Recent advance in computer and Internet technology have radically changed the business world. E-commerce jumped into the market, and lots of the companies started their online division in order to keep the competitive advantage and expand their customer segment.  However, how to have a successful online business?  Lorna Van Straaten summarized 7 tips in her blog, I would like to reference some of those points to what we have learned in COMM101 class in this comment.

1. Understand who your Customer is.
2.solve your customers problem.
The first two tips is about knowing the customers.  By finding out what is the company’s customer segment, knowing gains and pains of them, the company will improve their value proposition so that it will fit to the customers’ demand.  Impressive value proposition is supposed to be the gain creator and pain deliver for customers.

3.Get traffic to your website from as many places as possible.
Tip 3 is mainly about how to marketing your website.  It mentioned the importance of social media and several ways to grow popularity including:

• Advertise your business where your customer is found.
• List your website in directories.
• Send traffic to your offer as many ways as possible. Repeat your offer everywhere!

4. Add an easy Payment method.
5. Determine how your site is actually working.
6.understand conversion Testing.
Tips 4,5 and 6 discussed the user experience, we didn’t learn about UI in our class, but we can still relate it to a way that express how customer feel about the product, about the website.  Since online business is a window that companies can reach to their consumers directly, what customers experienced decide the success of the business.

7.Use Tech Support.

the last point remind me of we are in a fast-pace world, companies that refuse to accept new technology will obviously lose their opportunity to make the corporation stronger, so in online business, Using technology support will help them improving the company, According to Straaten, the entrepreneurs don’t need to do that by themselves, but they can hire staff with professional skill, and it will pay off.

Link to the original blog: http://smallbusinessbc.ca/post/how-have-a-successful-online-business