrepreneurs is to manage all their content effectively and efficiently. A content management system or CMS is a great tool for busy business owners because it provides an organized system.

A CMS enables the user to manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a Web site without needing the expertise of a Webmaster. This means you dont need to know any programming language to create your website. You can create, schedule, edit and remove pages without spending hours modifying HTML.

Top Notch Shopping Cart

If you're losing customers at checkout, part of the problem may be your shopping cart system. Theres nothing more frustrating than a system which drops items, makes you jump through hoops and doesn't provide all the payment and cost information right up front. An integral aspect to a customer friendly and therefore profitable website is a secure and easy to use checkout system.

For business owners a good shopping cart system will manage your data, produce real time reports and not cost an arm and a leg.

Search Option

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.

Providing this functional search feature enhances your customers experience as well it provides you with valuable keyword data to incorporate into your marketing strategy and product line decisions.

Search Engine Traffic

When building a profitable online business SEO plays a very important role in driving website traffic and sales. A key feature for a website builder is an easy SEO system which makes linking, content, and keyword tagging including meta and alt tags a straightforward process.

If your website builder also comes with a sitemap feature each time you update your website content, the search engines are automatically notified, saving you tons of time and ensuring your website is getting noticed by the search engines and potential visitors.

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.

Many website building tools are difficult to navigate, have a steep learning curve and make it extremely difficult to get the look and feel you want to convey. A profitable website, one which provides customers a memorable and enjoyable experience, isnt impossible to create. You just need the right tools and to know what you want the end result to be.

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