If you are considering creating a new e-Commerce website or re-launching an existing one, you should start planning at least 6 months before you want your new website to go live.

Why?

1. Planning is crucial for success on-line. The more planning you do now – the less work you will have to do later and also you will have a more accurate idea of time and cost required.
2. Have you considered how orders and stock control will integrate with your back office systems? It can sometimes take a long time to ensure you have the right systems in place to cope with an increase in sales.
3. Marketing Campaign. A website will not make you any money if you do not invest time and money in marketing.There are various ways that you can market your business using your website as central focus;
   • Keyword Research & Search Engine Optimisation
   • Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin
   • Pay-Per-Click (Google Adwords) Campaign
   • Off-line Marketing – Business Cards, Leaflets, Advertising, Networking etc
4. It takes time to get good natural Google positioning. It can take some time for the search engines to list you in their natural listings, there are various things that can be done to improve how quickly your site is indexed and improve your positions in the search engines such as Google.However, you do not want to be making all these changes in the peak of your sales season – this should be done in advance to ensure you make the most of the busy season.Having the site go live way before your peak season will ensure you are fully prepared for an increase in sales and also it will give you the best fighting chance of being found by large numbers of perspective clients.
5. Well designed and engineered websites take time to build. A well planned, designed and optimised website takes time to build, ensure that you have plenty of time to get together images, copy, spreadsheets and any other material which you need to be on the website.Expect the whole process to take between 2-4 months depending upon the complexity of the site and also the number of items in stock.

Realnet offer a full planning service to help with your online success –

To take advantage of a free 2 hour consultation please call on 01223 550800 or email: info@realnet.co.uk