Whatever the economic conditions there is always a need for businesses to take stock and think about their businesses practices. We have a range of articles that can help website owners take steps to protect themselves and prepare for any economic situation.

A well developed marketing strategy is the backbone of a successful business as it plays a pivotal role in attracting and retaining customers, and at the same time, maximizing profits for the business entity. Web Windows believes that an effective marketing strategy should be able to incorporate the changing needs and perceptions of customers, identify new markets and communicate the business messages to the target clients through proper advertising channels. It should also provide scope for monitoring effectiveness and making adjustments required to maintain its success.

Here are some simple steps to guide you in creating an effective marketing strategy for achieving your business goals

Before you decide your marketing strategy

Web Windows suggests that before devising a marketing strategy, do a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and control all external and internal factors that could impact your business objectives.

Highlight your strengths

Your strengths could be providing:

• Personalized customer services
• High quality skills and resources
• Value for money
• Reliable and cost effective goods and services

Identify your weaknesses

These could include:

• Limited budget for advertising
• Lack of a brand value in the market
• Inefficient data analysis resources

Focus on your opportunities

Always be on the look out for:

• An increase in demand opportunities for goods and services that you provide.
• Any emerging technologies that can change the rules of the game.
• Your competitor exiting the market, giving you new territory to expand your services.
• New advertising options on various channels including the Internet.

Face the threats

Be prepared for:

• New competitors entering the market.
• Changes in legislation that can affect profit margins.
• Constant flux in the markets and economies.

Question your marketing strategy

The following questions can provide you a sense of direction for planning your marketing strategy.

What are my business goals?

Set clear and realistic objectives based on products and services you provide.

Who are my potential customers?

An effective marketing strategy should provide for the expansion of a business entity's client portfolio. For this to happen, you need to identify new customer groups whom you can target, again based on the products and services you provide. You can also consider adapting your product portfolio to attract new clients through appropriate advertising strategies.

How to communicate with potential customers?

Do a cost analysis for advertising your services to your potential and existing customers through different communication mediums such as mass media, Internet or the print industry. You can also advertise your goods through PR channels and trade fairs.

How to keep the existing customers loyal and satisfied?

While a growing business demands new customers, it is important to keep the existing customers happy. Define a marketing strategy that informs existing customers of new launches, schemes, discounts and other such factors. Web Windows firmly believes that selling to existing customers is more effective than changing products and services to attract new ones.

How can I improve my customer services?

In today's cut throat competition, it is imperative that you retain your customers through effective customer care policies. Remember flexible, courteous and prompt customer services can provide a cost effective advantage over rivals and also boost sales. There is nothing like word of mouth publicity to build a good reputation. So one thing that your marketing and advertising strategy should focus on, at all costs, is to identify and list means and ways to provide an impeccable customer experience.

How should I price my products and services?

The general trend is to price products and services at competitive rates but here again you need to decide whether you want to follow a cut-throat strategy or price your product and services based on factors such as reliability, efficiency and quality. For example, if your customer base consists of people who prefer quality above all factors, you could decide on a higher-than market price and then devise your marketing strategy in a way it is able to justify the higher rates.

How do I promote my products and services?

This decision basically depends on, apart from others, two major factors, your target customers and budget. Consider a scenario where your services target a small yet dedicated customer base and your budget is limited. Web Windows suggests that opting for traditional advertising methods to promote your website can be considerably more effective that most Internet marketing strategies. Picking up late availability deals can dramatically reduce advertising rates. On the other hand, if the product is targeted at the masses and budget is not a constraint then you could consider the still in vogue traditional avenues such as TV and the print media to build your brand.

From our experience, Web Windows strongly advices you to avoid the following traps while devising your marketing strategy. • Never assume about customer requirements; always base your decisions on studies, surveys and statistics.

• Do not make the mistake of taking competition for granted. Always be aware of your rivals, try to understand their marketing and advertising strategy and make sure that they do not eat into your customer base.
• Your price should not be the only governing factor in deciding your marketing strategy. Focus on the value added services you provide so that customers choose you over your rivals.
• Avoid becoming complacent, for innovation is the rule of the game to survive in a market where consumers are spoilt for choice.
• The age old saying holds good: There is no short cut to success. Climb the ladder one step at a time to get a better perspective of where you are; pause for sometime, re-assess the scenario and then move to the next rung.

Build your marketing strategy

Identify and group your customers

Web Windows recommends that you segregate your customers into groups based on the services you provide to them and then develop a marketing strategy to push sales and services for each group. For example, suppose you have a customer group that focuses on quality; develop a strategy that positions quality as the hallmark of the services you provide.
Also keep in mind that while it is important to build new customers, it is equally important to ensure quality services to existing customers. Plan your strategy in such a manner that your existing customers are not taken for granted.

Identify the advertising avenues to promote your goals

Decide on a point of sale strategy, or in other words, explore all possible options for creating awareness about your products and services. Based on various factors, including financial viability, decide whether you wish to advertise your business through print, online or mass media such as TV. Public relations, exhibitions are other avenues to improve visibility of your products and services.

Evaluate your marketing strategy

No matter how sound your marketing strategy is on paper, it would diverge from its trajectory, due to the impact of the vagrancies in the economies and the financial markets not to mention the fickleness of consumer behaviour. So give your strategy a flexible element to adapt to the changes in the market and consumer attitudes. This is the final control element that will monitor the success of your marketing strategy. Let us consider, for the sake of an example, you decided on email marketing as your strategy to advertise your products and services. You can use tools such as autoresponders, click throughs and the number of unsubscribe requests you get to monitor and evaluate, and if the need be, redefine your marketing strategy. Then again, for other channels, you can also ask your customers to provide a feedback on the goods and services you provided.
Web Windows firmly believes that in a constantly changing market scenario there is no such thing as a rigid marketing strategy. An ideal marketing strategy should be flexible to changes in accordance with the changes in the market and customer attitudes.

