There was initial suspicion that buying online was a risk. It involved providing your card to pay for your purchases. Now, sophisticated payment gateways have ensured that those details cannot be accessed by unauthorized people and there seems common acceptance that everything is safe.

In many business sectors the Internet is totally dominant. Sectors such as travel now have airlines dealing directly with the consumer through their websites. These are interactive with price and availability controlled by the website so flights can be purchased there and then and a confirmation provided that is the authorization to check in and travel.

Some people still want to see and touch their purchases; shopping for clothes, where the age old practice of trying on before buying may never disappear. However, even fashion businesses in the sector place great reliance on their websites to attract consumers.

The power of the Internet

The World Wide Web has taken over as the main source of information. Reference library books are often gathering dust as people wanting information can get it by inputting keywords and phrases into the popular search engines.

As the traditional ways of advertising are increasingly being seen as irritants rather than positive promotions, a website has become the major marketing tool at the disposal of companies wanting to get their message across to the consumer.

Marketing, ranking, sales

Marketing is the first step towards sales; the aim is to have an informative website that has initial appeal and content to retain the interest of the reader. The role of a business is to ensure its goods and services appeal to readers; the role of an expert designer is to produce a website for a client that is user friendly and visually appealing.

The other challenge is to achieve a high ranking on the search engines so that general enquirers will be shown the website if they want more information on this business sector. This ‘visibility’ needs work because of the host of websites that are competing for those high rankings.

The aim is to create ‘authority status’ for a website so it is seen as a place where quality information is provided, initially on the standard pages of the site and then through constant news on its blog that invites questions and comment from consumers. That activity can gradually create a target audience and reinforces the website at the top of the rankings.

The natural consequence of all this activity is sales; where else would anyone go to buy other than a website that has kept information flowing and subtly educated the reader?

Ongoing attention

This whole process is not a one off exercise; it begins with discussions with a potential client to explain what can be done and how it can be achieved to see if that fits in with the client’s aims. The work involves understanding the client’s business sector, structuring a website to be user friendly and ensuring the initial impression is good and the text interesting.

There is ongoing work monitoring statistics and developing dialogue with a target audience. Sales and a successful future are a natural consequence.

Steve Smith is a freelance writer who lives on the South West coast of Turkey in the small town of Dalyan, famous as a nesting site for the endangered loggerhead turtle. He writes on a range of topics from current affairs and economics to consumer affairs and ecommerce web design.