Each day, more and more online businesses are getting planned and started. The boost in online businesses actually reflects the shifting buying preferences of the consumers, as the businesses have already covered every single life aspect there is. Why not? Consumers love the convenience online businesses bring, and that is the number one reason why this trend seems to strengthen overtime.

If you are planning to start an online business, we can offer you a brief, but comprehensive guide on how to do it and be successful online. Make sure to understand this first before applying for a small business loan or getting your funds ready for the online business. But, first, let us discuss what online business is.

What is an Online Business?

An online business is basically a business that takes place over the internet. There are various types of businesses and these include marketplaces, retailers, blogs and websites, and social media accounts, as well. Online business can be based on almost any type of industry.

Anyone can try and start a business online and apart from saving on office or store rent and staff wages, there are other benefits that you can get from setting up an online business. Moreover, staying online makes the efficiency of your product or service more enhanced because you do not need to get your business closed at the end of the day. With online business, you can serve your customers 24/7.

How to Start an Online Business

Starting an online business may seem simple, but you need to follow several steps in order to guarantee its success. You can try and start now without doing these steps, but success may become a bit hard to achieve. Nevertheless, anyone who wants to set up an online business can benefit from this guide.

How to Set Up an Online Business

1. Find a market and fill it.

You might think that finding a product first is the way to go. No. It is the other way around. You may get a bigger chance of success by starting with a market. Find a group of people looking for something that you think you can fill in. How? By doing an online market research.

You may go to online forums and check out what people are asking and talking about. Look for problems that people are trying to solve. Doing keyword research can help you with what people are looking for, as well as the keywords that do not have that much competition.

Check out any potential competitors and visit their websites, taking note of the things they do and offer in order to fill the demand. This way, you can know what product or service you need to create that you can offer to the already existing market. All you have to do is to make sure you do it better than them.

2. Get an effective sales copy.

When selling online, you can’t just post it on your website and expect customers to arrive. You need to write a copy that is so effective, it sells. Here’s a proven formula in making a sales copy that actually pushes your website visitors to make that purchase.

First is to have a compelling headline that will arouse their interests. You need to describe the problem and issues that you are trying to solve. This may seem too obvious, because they probably arrived at your site because they have a problem like this, but it won’t hurt to reiterate at this point. Stating the problem will help you establish your credibility as the problem-solver.

Let your site visitors find testimonials from people that have already used the product you are offering. Then, talk about how your product benefits the users. After this, you can make an offer and back that offer with a strong guarantee. Then, create urgency - “buy it now”, “get the special offer until tomorrow only,” and things like that; and then ask for the sale.

All through the sales copy, focus on your product or service and how they can solve your potential clients’ problems. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask, “what do you have to offer?”

3. Build your website.

Once you have already determined the market and product and you’ve come up with your own unique selling process, it is now time to build your online business’ website. For an online business, keeping it simple is advised. You don’t want to complicate things since you only have a few seconds to grab the customer’s attention and make a sale. If they come and go without making a purchase, chances are, they are not going back again.

So, here are some important factors to keep in mind:

• Keep it simple. Choose a plain background (preferably white), and use one or two simple fonts that are easy to understand.
• Make your pages easy to navigate and make sure navigation is the same on each page.
• Use only minimal graphics, video and audio. Do not add them if they cannot enhance your message at all. Adding them can be distracting and may take away the visitor’s attention from your actual product.
• Include a subscription option or opt-in offer. This way, you can legally collect their website addresses.
• Make purchase easy. One or two clicks must be enough to make a purchase. No customer wants to checkout and deal with too many pages and forms to fill up.
• Your website is your business’ storefront, so keep it user-friendly and customer-friendly, too.

4. Drive your target market into your website.

Use search engines and pay-per-click advertising to get traffic to your online business site. PPC ads allows you to get immediate traffic, even if your website is not yet optimized. Plus, you can get to experiment on which keywords work well for your target market. Keep in mind that search engine optimization involves using the best and high-converting keywords, so you can make a sale.

5. Establish a reputation.

Give free, but expert content that people can use to understand their problems more. Become active in social media and industry forums where your potential clients hang up. This way, you will reach new readers and there’s a greater chance that other sites link back to you, making the search engines love your website and reward you with a higher ranking.

6. Increase your income.

Get your business going and increase your income by upselling and back-end sales. It can be hard to make the customers make their first purchases, but it is also a challenge to keep them coming back. Here are some ways to make sure they keep returning for a new sale:

• Offer a product or service that complements their initial purchase.
• Offer related products on the checkout page.
• Send out loyalty coupons, which they can redeem with the next purchase.
• Give loyalty rewards so they will be more loyal.