Advertising is an important tool in any marketing strategy to promote sales, communicate information and strengthen brand awareness.
Good advertising is all about providing the right information to the right people through the right message using the right words….
And Web Windows is your one shop stop to help you design the perfect advertisement to:

• Promote your business
• Give your brand a unique identity
• Create awareness of new product launches
• Improve your sales
• Strengthen relations with existing customers
• Build new relationships with potential customers

If you want to create your own advertisement, Web Windows tips for designing the perfect ad can guide you through the process.

Why advertise?

So why and what is that you want to advertise? Is it to boost sales, increase brand awareness, announce a new product or service, launch a new business, or recruit new hires? The answer to this question will provide a direction to planning your advertising strategy.

Plan your advertising strategy...It is all about perfect timing

For your advertisement to hit the bull's eye, the timing has to be perfect. If you sell a seasonal product, the best time to launch your advertisement is when its demand is at the peak. During peak selling time of a particular product, the number of advertisers for the same product is also at its peak. If you advertise at this time, your advertisement will be one amongst the crowd. So it becomes all the more imperative that your advertisement should be powerful enough to tower above the rest and strike the right chord with the target group.
Yet, it all depends on how you look at it. There are people who kick start their advertising campaigns well ahead of the season and their competitors. The early start gives the product the advantage of time to create a conditional awareness in the minds of the people.

Choose the right media

Advertising channels can be broadly categorized under three sections: mass media such as radio and TV, print media such as newspapers and the Internet.
To decide on the media channel that suits your requirements you will need to consider factors such as budget, target audience and the channel's reach to your targeted group.

Advertise on the Internet…

The Internet is one of the most cost effective channels for advertising both products and services. Points in its favour include speed, low costs, and an instant global audience reach. So powerful is its reach that internet advertising spend exceeds TV. Internet marketing is also known by various other names such as online marketing and web marketing.

Advertise on the Internet by:

• Creating your own website
• Advertising on other websites
• Linking your website to online directories

On your own website

Your own website is your most powerful marketing and advertising tool to promote your product and push its sales. You are not limited with space constraints as is the case with other media advertising. You also have the advantage of regularly updating your content and promoting your latest offerings. Your website gives you the perfect platform to give detailed listings of your products and services. This is not to say that you can write realms on the subjects.

Web writing is an art that should be able to:

• Make an effective impact and convey the right message that can grab the reader’s attention in the first five seconds, build a rapport, and leave a positive and a lasting impression.
• Deliver market-focused content that serves business and audience needs.
• Attract customers, educate target audience and push sales.

You can reap the benefits of advertising on your own website only if people visit it. To ensure this, you will need to optimize it for higher page rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN and driving traffic to it.

It is also important to provide for easy navigation and make your website interactive to expand your sales pitch.

On other websites

Browse through the websites and you will notice numerous banner advertisements, pop-up ads and sponsored ads or Google ads posted there. This method of advertising is based on the simple give and take philosophy: You post your advertisement and link to your website on other people's websites and reciprocate the arrangement by allowing them to advertise their products and services by link through advertisements on yours.

On online directories

These online directories are more like the traditional Yellow Pages where people make the listings of their products and services. In case of online directories, you can:

• Set up links to your website in directory companies such as Yell.com and ThomsonLocal.com.
• List in specialized directories for products and services. For example if you have a manufacturing related product you can list your website in specialized directories such as Kellysearch.

Advertise in newspapers and magazines

Newspapers and magazines form the traditional and till date, one of the most trusted, channels of advertisement. These is Web Windows main areas of expertise and from your home page you will find an array of advertising opportunities in various colour supplements. By discussing your requirements with an experience Web Windows media exec, we will be able ensure your first foray into national press is a successful one.

Advertise on TV

Of all the advertising media, this is the most costly especially channels with a national reach. However, you can get cheaper packages if you choose to advertise on a large number of terrestrial and cable or satellite TV channels. This form of advertisement is beneficial if you have a localized market for your product.
The communication channel you choose to advertise your product and services plays an important role in how you create your advertisement and a call to our offices will give you a wealth of advice and information.

Create the perfect advertisement for the print media

Frame your tagline

The most important part of an advertisement is the tagline; it defines your product and positions it in the minds of the consumers. The tagline can be a play of words or any phrase that can immediately create an impact and catch the imagination of the targeted group.

Write your copy

A clean, concise copy is what makes an advertisement sell. A good copy should be able to convey the main message of the product in the minimum of words.
Successful ad copy for depends on the medium you are advertising in. In case of audio visual channels the consumer attention is divided between the visuals, background music and the words. But in the case of print media, the copy is the centre of attraction; it has to have the zing to make an impact. Also, a creative copy should be able to paint a complete picture of the product leaving no scope for questions in the consumer's mind. Use of a single image can often negate the need for lots of text.

Design your copy

In the advertising world packaging makes all the difference. An attractive design is an effective tool to attract reader attention. The design of the advertisement should compliment the copy. The messages and imagery/visuals should capture the imagination of the target group so that they are able to identify the differentiating characteristics of the product or service being advertised.
The use of colours, images, imagery, typography and image symbols and a powerful play of words are what make an advertisement stand apart from the others. A final note of caution, don't say too much and don't say too less, just the right amount to tickle the imagination and keep the interest alive.
Web Windows maintains excellent relations with the Advertising Standards Authority and we often check on behalf of clients to ensure that copy is legal, decent, honest and truthful.

Get value for money from your advertisement

• Get the best from your advertising by combining it with other marketing initiatives such as direct selling, press releases, and special events.
• Look before you leap. Reduce the risk of your campaign by researching and studying the advertising strategies followed by your rivals in the market.
• Do a cost analysis of various advertising media and plan out your marketing and advertising strategy that can effectively communicate your message to the audience within your budget.
• Advertisement, in any form, involves repetition over a period of time. Discounts will be offered for series advertising.
• If you are advertising in the print media make sure that your advertisement has maximum visibility for maximum impact.

