The truth is, most of us cannot imagine the shear size of the Internet today, for example, do a search for “Business Services” and you will receive back 2.2 billion results. And that is not all; there are just as many pages that are not listed by Google, floating around in cyberspace for all types of keywords and services.

The days where you employed a web designer to create a wonderful colour catalogue of your services and watch your sales zoom into orbit went many years ago. Yet as an Ecommerce specialist I am still equally amazed to find that many businesses, if not most, still think that is the case. They need to increase sales, “lets get a website” is the answer, without any foresight of how to get visitors to that expensive Internet presence.

The reality is, only a very small percentage of those who invest in a business web presence, get back their investment. It can be compared to buying advertising space in the desert. A huge, all signing all dancing billboard campaign that no one sees, except the odd camel travelling through.

As with all business ventures, marketing is key, so why is it that most websites never benefit from any marketing. Yes your site is on your business cards, yes you registered them with the search engines, this is not even close to being a start, if you really want to benefit from the millions of web searches done every say.

The answer is first to understand how your potential customers will find you, either by researching search terms, or paying for marketing within the correct publications.

Either one of these will cost you either in time or money, but should be costed in to your initial website creation plan.

You may find out that there are just not enough people searching for your services to justify the expense. This is when you need to be creative and optimise your website for dozens of not hundreds of potential search terms. For example, if you were a plumber, there is a good chance you also, fit bathrooms, do tiling, fit kitchen sinks, fix boilers, drain water systems, unblock drains, have emergency call outs, do tender work for authorities etc, etc. These are all things that a potential customer may look for you on the Internet. Most plumbing business, would call himself or herself a plumber and that’s it, missing out on much traffic.

Search engine optimisation should be a consideration for all websites and don’t believe your web designer that they can do that for you, until you have an example of their results. You should cost all this as if it were any marketing plan and then record all results against input of money or time. This all takes time and a new website will not get good results straight away unless they are unique in the market.

The can be big rewards if you get it right, but most will not and will become part of the 2.2bn results that no one ever sees, where will you be?

Mark Flanighan
Ecommerce Specialist
www.business-advisor.org