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The Building Blocks of a Successful Internet Business Part II

Internet success involves a close and ongoing approach to your Internet property which dictates examining each and every web page to ensure that it meets and exceeds the expectations of your site visitors. Here are two critical elements that can make a difference between a site with minimal ROI and one that beats the path to your banker’s office:

• Product Selection
• Product Description

The Success Blueprint
Rome took a few days to build and so does a successful Internet venture. Since this technology is no longer in its infancy, choices and options have become limitless. From something as simple as which domain name to select to complicated issues such as which merchant transaction strategy to adopt, there are a bewildering number of choices and options to pursue.

Product Service or Knowledge
There are three broad categories of e-commerce web sites on the Internet. The first category includes web sites that market a tangible product such as audio and video content on magnetic media, clothing or fashion accessories. In the second category, a specific service or a group of services is made available to the Internet audience. Example includes insurance and e-learning sites as well as sites which market software applications targeted toward a particular industry segment. There is a third segment which provides access to information and knowledge repositories in exchange for advertising mileage. Regardless of which category your web site belongs to, the product or service you are marketing needs to serve a purpose, solve a problem and fulfill existing demand that is commensurate with the investment you have made in your venture. Very often, Internet entrepreneurs showcase products or services on their web sites for which demand might be extremely limited due to seasonal, localization and other reasons. This just might be the right time to go back to the drawing boards to examine your product line to see if there is indeed a demand for the product or service you provide.How do you establish product viability? When selecting a product for your Internet venture, assess the existing competition. Too many competitors means that the product, although viable, might just have run its course. Too few competitors might just imply that demand for your product line is minimal. Arriving at the right product mix might call for a substantial amount of research and analysis which you should undertake prior to arriving at a decision. If you are one of those entrepreneurs who likes to play it safe once in a while, Identify a product or service which you intuitively believe has promise and potential and at the same time happens to be new on the horizon.

Pictures and a Thousand Words
pictures are indeed worth a thousand words. However, the dynamic impact of visually communicated information can never be denied. Therefore, your web site should have the right mix of text content and visual images. To what extent you should use both depends largely on the nature and scope of your product, service or your knowledge base. Provide as much information about your product or service as possible through relevant images, screen shots and direct product photography. This information should not only be accurate but easy to process by your site visitors and customers. Always remember that your competitors are only a mouse click away.Text and visual content on your web site that is scientifically search engine optimized can go a long way in transforming your product line from a drag to a super winner. Optimize your visuals with keyword rich alt tags so that the search engines can index your images. Your text content should demonstrate the right mix of key words, key phrases, descriptions and cross-links to receive front page exposure on search engines. Bear in mind though that site visitors pause on a page for an average of only three seconds and that is all the time you have to grab their attention. Text content should always be bulleted in part with liberal use of first and second level headings to improve readability and activate the use of H tags. As you can tell, judicious product selection and logical descriptions can improve your ROI across the board. Your initial investment in time and resources can reap rich benefits in the future.