100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS • 203- Plan and prepare for the benefi ts of an internet sales
strategy, so that you avoid investing too much, too little, too late,
or too soon. - Help customers (as well as distributors and salespeople) to
navigate easily through your site. Enable customers to move in a
seamless fl ow, with simple decisions and preferences included in
the process, so they can make decisions and express preferences
during the process. - Ensure that the website, or the web provider and developer, is
fl exible enough to take account of ways in which your website
requirements may evolve. - Ensu re t h at you r website is comp e t it ive: to ac h ie ve t h is it ne e d s to
provide an experience for the customer that is simple, interactive,
engaging, and compelling. - Give customers access to your information so that they can
quickly and easily decide how best to buy. The advantage of
this is that it can be a two-way process. It provides you with
opportunities to capture and use specifi c information about
each customer (data mining), as well as enabling you to enhance
the effectiveness of your website, following the pattern and fl ow
of customers’ mouse clicks while online (clickstream data).