So,  you have a business and  you want to use the Internet to sell your services or products, right?
    If you answered, "No, I don't have a website yet.' then before you spend a lot of time on this topic, why not first take a look at a list of what you will need to consider when creating a website 
    If you answered , "Actually I thought this was Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes website." then I can't help you.
    BUT if you actually answered "Yes!" (or some derivative thereof), then please read on...

As you probably know, one of the basic fundamental rules of selling is this: People would rather buy from someone they know. Okay,  I know... I know... Ebay... Craigs list... we don't know those people, but we buy from them.

I won't argue the point. Rather I'll ask you, "Is your site an 'eBay' or a 'Craigslist'?  Probably not. Chances are that your small business website is not too different from 'Joe's Pizza' (no offense, Joe.) You might make the best tasting pizza in the world, but if you're competing with brand name pizza places, like "Pizza Hut", "Papa John's" and "Dominoes" then you have an added burden of not being a famous name brand pizza place.

So the relevant question is, "Can a small business like Joe's Pizza get customers from the Internet?"  
The answer is, "Absolutely YES!"  Many small businesses use the internet to drive local customers to their doors. Many of the more successful ones use the strategy of building a repeat-customer base. This means they let their customers get to know them. They keep in touch with their customers with specials, coupons, sales, etc. to generate repeat business through existing customers as well as continue attracting new customers.

After all, a customer who liked the food, service, ambiance of Joe's Pizza is likely to come back again the next time they want pizza. And their likely to tell their friends about it, too.

So through your website you need to:
    1) Generate Traffic to your site - mainly people you don't know yet.
    2) Convert Traffic to Leads - 
        a) Let these people get to know you and your business.
        b) Give them something of value so they will want to return.
    and finally...
    3) Convert Leads to Sales - Of course we hope they come directly to the website and buy something, but statistically that will only happen 1 to 2 percent of the time. (Yes, that means for every 100 people who visit your site, statistically you can expect only 1 or 2 to buy something.  SO work with your Leads - keep in touch by the website, email, social networking, post, etc. and give them some reason to come back to either the website or to your actual store to buy something.

Need more details?  No problem!  Over the next few days I will cover each of these steps in more detail.
Tomorrow  I will talk about some terminology you need to be aware of and we'll begin to look at the first step of Generating Traffic to your site.

See you then!