The Importance of Market Research

by James Anderson

Market research is an important tool for any new company seeking a commercial opportunity, particularly for small firms looking to grow their business. There are many people who start a business to sell products online without ever thinking about why someone would buy it from them. If you are going to be selling products to customers, at the very minimum you will need a marketing plan. Without a marketing plan, you could end up making some costly mistakes. The only sure way to find out what product to sell is to perform a through market research. Ask yourself the following questions: What product to sell? At what price? Who will be the customers? The answer comes from doing some basic market research.

Some companies use a popular method to undertake market research that conducts a survey on the Internet. You can come up with as many ideas as possible and then run an Internet search on the ideas to get more information and help determine the best idea. Once you have decided on the best idea, think of some key words and see how many hits you reach by using those key words on a search engine. Next, you need to decide on what goods or services you can provide online and also find where you’re going to obtain them.

The Internet is a personal, highly interactive medium. Be as specific as possible with what business you plan to do online. Don’t try to do everything at once; the medium favors businesses that do one thing well. The more specific your business, the more personal the level of service you can provide to your customers. The continuing growth in computer and network technology has had a positive impact on market research, offering people a fast and cost effective method to perform online research and reach their target audiences. If you are not sure on how to conduct a market research you can hire a market research firm to help evaluate the business opportunity for your product or find alternative solutions to help you get started running your on-line business. Business is all about identifying customers’ needs and figuring out exactly what goods or services you’re going to offer to meet those needs.

Before you invest a lot of time and money into selling your product, you need to do some basic research to find information on your potential market and make sure you will be targeting the right buyers and offering products they want they want to buy. Start by conducting an online survey and asking your potential customers to answer a questionnaire. Of course you would have to offer some incentive for people to take the trouble to answer a questionnaire. Many people skip this step as it takes extra work, or the work might not seem worth the time. Do not skip this step! Although it might not seem important at first, it will pay off in the long run. To get specific answers to your new business, you can ask your potential customers these simple questions:

· What type of products do they buy online?
· How often do they buy? Once a month?
· What is the most important factor in their buying decision?
· What makes them want to buy online?

The best way to conduct a survey is to commission a market research firm to perform the survey. There are a number of benefits to using a market research firm including:

· A large numbers of respondents can be surveyed at one time.
· The Internet provides the ability to perform a worldwide survey.
· It can be a very cost effective way to conduct large surveys.
· The research can generate fast results received within a few days.

Despite its convenience, electronic research should not be undertaken lightly, nor should it be regarded as a substitute for traditional research methods. Online research has limitations, which need to be considered from the outset. It may be that, in some instances, these outweigh the benefits. These include:

· Do It Yourself surveys compromise objectivity of questioning and impartial interpretation.

· Research conducted via Internet surveys can only target Internet users who are prepared to answer on-line questionnaires.

These considerations are not intended to denigrate the valuable role electronic research has to play in today’s fast-paced business environment. If a business decides to perform an online survey then the research should be undertaken with the same degree of responsibility that would accompany a more traditional method of market research. The importance of conducting a detailed market research for the new business owner is to help develop a good business plan. The market research is critical for your product to be a success. Here are some basic steps to follow to help you develop your product marketing plan:

1. Get some demographic data on your potential customers. Ask yourself the following questions:
· What is their age, gender and marital status?
· What are their buying and eating habits?
· What sort of products do they use similar to yours?

2. Meet with potential customers. Find out what they like and don't like about products like the one you will be producing.

3. Conduct a Market survey. Hire a market research firm or conduct the research yourself. Devise a simple survey and give people a reason to fill it out. Find out what similar products they buy and what products they would like to see from you.

4. Find out about your competition.
· What will you offer that they don't?
· How is your product better or cheaper then theirs?
· What makes your business unique?

5. Analyze the data.

At first glance, some of these questions might seem very basic and simple. If you start thinking about answering them in detail, you will soon find yourself thinking about your business approach from a different perspective. Remember some of your future customers will be asking you these same questions so you better have a good answer.

Once you are convinced that you have a viable product, the final step before an all-out rollout of your product is to do some test marketing. Take your product to your local merchant and ask if they will allow you to test run your product in their store. Try different prices and displays to see what works best. Also, ask your friends and family members if they would buy such a product and how much they would pay for it. After a successful test market run, then you will know it is time to launch your product to the mass market.

