New York SBDC Research Network

Your online presence is a vital part of any sales strategy. But is your website the sales powerhouse it should be? Replicating the effectiveness of the face-to-face sales process online -- and getting customers to go from clicking to buying -- can be difficult. The good news is that there are a few simple tricks and tweaks that can improve your site's revenue-generating capabilities. Here are five tips that can help turn a business website into a sales machine: 1. Build an effective shopping cart. Some small businesses use services such as PayPal for making and receiving online payments. But building a full-featured shopping cart directly into your website might be a better option. Shopping carts allow for more customization and the potential to provide more product information. (Check our our earlier post on setting up a PayPal account for your business here .) Austin, Texas-based Volusion is an all-in-one shopping-cart tool that starts at $19 per month and handles chec...

A recent report released from the Small Business Success Index (SBSI) showed that social media adoption by small businesses is, in fact, increasing. Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business sponsored the report and found that over the last year, the number of small businesses using social media has gone from 12 percent to 24 percent. More HERE , including some downsides. The video . *** What Not to Do on Your Business Website

An effective, creative, and well-designed website for your small business is a critical marketing and sales tool that is essential in the Internet age. There are some consumers who do everything online, from watching TV to communicating with loved ones to purchasing services and commodities. Below are some tips to make the most of your online presence. Business Unusual : Take One Website, Add Stroke of Genius (Entrepreneur) For More Sales, Create a Landing Page (Entrepreneur) 35+ Usability Resources for Web Designers (DESIGNM.AG)

A couple of website development tools: At the ASBDC conference in Orlando, I went to a presentation by Jan Zimmerman, author of Web Marketing For Dummies . On that book’s web page , she offers some tools helpful to clients planning a website or selecting a web developer. There’s a planning form, web marketing spreadsheet to analyze costs and sales objectives, and a website assessment form which might be really useful for advisors wanting to offer feedback on client sites. All these tools can be downloaded here . Jan also discussed how we typically read websites ( ie , not very thoroughly, most important things should be in the upper right, then left side, middle is often less important. ) If you’re interested in learning more about where the eye travels when viewing a site, Jakob Nielsen offers several articles about eyetracking , with some great advice for website usability .