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Your website!!
In todays fast paced world, a web presence is becoming pretty much essential! If your customers are looking for you online - who are they going to find? Your competitors!!
As soon as customers see that you have a website - especially your own domain - they begin to take you and your business more seriously. If you have a nicely designed and easy to navigate website, potential customers can find out a lot more about you! Explain to them why your products are great and what YOU do that makes you special!
It doesn't have to cost a fortune either. For a relatively small amount of money, you can have your own domain name in seconds! Either have somebody design it for you, or learn HTML code and design it yourself. There are hundreds of free templates on the web that you can use to get started too!
Even if you feel you have got on okay so far without a website, think about the potential advertising that you are missing out on!
Existing customers can also keep in touch with the latest offers or products etc through the website. Newsletters can be sent to the customers who have signed up on the website for the same so they get the updates regularly. You have a way of staying in touch on a monthly basis with your customers and reminding them that you exist!
SEO or search engine optimization is precisely that ... writing the html code for your website so that according to current methods (I can't tell you what that is because the search engines change this regularly!) you get the best possible (ie highest) listing in a search engine for a particular keyword.
TIPS FOR WEBSITES
Keep it Clean
Ask yourself if you would buy from a company that advertised itself with scary loud background images on a website. As an online shopper myself, nothing puts me off quicker than seeing loud scary wallpaper images that look like they belong on a pair of boxer shorts! Keep it fresh and keep it clean looking.
High quality photographs of your work.
If you don't own a digital camera, then buy one! To be able to sell your products, you need to be able to show them. You'll be hard pushed for somebody to buy something based on even the best description! They want to be able to SEE what they are buying before they buy it. If you can't afford to buy a digital camera then borrow one. The other alternative is to use a regular camera and get the pictures developed. If you do it this way, make sure you take 2-3 photos of each product from slightly different angles. This way you can pick the best one to use instead of making the best of one bad picture or having to take more.
A Shopping Cart
Customers don't want to have to email an order to you. There are plenty of other candle websites out there offering hand poured candles that are just as good as yours, so you want to make their shopping experience as easy as possible for them. A shopping cart allows them to click a button when they are interested in a product and add it to a "wish list" they can then chop and change their items around as they like until they are happy with their order.
Ability to accept credit cards.
It's all about making an easy shopping experience for your customers! They don't want to have to get up out of their chair and post a cheque or money order to you. With the growing trend in internet sales, they want a one stop shop at the click of a button.
Listings in major search engines and directories.
What use is your website if people can't find it! It isn't as easy to get listed these days as the trend for websites is growing at a daily rate. Search engines are being more picky about the sites they accept these days. Only list meta tags that are actually relavent to your website such as "hand poured candles, pillars, votives" etc. Avoid repeated use of a word and repeated submission to the same search engine. They penalise for this and won't rank you!
Links from every site that will link to you.
The more links to your site, the higher your ranking in the search engines. Find related sites and ask if they will link to you. Offer a reciprocal link back in return.
A website stats counter.
You will want some way of monitoring the traffic to your website so you can see the growth and know where your links are coming from.
Regular mainenance.
Customers will want to know that they are ordering from someone who cares about their business enough to keep their site updated. Even if you don't have any changes to make, once a month change the date of the "Last updated on xxxx"
Patience!!!
You will need to hang in there for at least 6 to 9 months before you start to really see results. Internet success doesn't happen overnight, except for the multi billion pound companies who are paying a fortune for the advertising!! It takes time to develop, but hang in there!
The biggest obstacle to Internet sales for candles isn't a lack of opportunities - it's an overabundance of choices. Have you ever surfed the web and gotten so distracted you couldn't remember what you were originally looking for?
It's even easier to get lost when you start promoting your own site. The upside is that your hard work WILL pay off.
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