How To Increase Your Online Business

By Gigabyte

Before starting your own website, you can start by listing merchandise to sell with some online auctions like eBay. This requires nothing more than a computer, an Internet connection and a means of producing digital images. This will also give you some good data on how well your product will sell on the Internet. Don’t go overboard in stocking inventory, especially on a limited budget, but make sure your inventory is sufficient. Keep a modest surplus on hand in case of success. You can always give extra products away as promotions. Alternatively, you can use Drop Shipping, which allows an Internet merchant to accept orders for products and then pay a manufacturer or distributor to ship the product to the customer. You'll need to find a good market niche, a reliable drop-shipper and a way to drive traffic to your site.

When you are ready to promote your website, you can sign up with the Google's AdSense program which allows Web sites to display relevant ads on their website. If a website visitor "clicks" on an ad, the Web publisher will earn a percentage of any ad revenue generated. To take advantage of this, build content Web sites that attract visitors and hope they click frequently on the ads. You might think of your Web site as the place where people come to shop, but e-mail is the way you keep your business humming. Answering an email in good time is vital to communicate with your customers. However, you don’t need to be sitting in front of your computer all day waiting for emails otherwise you will not get anything else done. Sign up with a Web hosting service that provides you with autoresponders.

You have heard of the old phrase 'Quick is good; instant is better.' Many things on the Internet happen more quickly than they do in the real world. In particular, this applies to the Internet shopper’s time frame for making a decision. You have only a short time to grab somebody’s attention and get their business. Online shoppers like to get instant gratification and be able to quickly purchase their item. To attract visitors to your site you need to provide free information to make it a useful resource that people will want to visit again and again.

When you start a new business choosing the right product to sell is certainly important. But what really matters is your frame of mind going into your online business project. The economy is something you can’t control and sometimes your sales will slow down. There are plenty of people who will be happy to spread gloom and doom. But if you plan to be successful, you will be successful. You can supplement your product sales by generating income through banner advertising or through the Google's AdSense program.

Whatever you decide to sell you must know your product or the service that you are going to provide and promote it energetically. Remember if you don’t believe in your own product it will be hard to convince other people to buy it. Come up with a catchy slogan and put them on your website. Your own enthusiasm will radiate to prospective customers. Plan for success by paying a little extra up front for a top of the line computer and a good Web hosting service with the most features.

The following links may be helpful:

1. Drop ship Directory http://www.sandanco.com/dropship.html

2. Cheap Web Hosting - http://www.myhostgenie.com

3. Dell Computers http://www.dell.com (for PC)

4. Apple - http://www.apple.com (for Mac)

How to Get a Top Ranking in Google

By James Anderson

Everybody wants to get their website in the top spot on Google or Yahoo! Many SEO companies promise to get you to this coveted top spot for a fee, but nobody can really guarantee this. If they do make a promise be vary careful to check out the reputation of the company before signing up. There are no special secrets to getting the top position, but rather knowing what to do. Anyone with some knowledge of SEO techniques can optimize their own website and improve the chance of getting a high position in the search engines. There is a lot of learning to do before you can master all the techniques but if you are in a hurry that’s when the SEO companies can help.

Having one-way back links to your site is no longer enough. You also need to use proper anchor tags on your site catered for your main keywords. For example, if you are selling web tools and use the click-able text “products” to take a user to the products page, this would be less effective. It is more appropriate to use “web tools” for the click-able text, which is part of the chosen keywords. For example, see the site Sandanco.com and click on the web tools anchor text.

Although most search engines no longer use keywords as part of their ranking algorithm, the keywords are still very important to help users find what they are looking for and steer them to your site. Most users tend to pick one word phrase in their key word list. Although this still works, but to get more relevant traffic to your site you should use a keyword phrase to describe what you are selling to drive visitors to your site. For example, simply using “tools” is too generic and would bring up millions of hits. However, if you use “web tools” this would narrow down the search area to drive the visitors that type “web tools” to your site. It is no use having a visitor coming to your site that is looking for machine tools when you are selling software. This is called targeted traffic. To get targeted traffic you need to use targeted keywords.

Once you have made a list of keywords for your site, you next have to find out how many people are actually typing these keywords into the search engine to find the appropriate web sites. There are many free online keyword tools on the net to help you perform this research. You would of course want to pick the keywords most often used in the search to find website with like yours.

The next step is to get more one-way links to your website. Don’t waste time getting hooked on with link-farms that have no relevant content and only pages with links to other pages. Some search engines will penalize you for this while others would just ignore these links and not count them in their ranking. Remember, the people writing the code for the ranking algorithm know most of the tricks in the book that people try to use to fool the search engine.

