5 Tips for Taking Your Small Business Online

Your product line should be able to be delivered economically and conveniently through the mail or over the Internet.

The Web allows you to market to customers outside your geographical location. Your product should appeal to people nation-or-continent-wide.

Compare new “technology” costs to current bricks and mortar costs, e.g: rent, labor, inventory and printing costs.

Realize that the World Wide Web levels the playing ground—you can look like a big company with a great Web site.

Draw visitors to your site cheaply. Establish and grow alliances that will hotlink to your site for free.

Tips for Getting Noticed Online

Get your Web site listed on major search engines, such as Google or Yahoo!

Join a “banner exchange,” and trade advertising banners with other Web sites. Look under “banner exchange” on search engines.

Visit sites similar to or related to yours and offer to exchange links with them.

Write useful articles for other sites and include your Web address.

5 Tips on Meeting the Demand for Speed

Realize that the swiftest competitor, not necessarily the smartest, is often the winner in today’s marketplace. Speed is increasingly of the essence, no matter what business you are in.

Respond to sales leads quickly. One small business requires staff members to follow up within the hour, by email, fax or phone.

Get comfortable with rapid, strategic decision-making. Five-year planning horizons are out the window.

Compress your timetables. One Internet start-up rolled out its expansion efforts in a reduced-time span of 45 days instead of the originally planned year, beating out competitors.

Make speed a part of your corporate culture. Reward employees’ swiftness with stock options, bonuses or other perks.

5 Tips for Ensuring Your Customers’ Privacy

Understand that protecting customers’ privacy is essential to maintaining and increasing sales and profits online.

Develop a privacy policy, post it on your web site, and live by your policy.

Put top-notch security systems in place to make sure that customer data is not lost, misused, altered or stolen.

Require that third parties with whom you deal provide similar data security.

Don’t provide personal information collected from customers to third parties unless you have explicit permission from the customers to do so.

5 Tips for Marketing Your Web Site

Think strategically. Your Web site should be a part of your overall marketing plan.

Choose a Web site address (URL) that’s intuitive and easy to remember. Your company’s name (if it’s short) or the name of your main product might work well.

Put your Web address on all your printed material, including business cards, letterhead, press releases and invoices. Include it in all your advertising.

Don’t forget offline media and traditional publicity techniques. Send news releases promoting your site to newspapers, broadcasters, and magazines.

Speak at conferences and trade shows, and writes informative articles for trade publications. When you do, mention your Web address.