In recent years I’ve been approached by many small business owners. Asking me, If I have a secret for success for building websites online? In truth, I do and it’s a methodology I employ for many of our clients here at Apples 2 Apples.
You see I previously owned one of the fastest growing ecommerce stores online. In fact that store was so successful we were seeing sales growth of 187% month over month. When I opened that online store we had sales of exactly $0.00 and then 18 months later we had accumulated sales of $6,000,000.00 that’s right that’s not a typo. So I am often approached by business owners and even former competitors that want to know what it was that I did that had such a huge success for my online storefront.
“This article is about that, what I saw to be the most successful steps I took during that time.”
The first thing I did was analyze the competition and I looked at what they were doing really well, and more importantly what they were not doing well. But that led me to my next conclusion. It didn’t matter what my competition was doing online or offline, what mattered most was what I was doing to grow my online business.
“If I had to do it all over again”
They say hind sight is 20/20 and that’s true even with online businesses. Something’s I did very, very well like networking my business with government organizations that could place orders with small businesses or had mandates to do so. Incidentally those were the best sales, because they had to give you their business. The other choice I made that had a fantastic success story of its own was this, we wrote our own shopping cart software while we leased a hosted package from a vendor that supplied online shopping carts and store fronts. So in effect no sales opportunities were lost while we grew and developed our own online store front.
When I look back now we were young and far more inexperienced than I realized at the time and that’s fine because it was that all or nothing spirit that voice inside us that was telling us we could change the world that enabled us to design an ecommerce software package like no other at its time. You see we designed our software application so that others could see we were gonna do big things. It was that enthusiasm that helped spread the word about our business, our culture and our lives.
“In little ways we let others know we were a brand”
It’s ironic but the end result at that time was a product that was not visually appealing but more importantly it got the job done and then some. You see we developed a software solution that was technically correct. It did all the outstanding things software should do...It sold...Sold and...Sold. It sold our products, it sold us by that I mean our ideals, our way of life, our company values...it sold!
“It is ironic because someone once said our software looked a little homemade…Little did he know…”
In the end remember the secret formula of any e commerce shopping cart software you choose should sell...You, Your brand and Products very very well. The next time you get to thinking that by having a new website developed you will sell more products or services remember this story.
You see it was not a new website or website development that yielded those outstanding results it was a software solution or the best shopping cart online that was technically perfect it did everything from an online perspective that we could want. It was designed to achieve optimum SEO, optimum navigation, landing pages that convert, simplified shopping cart for increased sales, and it was optimized to SELL!
In the end it was the story of the little engine that could. Today, we offer that very same software package that we designed. As a website development solution, if you’re interested in the best online shopping cart contact us we’re sure you’ll be pleased with your results.
You can reach the author by emailing: Chris [at] apples2apples.us.com
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