Monitor your advertisement

What is good on paper may not hold well in the market. The ground reality may throw up surprises---some positive and some not so positive. So monitor the response to your advertisement and be prepared to change the advertising strategy in terms of re-working the concept, design and in some cases, even the channel if it is not reaching your target audience.
There are various methods available to monitor the success of your advertising campaign.

• You can have a standard enquiry form for your products and services with columns asking which product the customers are interested in and from where they had heard about it.
• If you have advertised on websites, you can monitor your campaign through the clicks your advertisement receives and also on how many of the clicks actually converted into sales.
• It also makes good business sense to follow up any lead that you get. It may not get translated into sales immediately but may have possibility of a sale in future.
• Study the kind of sales and profit margins of each sale that is generated from the advertisement.

Respond to your advertisement

Response to advertisements, in most cases, can be instant. Once your campaign hits the road, you should have:

• The product and services to meet customer demand.
• A trained customer care system to provide value services to the potential customers.

Gone are the times when having a website was considered as just one other way of showcasing and marketing your products and services. Today, a website is not a matter of choice but a 'must have' to survive and effectively compete in the new economy. No matter what your business objective is, you need an Internet presence to achieve it.
Web Windows firmly believes that your website is your business identity---- much like your logo, signature, letterhead and your defining brand statement. There are hundreds of ways of designing a website and we are here to make sure you do it right.
Our Web Windows tips can help you build an effective website to achieve your business objectives. We have our own website design business called Web Windows Design. The company is headed by Paul Taylor and he was formerly the Creative Director for Web Windows. If you are looking for a quality website which is easy to update, contact Paul at he will discuss your requirements and provide a quote.
Define your website

A website is more than just a few or more attractive pages put together without a thought to the purpose they are designed to serve. Designing a website involves the right choice and combination of technology, architecture and visual effects. At Web Windows, we design a website based on its purpose, audience, and its marketing and communication objective.

Define the purpose of your website

A website can serve any of the following purposes:

• Create or strengthen brand awareness
• Sell products and services
• Provide news content
• Showcase work portfolio to potential clients
• Provide customer support
• Inform about new product launches or service updates

Define the audience of your website

Your audience can be:

• People logging on to your website at home: It is safe to assume that people may have a slower modem connection at home so the design of the website should be simple with less of flash files and animations that take time to upload.
• Fans of a rock group: Given the target audience, the website design would require the use of high-end technology such as animations and flash files for that special experience.
• People looking for constant updates on services: Your target audience can be people looking for the latest news updates on the stock market. The design of the website should be such that it makes updating simple, fast and effective.

Based on the purpose of the website, write and design the content such that it makes for easy navigation, is user-friendly and attractive to look at. Your aim should be to provide all information the client is looking for within the first three clicks of the mouse. The content and design should be able to make the right impact in the first twenty seconds; if they cannot, the viewer is likely to move to another website providing the same set of services that you are doing.

It is mandatory for all companies in the UK to clearly state the company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on their website/s. Web Windows suggests the best place to put it is in the "About us" or "Legal info" page of the site.

Basic framework for your website

Once you have decided on the purpose and the target audience of your website, your next step should be to create a flowchart for content presentation and navigation. You can do this through a popular website framing technique known as wireframing. Wireframe is nothing but a visual guide that helps you design your content interface. You can draw a wireframe using packages such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator. Once the skeleton is ready, you can show it to your client for his or her feedback. Then again, discuss it with your content and design team so that they are on the same page as to the functionality and look of the website. You can also create a wireframe to define the levels of navigation.

Right technology for your website

Web technology: The technology you use for your website will depend on your purpose and target audience. Apart from this, keep in mind that the technology should be fully compatible with all previous and updated versions of commonly used browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. Web Windows recommends that you avoid technologies such as Javascript, HTML frames, Flash and AJAX as they may not be picked up by all browsers.
Screen resolutions: Keep your screen resolution to the commonly accepted resolution ratios: 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. Use a higher resolution when you have a limited audience and you know for sure that they have access to technology that allows for screening high resolution text and images.
Special effects: It is better not to use too many special effects in website design, unless they specifically serve a purpose. There are many people who surf the Internet from their homes and do not use high speed modems. So if your page doesn't load within the first ten seconds, chances are that they would move on to another website.

Design your website

The design of the website should highlight the messages you want to convey and should not take the focus away from them. Keep the following points in mind while designing your website.

Content presentation

• Create separate buttons for all the products and services you offer.
• Use linked text and separate pages for descriptions.
• Write short, clear and concise text to aid online reading.
• Where possible, provide information in bulleted points rather than in paragraphs.
• Prioritize and rank information to maintain logic and flow.
• Maintain the right contrast between the foreground and background colours for easy reading.
• Keep the imagery simple for easy readability and faster browsing.

Web typography

• Use a font that people are most likely to have on their computers.
• Use different font sizes to differentiate between page headings, section headings and body text.
• You can also use separate colours for fonts to differentiate between headings, section headings, and paragraph text.
• It is harder to read on screen than on paper; keep the size of the font big enough for comfortable reading.

Navigation

• Develop a simple and consistent navigation scheme.
• Use hyperlinks to make navigation easy.
• Present links clearly and use clear, concise words or images relevant to the information they lead to.
• Provide navigation bars on each page to enable easy movement.

Locating information

• Include a sitemap and a search facility to locate information on the website.
• Use hypertext to provide contextual linking to related information and content.
• Ideally, the user should be able to locate the information within three clicks of the mouse.

The perfect browsing experience for your website

Visual effects: Give your website a clean, uncluttered look. Packaging is important but remember people visit your website for a specific purpose and that is what the visuals should help showcase. There should be a perfect combination of content and design to highlight and focus on the marketing and communication objective of your website.
Branding: The effective and systematic use of colour, imagery, typography and graphic symbols plays an important role in highlighting the key messages and creating a brand statement that defines your website.
Consistency: Maintain a consistency in the design and placement of content for a smooth browsing experience. A person going from one page to another should have to look around for the navigation buttons; if they are at the top in the home page then they should be at the same position in the following pages. The same should be the case with the use of fonts. Choose an easily readable and the same font type on each page for a uniform look.
White space: Use white space effectively to give volume to your page and focus on the content on it. White space is an effective tool to structure and separate content.

