Starting an Online Business? - Guide 8 – Making The Website Interactive

A big mistake that businesses make is to simply put their current company literature onto a website and expect this to be sufficient to have a maximum impact online. A business does not want a web visitor to have the same experience that they could have from offline literature. The business website must utilise the potential of the internet and form a website that is engaging and communicates to the web visitor on many levels. A successful online business utilises the creativity and communication techniques that can be sought online to give the customer an interactive experience on the website.

Having an interactive ecommerce solution is now an obligation for businesses to sell online. Many businesses fail to add certain elements to their website which engage with the customer, here are the top elements that need to be included in an ecommerce software solution:

Social Bookmarking: The recent Google algorithm update has meant the need for an ecommerce solution to have a social presence is now a necessity. There is now huge traffic and potential customers on social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The ecommerce software must have the ability to link into these sites and interact with their customers. Having sharing buttons on the ecommerce solution so that customers can spread the word on your behalf to their friends and colleagues is a priceless marketing tool and is so simple to incorporate.

The businesses social presence is now benefitting the businesses search results more than ever with the algorithm update. This means that increasing the social brand will benefit the traffic and potential sales. By adding these ‘share’ buttons and ‘like’ buttons will increase your social presence and now that the search engines are using a websites social status as an element when ranking the website they are essential tools that need to be incorporated.

Email Newsletter: Collecting web visitors’ information and statistics is fundamental to the success of an online business, knowing their web habits and behaviours will give the business an advantage over competition. By adding a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ option, the business is then able to gain an email address of the web visitor and interact via email. When the email list starts to grow, it can be become one of your most valuable marketing tools as information can sent directly to the web visitors’ inbox. By engaging with the customer, with their consent, the ecommerce solution is more likely to make a sale, as the customer has expressed an interest in the website already.

Incorporating these elements into a business website will gain the website an exposure to your customers and interact with them to create sales. By utilising the social market will give the business an exposure to a market that is growing all the time and will be the future of how a customer finds your product or service.