Launching a Successful Online Business
Launching a Successful Online Business
Next, I will share with you 3 basic keys for launching a successful online business. Let’s try to follow Albert Einstein's advice: You have to learn the rules of the game. And then play better than anyone else. For this purpose, let’s start with a simple approach because sometimes simple is better.
There are 3 things that you need to know before starting an online business that will become a successful one.
1. Understand online users.
(Identify and get to know your market)
People surfing the net, are looking for information about products, services, and organizations. In additio they want information about solutions to their problems, and something that will meet particular needs and wants. They are relying more than ever on the search engines to find aswers. Web users love to search. There are approximately over 3.5 billion searches on Google.com per day.
Online surfers are not looking for you or your business. This is why most online business startups fail. They start at the end of the process.
Most online startups want to start making money right away, instead of focusing first on building a business that makes them money. A successul online business offers VALUE to its visitors before it attempts to generate money. So, the first thing is to provide the information people are looking for.
Let's first take a look for instance at the internet demographics of the largest country user in the world, the US. Then look at the source of this info and you'll find more information about particular coutries and target the one you're interested in.
Internet User Demographics In The U.S. 2014
As of January 2,014, 87% of American adults use the internet.
Among adults, the % who use the internet, email, or access the internet via a mobile device.
Users By Gender
Users By Race / Ethnicity
Users By Age
Users By Education Level
Users By Income
Internet users say digital tech makes them better
informed than 5 years ago.
% of internet users who say the internet and cell phones help them be better informed about...
Source: August 2,014 Panel Survey
How much, if at all, have the internet and cell phones improved your ability to learn new things?
% of internet users who say the internet and cell phones helped ...
Source: August 2,014 Panel Survey. Previous surveys were national phone surveys.
2. Understand the virtual environment.
A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). Source: Wikipedia.org
The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. Source: Wikipedia.org
This environment looks to connect searches with the information they are looking for and serving the most relevant one. This is why is also called a network. For online businesses and marketers it's the medium used to facilitate those connections. They want to attract visitors to their sites in order to trigger transactions and exchanges.
Since there are millions of websites on the net, how will website and business owners get found by their propsects? Competition is huge and fierce. It is very crowded out there.
One of the first important things to keep in mind if you want to succeed online is to dilligently market optimize the business website to make it easy for the search engines to index. Post relevant content to a particular theme using keywords and phrases so that the content shows up when people surf online. Potential customers online should be able to find your e-biz easily.
So, a successful online business knows how to reach it target audience effectively by serving the relevant information surfers are looking for and not just any information but with quality.
3. Understand what makes it work. (Action plan)
You’ll need a good understanding of the way businesses work online. However, a lot of business fundamentals of an physically located biz still apply. One of the aspects that both business models have in common and key to their success, is that every business transaction is conducted on trust-based relationships.
People do business with those they know, like, and trust. Trust and credibility are key elements for every good long term business or personal relationship. This is easy to achieve in the physical world where your customer meets you face to face. But very hard to achieve online.
A successful online business has the ability to gain the trust and credibility of its visitors. This is one of the most challenging aspects of the virtual business world. It is very difficult to gain trust when people can't even see each other.
This part of the process is a very critical one. Many fail at this stage.
The first step to take on this challenge is to focus your efforts on delivering personalized experiences and solutions. Take it personally and put yourself in your customers shoes.