Marketing is a necessary process that identifies and satisfies the customer needs of a business entity. It also involves researching new opportunities and reviewing and improving current advertising strategies to stay ahead in the market.

Web Windows firmly believes that a marketing strategy can make or break your business. It is, therefore, imperative to devise a marketing plan that defines your business objectives and spells out a marketing and advertising strategy to capture a niche or an entire market.
Our resources at Web Windows can help you create an effective marketing plan or guide you to draft your own blueprint to success.

Defining your business strategy

At the outset, define your business strategy, or in other words, the direction and the scope of your business and what it aims to achieve in the long term.
The following questions can help you define your business strategy:

• What are your products and services?
• How do you wish to price your products and services?
• How do you wish to promote your products and services?
• Who are your target customers?
• Do you have a strategy and budget to reach your customers?

Coordinate these points to reach your customers, give them a clear message about the unique selling point of your products and services, and turn your efforts into sales.

Analyzing your business strategy for drafting an effective market plan

Your marketing plan is all about bringing your products and services to the market and reaching your target customers.
The SWOT analysis framework: To operate successfully in a market, you need to understand where you stand with respect to the other players. For this, do a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with your areas of business and then draft your market plan accordingly. A SWOT analysis allows you to scan both the internal and external environment in which your business will function.
Your strengths and weaknesses are integral to your internal business environment. Providing cost-effective, high quality services may constitute your strength; your budget limiting your ability to market them may be your weakness.

Strengths: Your strengths provide you the competitive advantage over your rivals. Strengths can include factors such as good reputation, strong brand awareness in the market and exclusive access to resources.
Weaknesses: Weaknesses can include a high cost structure, weak brand name or lack of access to proper distribution channels for marketing your products and services.

Opportunities and threats allow you to understand the external environment for your business.

Opportunities: Keep an eye for new opportunities for they may allow you to explore new avenues of growth for your products. There may be a change in government policy, for example, a more liberal trade policy that will give you the opportunity to explore new markets across borders.
Threats: These can include factors such as a shift in customer taste away from your products and services or any change in government policy that may adversely affect your profit margins.
You should also scan the macro-environment of your business entity in terms of the PEST factors:

• Political and legal changes such as tax policy and employment laws
• Economic factors such as interest rates and exchange rates and inflation rate
• Social factors such as changing attitudes and lifestyles, age distribution and career attitudes
• Technological factors such as R&D and any new inventions

Developing a marketing strategy for your marketing plan

Web Windows suggests that you answer the following questions to develop your marketing strategy.

Your customers

• Who are your potential customers?
• What are the requirements of your existing customers?
• What are the factors that affect their buying decisions?

Market

• What is the size of the market for the products and services you offer?
• What are the growth characteristics for these products and services?
• What are the opportunities that you can target?

Competition

• What is that you can offer which is not already available?
• What are the profiles of your competitors?
• Can you compete with the quality, price and delivery of similar products in the market?

Your existing customers should be your primary targets in any marketing and advertising strategy. Familiarity, in business, breeds trust. Also, it is more cost effective to reach existing customers than attracting new ones through advertising.
If you are targeting new customers, first do a careful research analysis of the market to:

• Understand current trends and what customers require in the different product segments that you offer.
• Study what the competition is like in each segment.
• Identify the segments which offer you a competitive advantage.
• Do a cost analysis to assess profitability in the segments.

Work out an advertising strategy to reach potential customers.Web Windows recommends that studying the market should be a regular process as trends, competition and customer behaviour keep changing. So plan your marketing strategy in a way that it is flexible enough to anticipate and accommodate these changes.

Implementing your marketing strategy into a reality

An effective marketing strategy should have the following defined, and in place, for a successful plan implementation:

Product: What is your product and how does it stand apart from the others in the market in terms of quality, price and the value addition it provides to the customers? Based on these factors, decide on your product positioning to create awareness and capture the market.

Pricing: Is your product competitively priced? If it is priced above the market value, do you have the strategy in place to justify it? Again, your pricing will depend on whether you wish to sell limited editions of the product to premium clientele or target the masses.

Place: Where is it that you want to sell your product? Is it for a global audience or is it meant for localized customers? These factors will help you decide your advertising and distribution channels to create awareness and sell your product.

Promotion: Choose between advertising channels such as TV, radio, print media, tradeshows, Public Relations and the Internet to reach your existing and potential customers.

Targets: Set realistic and measurable targets and the deadlines to meet them.

Budget: The budget should take into consideration all resources you would require to launch and market your product. In other words, specify a budget for each activity listed in the marketing plan.

Distribution channels: Depending on the penetration level you wish to reach, decide the budget and the means by which your products and services will reach your target customers

Customer care: Ensure that your employees have adequate knowledge and are trained to answer customer queries and take advantage of all leads that may occur.

Schedule: Develop a schedule for putting your marketing strategy in place and allow for some flexibility. An inability to meet the schedule would increase costs.

Once everything is in place, designate responsibility for each process to key individuals to ensure that everything is implemented as per schedule and within the budget.

Monitoring your marketing strategy

Have the right people at the right place to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. They should be able to:

• Ensure processes occur as per timelines.
• Analyze customer response.
• Fix responsibility and respond to any lapse in schedule.
• Respond to customer queries.
• Review the process as and when required.

Introduction

E-commerce is a process that refers to the delivery of goods and services via the Internet. The growing popularity of buying and selling online can be attributed to the fact that it saves the time and hassles required for running from one store to the other in search of an item. You can, from the comfort of your home, browse through a wide array of choices for any item you wish to buy and snap at the best deal, whenever the mood strikes, be it the middle of the night.
You can carry out e-commerce through your website. Your website is your online store for showcasing, listing, advertising and providing support for your products and services.
Our Web Windows guide lists the key issues required to plan, develop, and maintain an e-commerce system.

