I once worked in a Commercial Construction & Real Estate Office. I was Corporate Secretary and was constantly over-seeing every aspect of our business.

That job meant that I had to understand building structure, improvements, regulations, and pretty much anything to get the building up and ready for the new store tenant to move and begin to sell their wares.

Why am I telling you this? I am after all, a website designer and developer and I am not in the business of building shopping malls any more.

I am telling you this because that was the best training I ever received in regards to the business I am doing today! No college courses, no ebooks - nothing gave me the insight I need today to be successful online like that construction job.

Building a web presence is similar in so many ways as building a brick and mortar business.

1. You need a 'home' for your business. In the brick and mortar world that is your building, your office, or store front. In cyber-space that is your domain name, website, and hosting. All these need to be up, running perfectly, and open for your customers to come in. You can't have plumbing problems in your store; just like your website can't load slow or even worse, your hosting goes down! Make sure you have a reliable host and remember to backup up; that is your insurance! You would insure a store front ; you need to treat your website the same.

2. Brick and mortars need to install store signs, put up fixtures, create marketing, letterhead and advertising. Doing business online means you need attractive design, header and footer graphics, banners, and creative marketing ideas.
   

3. You need traffic and a presence... Location! Location! Location! Brick and mortars need to be in high traffic locations, and as we all know; so does your website! Learn to market like a pro and use social network sites like Apsense, facebook, twitter and others to get that foot traffic you need to succeed!
   

4. Brick and mortars need employees; online you need affiliate software, autoresponder software and any automated script you can get your hands on to do the work for you! And don't forget the power of viral marketing! You can't do it all yourself and rarely do brick and mortars survive that way either.
   

5. And my most favorite similarity ... when your brick and mortar grows huge; you can sell it for profit.  The same goes with websites!  Flipping websites; just like flipping real estate is hot online so it is always an option.

Doing business is still doing business no matter what world you are doing it in. You need to be present, friendly with your clients, and offer stellar customer support; especially online!

Because the Internet is open 24/7 it is a good idea to have way to at least handle support issues if you are on vacation; never leave your websites unattended too long ... trust me they have an uncanny way of knowing and the minute you think they are ok and you don't look at them for a few weeks ... that's when the trouble starts! Keep an eye on your websites no matter how automated they can become!

I hope you enjoyed my article and here is too your success! Please visit my website and let me know how I can help you build a solid online presence ... from structure to marketing; 5buckbanners.com does it all!

5buckbanners.com

Terah Logan

5BuckBanners.com