1. Identify Your Target Audience

What is it that you are offering? What is your unique selling point (USP)? Who is going to be interested in your offering? What kind of  information, products and services are search engine users searching for? You will be surprised by how much you will be able to identify by investing in some research. A quick way of understanding demand and target audience, can often be search term research and analysis.

2. Uncover Your Competitors

Once you understand your target audience and what kind of things they are looking for on the web you can start looking for your competitors. How many other companies and websites are in the same space? How crowded is the marketplace for what you want to offer or sell? The good news is that in the online world, competitors are not hiding. They want to be found and they want to be visible. You can uncover most of your serious competitors by searching for your business keywords on popular search engines and see who is getting listed on page one. Beware online competitors might not have the same offering as you, but by occupying top search ranking positions they prevent you getting access to your target audience.

3. Develop A Clear Business Model

You know your target audience, your identified keywords and your main competitor for your chosen products and services. How are you going to make your money? What makes your visitors part with their cash or how are you going monetise your visitors in other ways? There are many business models you could follow. In addition to selling products or services online you could develop innovative subscription models, capture data and leads, implement affiliate schemes or just build email lists, which you can monetise. Whatever you business model, make sure it is unique, clear for users to understand, compelling and good value. A well structured online business plan will help you focus and succeed.

4. Align Your Website With Your Business Needs

Produce a site that fits your immediate requirements but build it so it is scaleable for your future business needs too.  If you are planning on selling products locally you require a shopping cart and a  reliable online payment system.  However if you are planning on selling products globally, you will require features such as multi-currency, localisation and advanced security. If you have to add and edit high volumes of  content you will require a suitable content management system (CMS).  Draw up a road map of what you need to start with and what you think you will need inside the next three years.  A typical life cycle of a website is three years.

5. Optimise Your Website

The Internet is cluttered with websites that do not have any visitors and no visibility. It is estimated that last year alone over 47 million new websites were created. Your success will largely depend on how visible your online business will be and how you’re going to attract visitors to your website.  It is paramount that you optimise your website for your target audience and your target keywords. This can be done for new and existing websites and there are plenty of search engine optimisation companies out there eager to help.

6. Increase Your Online Visibility

Search engine optimisation is a must. However it is not the only way to increase your websites visibility and site traffic. If you have the budget you can try PPC to  generate instant visits to your site.  Social media, blogs and organic link building are equally valid but often lower cost methods to drive traffic to your site. Expert Marketers can help you with email- and viral marketing techniques.  Anything to get the word out and bring visitors to your site

7. Reassure Your Visitors

When you’re setting up a new site  it’s essential that you stand out from the crowd and communicate to your visitors what your site is all about. If visitors find your site useful, trustworthy and your site satisfies their needs or solves their problems they are more likely to buy or subscribe.  Make sure you are clear on what you are offering otherwise your hard earned visitors will bounce.

8. Convert Visitors

Call-To-Action, Call-To-Action, Call-To-Action. Encourage your visitors to do what makes your online business successful. Get them to buy, subscribe, register, download and participate. Whatever it takes but make sure your visitors convert into sales, leads or enquiries.  Make it easy for them to buy, make it clear where to register and encourage them to consume more content until they convert.

9. Retain Visitors

New customer acquisition is more expensive than existing customer retention. The internet is no different. Recycling exiting website traffic is less expensive than generating new traffic. Make sure you give your visitors and customers reasons to come back to your site. Use of CRM tools, publishing of unique interesting content, free tools, email based  promotions and offers will give visitors a reason to come back to your site.

10. Measure Your Success (Or Your Failure)

Web analytics can help you to gain insight into your site traffic. Where are your visitors coming from? How are visitors responding to your site and your content? Why are visitors exiting the site before being converted into business?  There are lots of packages to choose from – some paid, some free. Google Analytics is a very  good package to use if you’re just starting out.

If you get most of the above right, your web-based business will be successful. Don’t despair, nothing is ever perfect from day one and online marketing techniques evolve permanently. Consult an online marketing company for some of the specialist areas.