Defining activities for e-commerce

There are several ways by which you can benefit from e-commerce, depending on the products and services you wish to provide and what your business objectives are.

Pre-sales activities

You can use your website as a pre-sales advertising medium to create awareness about your products and services. For example, you may be a publishing company with a global audience for your textbooks on computer applications. You can advertise new titles, or inform about updations in existing ones through email campaigns, ebrochures, enewsletters and other online marketing tools. Compare this with the costs you would incur in pre-sales activities in offline advertising to appreciate how cost-effective e-commerce can be.

Direct sales activities

Though you can sell your products and services online, there are still many goods that require physical delivery to reach customers. There is a vast difference in the approach to direct selling through Internet and selling products and services through sales people. Your sales people can handle all customer queries directly; In case of online selling, you need to clarity on all aspects of sales ranging from providing adequate information on products and services, and handling customer queries through sections such as FAQ (frequently asked questions) sections, to taking care of all aspects of transactions. These can include taking orders, confirming orders, creating invoices, taking payments, making deliveries and providing ways for returns.

Post-sales activities

E-commerce transactions do not end with receiving payments and supplying goods and services to the consumers. For a long term customer relationship, you need to provide after sales services. For this, one way is to provide automated services. For example, your customers can email about their queries and you can send automated mails saying that your sales representatives would get back to you within, say two days time. Then again, you can have a FAQ section for post-sales services also.

Monitoring your sales activities

An important part of any post-sales activity is to monitor the response to your products and services. One pointer in this direction is the number of sales you make. Yet, it is also important to know how satisfied your clients are with your services. You can, therefore, have an online feedback form requesting customers to give their feedback, suggestions and comments about their comfort level with not only your products and services but the entire process from providing information, the sales process and to the actual delivery of the product.

The basic requirements for an e-commerce system

 

Website

The basic tool for any e-commerce activities is a website. The design, layout and concept of a website should effectively synchronize with consumer interaction and also the objectives of the business entity.

Choosing a domain name for your website

Choose the domain name of your website such that it defines your business brand. It would greatly help if the domain name, in some way, reflects the services you provide.

Hosting your website

You can host your website on your own if you have a fast Internet connection and a suitable PC. Otherwise, you can host your website through an Internet service provider (ISP) at nominal costs.

Designing your website

You can ask a website design company to create your website as per your specifications or use readymade software packages or the 'shop' packages available in the market. The disadvantage with using shop packages is that you would not be able to customize your website to your requirement.

Providing security to your website

Provide for adequate transaction security so that people are comfortable buying online. You can also secure your website from unauthorized and unauthenticated users. Also provide for security against hackers. Ensure you have logos like Hacker Safe and VeriSign at strategic places on the website so that the customers know that your site is a safe place to shop.

Planning for contingencies

E-commerce, like any other activity, has its share of risks associated with it. So you must have an alternate plan of action should anything go against expectations. No matter what the circumstances, the show must go on.

Maintaining your website

Consider re-designing your website without changing its signature concepts, at periodic intervals to give it freshness and appeal. Design your website in a manner to accommodate for changes/additions in products and services, and provide for a more satisfying consumer experience.

People involved in e-commerce ventures

A successful e-commerce activity combines the services of many people with varied skill sets to meet business objectives and provide a seamless customer satisfaction experience.
Board level management: An e-commerce activity usually has a board-level management to oversee the entire supply chain management process.
Key position holders or leads: At a lower rung are the people who are assigned key responsibilities for sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management activities.
Marketing and sales people: They are responsible for planning and executing marketing and advertising strategies to promote the website and the products and services offered, provide sales and after sales support and monitor the effectiveness of the e-commerce activity.
Technology experts: These people provide back-end services to run the website smoothly. They need to be well-versed with firewalls and security, servers, programming languages, HTML and XML coding and database technologies.
Web designers: Web designers are necessary as the website has to be updated on regular basis in accordance with changes in technologies, customer feedback and updating products and services.
Customer care executives: These are the people who take care of customer queries once the product or service is sold.
External parties: These include hardware and software providers, domain registrars, customers, suppliers and also, if the need be, marketing and advertising agencies.

Promoting your website

Web Windows believes that to survive and be able to successfully compete in the e-commerce arena, you need to well-versed with the ways of promoting your website to attract potential customers and retain the existing ones. You can promote your website through:

Print and mass media advertisements: You can advertise your website through print mediums such as newspapers and magazines and also on TV and radio if your target group includes the masses. Obviously we believe that Web Windows print advertising is one of the most effective ways of building traffic, read our section Why Newspaper Advertising?
Online advertisements: You can place banners, pop-ups and advertisements of your website on other websites providing similar or related services and reciprocate the arrangement by allowing them to advertise their products and services by link through advertisements on yours.
Online directories: You can list your website in online directories companies such as Yell.com and ThomsonLocal.com.
Google Adwords/Adsense: These are the sponsored ads you see on the left side of your search results and under the section Google Ads on websites offering similar or related products and services.
Email campaigns: You can promote your website, products and services to your existing and potential clients through emails.
SEO practices: You can also use search engine optimization methods, such as the proper use of keywords, in website design for higher rankings in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Social networking sites: You can also promote your website through social networking sites and blog writings to drive traffic to your site.

Building and improving relationships through e-commerce

E-commerce provides for many opportunities to improve existing and building new, mutually beneficial business relationships. At every stage of the supply chain management process, from procurement, sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management activities, E-commerce has opened doors for new and cost effective business opportunities, methods for minimizing inventories, means to fulfilling orders quickly and smoothly and providing for improved customer services

E-commerce has also opened avenues for providers and buyers across the globe to meet at what can be termed as, e-marketplaces. These e-markets eliminate barriers between buyers and sellers through an interactive process of bids and offers. Deals can be made on the basis of a match between buyers and sellers based on variables such as costs, volume and the type of services required.

The National Readership Survey (NRS) is a non-profit but commercial British survey concerned with monitoring, analyzing and providing estimates on the number and nature of people who read Britain's newspapers and consumer magazines. Currently the Survey takes into account 260 newspapers, newspaper supplements and magazines.

