Ultimate Advertising That Works

Not Your Usual Sidewalk Sale
Hosting a successful e-commerce business is about a lot more than just being able to accept credit card transactions. Your Web site should play a specific role within the overall relationship that you are building with your customers. The most successful Web sites increase customer loyalty by providing value to customers, which in turn increases traffic through return visits from your customers and customer referrals.

The World Wide Web didn't start out being an easy place to make money. But it was an easy place to spend money. In its earliest days, the Internet was all about spending the money of U.S. taxpayers to establish a worldwide network of computers for the U.S. military establishment and later, its universities. The idea of a money making venture seemed unlikely.

As the Web arrived in 1994 in its full glory, a lot of Internet veterans were aghast at the idea of commercial Web sites. The possibilities represented by the electronic ads at the top or bottom of Web pages, however, soon attracted commercial newspaper publishers.

Within two years, major newspapers started their own online publishing ventures with the goal of seeing them largely funded by advertisers. Although at first advertisers were few.

However, after several years of experimentation, many Web advertisers now seem willing to bet heavily on Web-based marketing. Their future success will likely depend upon the nature of the media in which the ads are appearing. Web-based content is still evolving quickly, making it hard to decide how to advertise.

Web ads are very attractive for home-based software businesses that can sell their products digitally. These software companies, for example, can now sell and collect money for their products entirely over the Internet. They do not need to use courier companies to ship physical products as the entire product can be downloaded into a computer. The same is starting to apply to companies that sell music digitally on the Web.

For companies selling non-digital products, that use their Web sites for catalog style shopping, the attraction of online ads will increasingly be to get the attention of the right online consumers. While online pioneers such as Amazon.com don't need to do much advertising to get their names in front of the cyber-public, home-based businesses entering an increasingly established online marketplace will need every possible promotion tool to get their voices heard.

The real trick is to find ways to use your Web site to understand the needs and preferences of your customers - and to use interactive tools to respond to those needs. Web sites provide a powerful new method to serve your customers, but the basic principles of targeted marketing and good customer service still apply.