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.

Powerful Customer Experiences

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.

Customers will want to read product descriptions, have shipping calculations be quick and easy and a FAQ page is a great way to take care of all those recurring questions.

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

Youve likely heard the term Content is King. Its overused for sure but it still holds true. Content not only provides your website visitors with the information theyre seeking, it helps drive search engine traffic to your site. However, organizing and uploading all of this content can be a full time job if you dont have a content management system to get the job done quickly.

A content management system or CMS makes creating, storing, modifying, and even removing content from your website a quick and easy process. No HTML skills are necessary to create a professional looking website. Its a great time saver.

Secure, Easy To Use Shopping Cart

While a shopping cart may seem like a mere technicality to you, its an integral part of your customers experience. Customers need to know that their information and transaction is secure. They want to know all shipping and sales tax information right up front, and they want a system which lets them manage their cart with relative ease.

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

Easy Navigation

In order to make the most of your customers time, and to keep them on your website, make it easy for them to find what they want. Provide a search tool which lets them enter their keyword and find exactly what they need with relative ease. For example if you own a store selling pet clothing, rather than asking your customer to search through pages of products, provide a search tool lets your customer find dog sweaters quickly and easily.

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

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

In the competitive world of online business, your branding strategy can certainly help set you apart from your competition. While a logo is important, think about the Nike swish or the colorful eBay lettering, for a small business owner your personality is a large part of your brand. Your personality can be reflected in the content and design on 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.