Objectives of the National Readership Survey

Using a methodology that is accepted by publishers, advertisers and their agencies, the NRS provides data on:

• The number of people who read a particular publication.
• Break up of the people in terms of sex, age, regionality and other demographic and lifestyle features.
• The data provided by the NRS is used by all people and agencies such as publishers of newspapers and magazines, advertisers and advertising agencies to plan, buy and sell advertising space in the print media.

How is the survey conducted?

This is how the National Readership Survey arrives at its estimates.

• The addresses for the sample population to be interviewed are taken at random from the Small Users' Postcode Address File.
• There is a continuous process of interviews with the representative samples of the adult population (15 years and above) of Great Britain.
• The interviewers then call at these addresses and interview one or two adults, depending on the total number of adults in the household, for under 30 minutes each.
• For each year estimates, interviews are conducted seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
• The data collected is then extrapolated to the total population estimates.
• It is then segregated under various heads such as sex, age, region and social grade and extrapolated to the total population estimates so as to near perfectly match the profiles of the actual population.

Data provided by the National Readership Survey

The data provided by the NRS is categorized under:
Read in last 12 months: This takes into consideration anyone who has read or looked at a publication for at least 2 minutes in the past 12 months.
Average Issue Readership (AIR): Anyone who has read the publication within the interval between one issue and the next is counted as an average issue reader. For a daily newspaper this would mean yesterday, read in the last 7 days for a weekly newspaper or magazine, and so on, depending on the frequency of publication.
Reading Frequency: This includes, among others, the question, 'how often do you read?' The aim is to classify readers as regulars and less regular readers of a publication
Source of Copy: Based on how the readers obtained the copy of a publication, data is used to identify primary and secondary leadership.
Time Spent Reading: This is one of the latest additions to the Survey. The respondents are asked to rate on a 7-point scale the time in total they spend on reading a particular newspaper or magazine.
Topic Interest: The respondents are asked to list their areas of interest in terms of what they like to read in a publication.

Interesting facts about the NRS

Approximately 3,000 interviews are conducted per month, and this totals to around 36,000 interviews per annum. The sheer volume makes the NRS one of the largest programmes of continuous readership research in the world.
The interviewers use the DS-CAPI (Double screen Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing) technology for maintaining consistencies in interviews and providing for faster data processing.

Any economic venture is based on the principle of supply and demand. Your venture is not going to succeed simply based on the quality product or services that you have to offer. You also need a targeted customer base who is willing to buy your products and services.
Before launching any product or service in the market, Web Windows recommends that you conduct a survey to understand your customer requirements. Interview your target audience to get a detailed picture of their needs and expectations. You can use the report to arrive at solutions that can exceed customer expectations and provide them value added services over and above your competitors.

There are other benefits associated with understanding customer requirements. You can:

• Focus on your priorities.
• Plan your business and marketing strategy.
• Ensure team works towards a common goal.
• Cut down on expenditures, for example, you can avoid developing functionalities that are not required by customers.
• Move in a well-defined direction to fulfil objectives.
• Change your strategy in sync with the changing customer and market requirements.

Profiling your customers

Profiling your customers is an integral part of any process as it unites the team to work towards designing and implementing a perfect process that satisfies both customers and the business entity. Existing market research and consumer insights will help you integrate your customer goals with your business goals and decide upon a business model that is cost effective and at the same time, optimized for profits and customer satisfaction.

Who are your customers?

• If they are individuals, create a database of their gender, age, marital status and occupation.
• If they are business entities, list them under descriptive heads such as the size of companies, the products they deal in and what they expect in your business dealings.

Web Windows suggests that you use this information to identify your customers and work out a strategy to satisfy their requirements. The project team can use this data to prioritize their ideas, spell out and showcase the unique selling preposition (USP), redefine strategies, and speed up decision making.

What are your customers' buying preferences?

• What do they expect from their products and services, for example, do they prefer quality or decide based on price factor?
• How do they like to buy? Do they prefer direct buying or shopping online?
• When do they buy? Your chances to sell increase manifold when you target your customers at the time when the need for a particular good or service arises.

Take a regular feedback to understand buying preferences of your target group. You can talk to your customers when they buy from your store, watch their reaction as they browse through the products on display, or record their conversations when they talk to a customer care executive so that you can analyze their responses. Try to understand why these customers come to your company, the types of improvements that they are looking for and how you can make your interaction a more worthwhile experience. At the same time, also analyze the type of customer experience your competitors are offering and look out for gaps that need to be filled for a mutually beneficial relationship with your clients.

Identifying your potential customers' current suppliers

• Who are your customers buying from?
• What is their satisfaction level with the service?
• What is their brand loyalty?
• Would they switch services if they got a competitive advantage?

You can talk to your potential customers to identify their current supplier and gauge their level of satisfaction with the services provided. Before explaining the benefits and USP of your products and services, try to understand what benefits they are looking for, as this would help you present your case from their perspective.

Setting your priorities based on customer requirements

• Match your products and services based on the spending power of your target audience.
• Provide them value added services and showcase the competitive advantage of your products.
• Personalize services to make them feel that customer is actually the king.
• Deliver what you promise and don't promise what you cannot deliver.
• Take regular feedback to fill loopholes, if any.
• Study your competitors to stay ahead in the race.

Be prepared to make changes in company policy and processes to meet customer requirements and satisfaction. Evaluate how well you are able to satisfy them and compare their experience and devise means and opportunities to exceed their expectations to retain their loyalty and get repeat business.

1. Know Your Target Audience

It’s vitally important to pitch your advertising at the right level, to the right type of person. You should be communicating directly to the consumer who wants to buy your product or use your service. Useful attributes to consider are age, gender, education, cultural background, and income. Certain consumers are easier to target than others; and try to anticipate which group is the most likely to make online purchases.

