What an e-commerce entrepreneur should know. Trillions of dollars in revenue will be generated through e-commerce this year according to statistics. That's one great reason for any small business to have a website. Websites can be a useful marketing tool for your product or service. Obtaining a website doesn't cost you much. Plus it gives enormous exposure locally as well as from around the world. Having a website offers many other advantages too: Having a website also means you have an email account. With this you can communicate with clients and vendors for free; with no long distance charges. Your online store is open 24 hours a day so potential customers can view your product or service at a time convenient for them. If they have questions, they can email an inquiry at their convenience but remember to always respond on a timely basis. Bad customer service can drive away customers. When you make changes to pricing, services, products, or advertisement, it doesn't cost much to update your website as it would to throw out the old brochures, business cards, or signs and print new ones. Are you going to create your own site or hire someone to do it? Decide whether to update the site yourself or contract someone to do it. If you're generating revenues for your business, then get someone else who qualifies to do it. It may be worth the cost and save you time and the headaches of doing it yourself. Whatever your decision, you should make sure the site doesn't take long to load. Otherwise you may lose a customer. Make sure it is easy to navigate or move around. Some older browsers might not be able to load correctly, so take that into consideration. Always update your site. If a website is not updated, a customer may think you don't care or you're out of business. When a website is updated on a regular basis, the chances that it is listed on major search engines are higher. A customer will return to a site that has constantly updated information. It also provides credibility to your business. A good method to update a website is to have a news page about your company or the industry you're in, adding something once a month. If you reached a targeted sales goal, announce it. If you hired someone important announce that too. This will keep visitors interested in you. A website doesn't generate traffic by itself. You need to market it. You can't get away from non maintenance. Below are a few steps to help. Make sure your ads are short and to the point. Bold any action words. Make sure you target the right audience like selling expensive software programs to a small startup just doesn't work. Show what you're selling with a demo version or offer part of it for free. Let your customer know where they can go to buy the item, for example "Buy Here". Make your customers feel safe when they purchase the item with easy access to your privacy agreement or anything else to make them feel secure about your site. Instantfame provides the entrepreneur with all the tools needed for a business, from start to finish. Creating web pages on your own is easy with WebMaker to assist you. For those ready to sell a product or service, our Product Manager helps you easily manage the products and services you sell. Shopping Cart tracks customer purchases, calculate taxes and shipping costs. It also bills the customer's credit card and notifies both the customer and business owner of the completed transaction. All of your e-commerce purchases are done securely under state-of-the-art SSL encryption. Everything a person needs is available in the same place. Check out our services for yourself.