Everyone is embracing the online phenomenon. It’s never been easier to get a business up and running, taking an idea from the draft table to a live website is realistic for anyone with ambition and drive. Offering your services or product online can instantly let you tap into a worldwide market, you can quickly become in demand.
If you search through the business press you will find lots of success stories about digital entrepreneurs, rags to riches millionaires. Ebay and Amazon are living proof that one person start-ups can be successful. However like anything, for every success there is failure. Dig deep enough and you will find many tales of online ventures that have failed, that have not even managed to clear the first hurdle.
Examples include pets.com which crashed and burnt after just 2 years. How about boo.com a fashion retailer that spent $135 million of venture capital in just 18 months. No matter what your aspirations are for your online business, whether it is to dominate the world or just capture a piece of the market, you will need a brand that is strong.
Your online brand fly’s the flag for you, your service or product. It’s the first thing people will see when they engage your services and also importantly, the trigger that will make them think of your service. For some, creating a brand for a website is not top of the list, in fact many leave it until last.
A shabby website logo, a badly designed social network or a website with a bad user experience can instantly turn people off your brand, your product – a sale lost. Give thought to your brand, the image you want to give a new customer. If you’re running an e-commerce website, your brand and website should put your new visitor at ease, trust is important with online purchases. Think about how you would talk about your business to a new customer if you met them offline. Incorporate that into your website design and the tone of your website copy including your social networks.
Be seen
You could have the best brand in the world, but if no one can find it online it will have little impact. Think about visibility of your website and brand. In fact, it needs to be the first thought you have straight after your idea. How will people find my website? How can I get the right people to my website? How strong is the competition online for your product or service, what are they doing that is working, can you rise above them? If you find answers to those questions, you are well on the way to a successful online brand.
You will need to dominate search rankings in Google for your product or service searches, have a social network that is responsive, informative and helpful. Your brand will have to been seen across different online business platforms, have plenty of positive customer reviews. You want to create a brand that is trusted, one that is known for quality. Most of all a brand that is visible online to customers you are looking to attract.
Think about your online brand because it represents you.