2. Set Your Budget

Knowing how much budget to set is never easy and there are no strict rules. Large companies are often advised to allocate 2-3% of their annual turnover, but if your company is at the launch stage, the amounts will be considerably higher. Too timid an approach to setting your budget often leads to disappointing results. Successful advertising is not for the faint hearted. See our guide to Setting the Right Budget.

3. Focus Your Marketing on the Benefits of Your Business

Successful marketing maintains a focus on the benefits your product or service brings to customers. Many companies make the mistake of paying too much attention to the details of what they offer, rather than focussing on how the customer will benefit from you. People generally only buy when they believe that your product or service will benefit them. Therefore, make sure that your marketing strategy centres round the advantages your company will bring. Ask your colleagues to name the top five benefits of your organisation – if they hesitate, you’ve identified areas in which you need to improve.

4. Concentrate On Direct Response Advertising

Brand building advertising is for businesses with multi-million pound budgets. If you want to really make a difference to your sales figures, an offer specific approach to hook readers’ attention is far better than something more general.

5. Keep Your Artwork Simple

Your heading is the most important part of any ad. Writing a benefit-related question is a favoured tactic by many experienced copy writers. Always include a strong call to action; prominent URL and/or telephone number. “A picture paints a thousand words,” so chose an image which explains at a glance what your product or service is. Ideally the picture should be simple, clear and immediately obvious. Once you’ve decided on the ad, avoid making radical changes with each insertion.

6. Always Book Series

Repetition of small ads is key. Nine out of ten buyers continue to look at the vendor’s adverts after making a purchase. Advertising reassures buyers that they have made a good decision. Double page spread adverts can be run once yielding brilliant results, but are extremely expensive. In the case of small ads, frequency is vital, with anything more than fortnightly to be avoided. Three or six adverts should yield a steady response that builds with each insertion. The longer the series the less risk you take and the greater the chances your campaign will work

7. Ask For Good Positions On The Page

Whereabouts on the page your advertisement appears can have an effect on response levels, so always ask to know what positions are available. Top half or outside edge positions generally perform best.

8. Maximise Your Coverage

The higher the readership, the greater the chances you’ll enjoy good response. Make sure the readership figures quoted are from the National Readership Survey (the gold standard for the media industry).

9. Avoid Specialist Press

Rarely do ads in low circulation publications work. Avoid the common mistake of thinking that selective targeting is less wasteful and therefore you’ll get better response. It seldom happens. High circulation publications generally equal high response. Coverage is king.

10. Be Willing To Learn From Your Experiences

Keep an open mind and don’t allow yourself to develop the attitude that you've "arrived" and there is nothing more for you to learn. The world of technology is changing rapidly and if you don’t maintain an adaptable frame of mind you could be easily left behind. Read articles, books, and other sales solicitations, and listen to people who know. These are sources of knowledge that could enhance your sales and marketing and strategy.

The importance of a brand can be gauged from the fact that while products can be copied, a brand cannot. Your brand is not just your logo or slogan; it is the identity and reputation of your product and services in the market.

By creating a successful brand, you position yourself in the minds of the customers and in return, divert their attention to your products and services.

Web Windows recommends that following key issues that can help you build a successful brand.

Define your products and services

Differentiate your products and services from the others by thinking from a consumer's perspective. Your product will have higher sales and rankings if it is meaningfully differentiated in terms of the maximum advantage it can provide to the customers.

Choosing the right name

The right name can help you get your product noticed in the market. The name should be short, easy to remember and at the same time say something about the product. A meaningful name reinforces the positioning and the key benefits of the product.

Positioning your brand

Achieve visibility for your products through advertisements. The right advertisement can help you control what other people think about your products and also what you can do for them. Yet, what you deliver will make all the difference. Never promise what you cannot deliver. Create a positioning statement that gives your product a differentiating and competitive advantage in terms of emotions, performance, and value.

Maintain consistency

Branding is strongly associated with consistency. Though brands need to be updated to meet the changing times, yet at the end of the day, branding is all about recognition and mindshare.

Understand The Role Of Your Ad

It sounds obvious, but bear in mind that the role of a Web Windows advert is not to sell the product. It is to convey the idea behind the benefit of the product and steer potential customers to the website.

Copywriters Use AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action

A well known hierarchy of effects describing the basic process by which people become motivated to act on external stimuli:

Attention: A powerful headline to initially hook the reader

Interest: A good image can build appeal

Desire: Sell the benefits and not the features

Action: A Prominent URL and consider a phone number too

Keep The Ad Simple

A common mistake is to over-clutter the ad; "Less is more." Don't feel that every part of the ad space needs to be filled with words or images.

Copy needs space to breath.

Create A Punchy Headline

Some of the best performing Web Windows ads are those with headlines that are not too wordy, and convey a clear benefit. You only have a split second to seize the readers' attention.

Remember Your USP's

Your Unique Selling Point is what makes you stand out from the competition, and this should be clearly expressed in your copy. Try to imagine seeing the ads from the view-point of your target audience and you'll be surprised how often you miss the obvious.

Advertising costs are totally within your control; the amount you spend on an advertisement constitutes an important part of your marketing budget and depends on the factors such as the volume, channel for advertising, and your target groups.

Advertising expenditure varies from company to company, business to business and also from market to market.

So what are the various approaches for setting an advertising budget?

Budgeting at a fixed percentage of sales

Companies with a stable sales pattern, keep their advertising budget in proportion to the sales they make. If there is a decrease in profits, they slash the advertisement budget and vice versa. The advantage is that the company can avoid an 'advertising war' and keep the budget consistent with the sales volume. On the flip side, however, this policy could backfire in the long run. This method works on the premises that all sales are a result of advertising. But profits can be low because of other factors and in any such scenario cutting down on the advertising budget would further bring down sales.

Budgeting based on industry average

Percentages set aside for advertising are fairly consistent within an industry. According to this method, you can figure out the ratio of budgeting expenses to the sales within your industry sector. You can then set your budget in proportion to what is the accepted norm in the particular sector. However, you should use the ratio as a yardstick to set aside your budget. Your decision should ultimately depend on your particular situation and you may, therefore, be required to spend more or less than the specific ratio.

