Selling through the internet without breaking the bank

Without doubt, your business has to have a website. Without one these days, you are missing out on sales, prospects and marketing opportunities. 

The challenges for any small business owner that wants to get their enterprise onto the internet to find new customers or to sell to existing customers are firstly the cost of getting a decent website designed and then marketing it so that customers know it exists.

In my experience, when getting my delicatessen business onto the internet some years back, the cost of getting the site designed, eCommerce ready and launched put my small business' finances under great strain. I had little money left for marketing it. (I had a designer build it and incorporate Actinic as the shopping basket system).

Of course, there are plenty of internet service providers who will provide you with an eCommerce ready website for a few pounds per month (e.g. 1and1). They are good but their templates tend to be too generic and does not easily differentiate you from competitors.

Therefore, setting up your business' website is a balance between going for a bespoke, high cost solution or going for something which is cheap and looks cheerful but similar to lots of other company websites. I now always set up websites with the impact that it will have on the 'bottom line' and the business' cash flow.

You need a website, you need it to start working for you quickly and you need it to be contributor to your profits as soon as possible. You need it to be simple to set up and to be able to customise its look easily and cheaply so your business website looks like your business.

There are many good providers of services which help small businesses get onto web, and one I particularly like is BaseKit. Firstly, it includes lots of templates which are specific to different types of businesses such as car dealers, estate agents, plumbers or electricians, for example. You can easily customise it and features or elements relevant to your business.

It's also cheap. You can try it free for a couple of weeks and then choose between packages which costs either £6, £12 or £24 depending upon how many features you need. You can set up an eCommerce website using it too. Finally, it makes it easy for you to make it search engine friendly, which is an important factor for making the website work for you.

Even better, BaseKit is running an offer for January where you can obtain a domain name for free and get the 'business' package for £1 per month rather than £12 per month for the first three months. With the money saved, you could spend that on Google Adwords to attract some new customers to your site.

Here's a video about the BaseKit service.

To get the discount, use this code at checkout during January 2012 when you decide to buy: XYZ123.