With online business you lack the ability to build face to face relationship but this does not remove the importance of building this relationship. The first and important thing to put consideration to when starting an online business is the website or blog. Your website or blog is the point of contact with your customers, so it need to be in a way that it can set the groundwork for building a strong relationship.

There are several benefits of having a website or blog like;

Improve Credibility

A website or a blog has the ability to tell your customers or potential customers about who you are, what you are selling and why you deserve their trust and confidence.

Soft Selling

Websites help you to enhance and build your visibility and brand online. Sometimes a website can do soft selling to your customers. Customers who visit your website or blog can decide to buy from you after reading about your products. You don’t have to send email to every potential customer and ask them to buy.

Search Engine Benefit

With regular categorised posts with tags on it are search engine friendly and can attracts customers to your website.

Accessibility

Unlike offline offices on which customers can visit your visit from 8:00 in the morning to 17:00 in the evening or more depending on business working hours, blogs are accessible 24 hours a day in 7 days. Customers from all over the world can visit your business anytime.

How to build online relationship with customers?

This can be done easily by responding to customer needs. You might wonder what are these needs? Let me describe some of them, but feel free to research more by putting yourself on their shoes and think about what would make you happy or satisfied if a certain business man you know would do it to you. Convert your need into customer service and do it to your customers. Remember in most cases customers behave in similar.

Customer needs;

Customers likes to feel special; Use your autoresponders to respond to this need by giving them compliments like “congratulations!”, “You have made a right decision by visiting us” etc. It is also good idea to personalize your messages so that recipient feels that it is unique and directed to him or her.

Customers are insecure; The main problem when it comes to internet business or online business is how to build trust with the customer. Customers don’t like to be scammed, they will want to know if they will get what they paid for in terms of quality, quantity etc. As the business owner you will need to assure your customers, give them confidence that you are the one they are looking for, stand out as someone they can trust.

Customers think about themselves; Customers visit your website because they want something they need, they are not in your site for your benefits and they don’t care much for your business or to your products. I know this sounds harsh but let me explain by this example; when you wake up in the morning with headache, do you really care about the company which manufacture the pain killer or the contents and chemistry behind the pain killer? I know all we think about is how the pain killer will cure my headache and that is what we will want to hear and NOT a long history about the pain killer. So the same applies to our customers, speak to their needs first and then explain how your business can give solution to their needs.

The last one is mental issue that customers likes to be associated with success; Success people will like to associate with other success people. The same applies to your business, make your website in such a way that it will portray that you are successful. Don’t lie to people that you are a millionaire while you are not because one day they will find out and you will lose credibility.

Building a strong relationship with your website visitors will give you significant sales and marketing advantage over your competitors

Starting a business and becoming successful is often part of the American Dream. But there is a difference between starting a business and building a successful business. Many businesses fail within the first few years of existence due to the lack of planning for the long-term. There is not enough vision and there is not enough done to strengthen the business properly from the ground up.

If you want to start a business there is an easy way to get a better understanding of why some businesses fail and others don’t. When starting a business think about it similar to building a house. If done right it is protecting you against any kind of storm or danger of the outside world and will last for a long time. It offers shelter and protection. For you and your business that could be translated to that you want to have a business that is able to weather economical ups and downs (=storm) and that will provide income to pay the bills (shelter and protection).

When building a house there are several different steps you need to follow to have the house build. You know you want a house, but you got to pick a location and get an architect to plan everything out. In the business world that would be: you know you want to start a business, but you have to come up with a business idea and work out a business plan. The next thing for the house would be to build the foundation (and eventually the basement) for the house. In the business world – you got to build the initial infrastructure (example: connecting with vendors, find a manufacturer for your product, create a sales team, rent office space, get a delivery truck, etc.). Once that is in place you able to actually do business and earn some money. But you are not completely done yet. You need to build a frame, put in windows and you also need a roof on house. For your business this means that you pay off debt, improve business processes and get professional help when needed (example: find a tax accountant, select a payroll service, etc.).

Once the house is build you probably want to fill it with furniture and make it livable for the future. Nobody wants to sleep on the floor, right. Again translating this to the business world it could mean that you invest money you earned back into your business. You buy machinery instead of leasing it. Eventually you buy a building, hire more staff, develop more products, move into new markets, build up a high cash reserve, and buy other businesses and so forth. This is often the step where winners and losers separate. Re-investing money into the business is a key factor for success. If you go and spend all the money on your own salary to buy things you have nothing to go back to when the economy slips into a recession or if disaster strikes.

The successful business owner has build up a cash reserve or can borrow money from bank – securing loans with the assets of the business. Going back to building a house this pretty much matches the same efforts. You pay off your mortgage and have equity available to eventually borrow against when emergency arises. Emergencies do not include paying off credit cards to use them again or to buy a car. Financially responsible you should be looking at the long term and not finance short-term goods with long-term debt.