Budgeting according to task requirement

As per this method, you can set your budget based on the marketing objective. For example, your advertisement can aim at creating brand awareness, pushing sales, informing existing customers, or attracting potential ones. The budget, in this case, will vary from objective to objective.

Budgeting within financial limits

As the name itself suggests, this method of setting the budget depends on the amount the company can actually afford to spend on an advertising campaign. If your budget is limited, you can choose a cheaper channel of advertisement. For example with print advertising, pick up cheap advertising deals through late space opportunities which may arise from advertiser cancellations.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Google Adwords / Sponsored Links

PPC internet advertising campaigns are a fast and efficient way to instantly drive targeted traffic to your website, and are a main part of any SEO service. They are the small adverts that appear at the top of search engine listings or down the right hand side of the page, called ‘Sponsored Links’ or ‘Sponsored Results.’ These can be purchased by bidding an amount of your choice for relevant keywords. Payment is only taken when people actually click on your advert. With PPC you can drive large volumes of traffic to your website, however it can be time consuming and sometimes bewildering to set up. In addition, people have found they can waste vast amounts of money through mistakes or mismanagement of this kind of internet advertising. It’s far better to let a professional SEO company manage your PPC campaign for you.

Banner Campaigns

Internet advertising often involves the use of banner campaigns, commonly utilising oblong graphical elements to catch the attention of readers and direct them to another site. They are often brightly coloured or flashy, and tend to contain a very short, intriguing piece of text to entice people to click through to the advertiser’s website. Banner campaigns are an important part of our SEO services. Known as a ‘banner’ due to its long, thin design, this form of electronic internet advertising can help increase brand awareness, targeted traffic, and generate new sales leads. If you would like a banner designed for your business, a good SEO company can help you make the most of this opportunity, at minimal cost.

Keywords / SEO Copy

When you write the SEO copy for your website, it’s best to write in natural language for the benefit of the reader. However it’s also advisable to include relevant keywords or phrases in the content that people use in search engines to find the products or services you offer. This helps the search engines classify your page, so when a user searches for a particular product, pages that are most relevant to this product appear high in the listings. Obviously, websites listed high in the search engines tend to get more visitors to their site than pages listed lower down. So, optimised copywriting is another clever form of internet advertising.

Links

Part of the reason why Google ranks a web page high in its listings, depends on how many links pointing to your site have been attained. An SEO company can offer a website submission service where they will submit your website to dozens of quality websites and directories in order to gain a high number of backlinks. This will benefit your optimisation drive, and increase the authority of your website.

Google Page Rank (PR)

Your Google pagerank is an indicator of how important Google rates each individual page of a website on the internet. Pagerank ranges from 0 to 10, with very few websites achieving ten and many websites ranked at zero. The main aim of an SEO company is to help boost their client’s pagerank which is improved by several factors, including SEO copy, HTML coding, and how many backlinks the site has. It’s important to make sure a professional SEO company trained in website submission handles your backlink campaign.

Article Distribution

Articles written around the subject of your product or service and published on the internet can be an excellent source of relevant inbound links to your website. Along with website submission this can be a vital element of your SEO efforts. It’s very important to ensure the content of the article is informative and interesting to read, but it’s also a great opportunity to establish links to your products or services within authoritative text on an independent website. In this way you can incorporate internet advertising into written content that is both beneficial for the reader, and the website it’s published on.

Website Design

In these days of rapidly changing technology it’s important to stay ahead of the game. Website design is a vital part of your SEO campaign and should be planned together with the written content, and meta tags coding. As more and more people access the internet and view websites on different sized monitors, websites should be designed to be accessible by all. Including people with physical and mental disabilities. What is good for the disabled reader is often good for the search engines too. Not all internet advertising has to be manifest.

Optimised Press Releases

Sending out optimised press releases is another form of internet advertising and website submission that is useful and wanted by both reader and sender. People want to know about the latest developments in every conceivable subject, and if you can get your announcements in front of people who are searching for products or services you sell, it’s a win-win situation for customer and vendor. Press releases need to be appropriately optimised for search engines and distributed in the correct way. Tracking technology allows you to collect statistics about how many people read the release, and how many clicked through to the website so you can monitor your ROI. Make sure a professional SEO company manages your optimised press releases.

• Too much reach and not enough frequency.
  Effective web advertising ensures that a good percentage of the target audience see the advert a suitable number of times.
• Selling the features rather than the benefits of what is being offered.
• Too much copy. Over cluttering adverts will dilute the main message.
• Not emphasizing the unique selling points.
• Using an image which does not clearly show explain the product / service.
• Giving up on advertising before it has had a chance to work. Avoid the quest for instant gratification.
• Changing your web advertising copy too frequently.
• Choosing the wrong media. What media works for one business may not work for others.
• The business owner does not always know best. Too much product knowledge does not allow the product to be viewed afresh.
• Too much priority on selective targeting. High coverage and frequency yield the best results for your web advertising campaign.

These are all factors to why adverts fail.

Copy sales for national press outperform everything. The sheer number of people your ad reaches is the primary factor as to whether your ad gets a good response. No other advertising vehicle has the extensive reach of newspapers. In order to target the largest audience possible or corner the market in the most direct way, newspaper adverts are where you should channel your advertising budget.

Choosing The Broadsheets

Broadsheets means that you’ll also be getting quality and quantity. Readers of the broadsheets spend more online than any other group and are your best prospects.

Appearing In The Sunday Press

Appearing in the Sunday press has the huge advantage of reaching people with time on their hands who will be more inclined to buy online. People typically labelled well-off all consider themselves as newspaper readers. This implies that they’re more likely to have a higher disposable income, higher education levels, and be more willing and able to purchase online.
Of All The Different Sections to a Sunday paper, the colour Supplement has the greatest shelf life resulting in a longer exposure period for your ad. In addition, the editorial content lends credibility to the adverts within the pages, meaning that the advertising in newspapers appears every bit as legitimate and important as the news.