If you own an offline business, you may have heard about taking your business online, but you might be sceptical about actually taking the plunge. So, what is an online business, and how can it affect the day to day running of your business?
Well, now is the time to take your business online. Everyday more and more people are becoming connected to the internet, giving them freedom to browse the web, but how you tap into this market and make money from an online business as well as your offline business?
Firstly, you’ll need to make a website. Nowadays doing this is incredibly easy and cheap to do – you could set up a ready to run website for under $20! The most important part of the website is a domain. The domain is the actual web address that people will type in to see your website. It will cost you under $10 to buy a domain if you shop around and find the best deals. The most crucial part of buying a domain is that your offline business name needs to match with the domain, otherwise how will people know you’re connected?!
Once you’ve got the domain you will need hosting and an actual website to put on the domain (the hosting will connect the website to the domain). Depending on whether you use a free script or a custom one, this could cost anywhere from $0 to $10,000 – it really varies that much, so it’s best to shop around for a bargain.
Once you have your website up and ready to go, you’ll need to advertise it (after all, what use is a website if no one goes on it?!). There are various methods of advertising online businesses, but the most obvious one is to advertise your website in your own offline business! Put up posters around your building advertising the website, as this means your customers can browse around your shop even after closing hours by simply clicking onto your website. You should also put your website address in all your letters and invoices that you send out to spread the word.
OK, so you now know how to do it, but why should you do it?
The main reason is the extra money! With the expansion of the internet more and more people are buying online because of the convenience of shopping from their own home. If you can target your website to the right people then you could have customers using your shop all over the country, rather than just in your own city.