The right way to get back-links is to actually use strategic links from another site that has something in common with your site. Most often, this can be done by simply writing to the Webmaster from another site to ask if they could place a link to your site. Sometimes they may say no and other times they will agree to place a link to your site. This is more effective then a reciprocal link exchange. A reciprocal link has less value because it is a two-way link. Each website owner agrees to exchange his/her link to the other site.

If you are in a hurry to get to a top ten position, you can increase your back links by using a paid one-way link campaign. There are many companies that offer this service and you should do your homework before you part with your money. Nevertheless, this is the fastest way to increase your back-links and improve your rankings in the search engines. Remember, it is more important to the search engines on where your link in coming from rather then how many links you have. There are many factors that determine how you can get your website to the top position in Google or Yahoo. This article is not intended to be a complete guide on how to get a top ten position but to point out some common methods to get there.

Tips to Add Credibility to Your Web Directory Listings

by Jim Degerstrom

Natural linking to add related one-way links to your website is an accepted method for boosting search engine ranking. Done properly, the results will be worthwhile. If you are determined to take shortcuts, consider the consequences. There are valid services who will hand submit your URL to directories, and the best will provide evidence of value for money paid.

Quick and low cost solutions may backfire because others may broadcast your site to 500-1000 or more sites for $19.95, or some similar number up to $99, with varying results. You may see ads for one million sites for some ridiculously low amount. You need to think twice about where your www domain will end up listed. A low price may not be a good price.

None of the services can guarantee you will be approved and listed to all that receive your submission. Each directory has rules, and although some will automatically add your URL, most are reviewed by a human editor prior to approval.

My advice is doing it yourself. Unless you hand submit your www domain to website directories, the quality backlinks you expect from a service company could leave you wondering if your efforts were in vain. By physically visiting each site and reviewing their guidelines, you improve your chances of being approved. More importantly, the rules change.

For example, I developed a list of 150 well established directories that accept free listing of your URL. For natural listing, I choose to submit 5 per day to avoid a spike in backlinks that may be perceived as spam by the search engines.

In the course of submitting over several months, I discovered some directories change policy due to the large number of sites submitted and then they do one of three things. They charge a fee, require a reciprocal link, or temporarily discontinue accepting free submissions. Broadcast submissions will fail without picking up this valuable information, so many will not be approved.

The first step is making sure your website is ready to submit. Be prepared with quality content and then do search engine optimization review prior to submitting to website directories. Use these guidelines to determine if your site is worthy. Keep in mind these are general rules, and may vary from one directory to another. Each listing structure may be organized with variable categories, so an automated system may not properly evaluate the rules.

Do not submit:

1. Websites under construction
2. More pages other than your home page
3. To unrelated categories
4. Porn, vulgar, hate, or illegal content sites
5. Sites in languages other than English
6. Pages with plug-ins, pop-ups, or flash only design
7. Any graphic only sites with unreasonable load time
8. Just your sitemap, a pdf, or catalog only page
9. A site designed primarily with ads or affiliate links
10. A mirror site with duplicate content to another URL
11. The same URL disguised to try to get multiple listings
12. To unique niche directories if your site is unrelated

Some website directories will tolerate minor violations of the above rules. For example, some may allow you to submit multiple pages of your www domain. Most will not list subdomains from free hosting services. If you have built high quality unique content on a free hosting service, some directories may make an exception. By physically visiting each directory, you have the opportunity to evaluate each based on first impression, other sites listed, and any special rules that may affect your approval.

Bonus Tip: Do not use a free service email address when submitting to directories. Most require that you provide a working email address to qualify for submitting your URL. Some may not tell you, however, most expect that the email address provided includes the same ending as your www domain. The editors are often too busy to respond to each site submitted, so if you are not approved, they won't tell you.

Finally, if all this seems like a lot of work, it is. The preparation and time to submit requires long hours. Fortunately, you may spread out the task over time to make the job easier. Once you're ready, do 5 a day for natural linking, and your listing in 100-150 directories should be accomplished in less than 2 hours a day over 30 days.

Article Source: http://www.jimdegerstrom.com/web_directory_advice_article.html.

About the Author: Jim Degerstrom offers small business advice based on 30 years in management, sales, and marketing, including President or General Manager of small companies in 5 states. He is proficient in website and graphic art design, and runs his online Small Business Resource Center at http://www.jimdegerstrom.com from Kissimmee FL USA.