On supply side, you could reduce costly business disruptions by giving key vendors Web-based access to your inventory or other real-time information.

Customer Stages: Awareness, Interest, Trial, and Repeat

When setting your marketing objectives, it may help to think in terms of awareness, interest, trial, and repeat. These concepts are often used in marketing to explain stages a new customer (or site visitor, in this case) goes through on path to becoming loyal to your business.

The potential visitor must first become aware of your site. Once aware, you must spark an interest with potential visitor, motivating her/him to trial, or respond to a call to action on your site. After (s)he visits your site, that person becomes loyal by revisiting in future.

You may be able to most effectively build your business by focusing on one or two of awareness, interest, trial, or repeat visits, then changing your focus over time. If your site is brand new or known to very few people, for example, your plan is likely to concentrate on ways to increase awareness and interest.

A focus on interest and trial may be in order, however, if you get an above-average number of "window shoppers" - visitors who never purchase (or do not respond to some other call to action).

Additionally, if you sell multiple products or a product that needs replenishing from your site, focus on repeat purchases may be more effective.

Setting Your Marketing Objectives

While there are different approaches to setting objectives, my preference is to develop a single objective for a site that may encompass more than one approach to business building.

In marketing plan, I include separate strategies and tactics to address each approach suggested in site objective. I also like to note in objective both customer stage(s) and business model(s) I will focus on in marketing plan. This makes it easier to decide upon most effective marketing strategies.

Another approach is to address customer stages separately, in a summary or write-up. With either approach, you should view your marketing plan as evolving over time. As business environment and situations change, your focus should change as well.

Once you get past launch stage of a new site, for example, you are in a better position to evaluate site traffic, so your plan may shift from focusing on awareness and interest to building trial and loyalty. Similarly, a better understanding of site visitors may lead you to adjust your business model to more closely address your company's and Web customers' needs.

You may have thousands of hits on your website everyday, but do you have a compelling sales reason or strong enough a reason to get customers to buy? Channel your energy into creating what I call ULTIMATE sales page, spend your time crafting each component, each word to make sure that they influence your buyers instead of simple getting lots of traffic and not knowing what to do with it.

Is your sales pitch well written? Most people spend so much energy advertising they're wasting it! You need to spend some time writing a good sales pitch. Every copy I do is usually revised 3 or 4 times based on conversion ratios tracked, and I study psychological factors that cause visitors to actually purchase my products. Are you doing same thing?

Is your product worth asking price? Most people ask for exorbitant prices. Never sell something for $2 when you can for $1. Basic laws of Economics tells us that people will never pay more than satisfaction they can derive for a good. So make sure you price product right. Price it too high and it might just become and inhibiting factor to hurt sales.

Is your website attractive, easy to read? People will only stay on a site if it interests them, and if something captures their attention. Is your site designed with user in mind, fast loading and clean?

Do you have a complete idea of your ideal customer? Try and build up a picture of your ideal customer - Think of what he / she likes to do in his spare time, what problems will they have, what are their hobbies, what are their lives like...and then market with them in mind. Remember that targeted marketing is better for specialized products.

Simple as they might sound, but most people fail to notice importance of marketing at its source, your sales pitch and website. So with my 6 pointers in mind, go and tighten your sales website, do something about it... I'm confident that you will notice a difference in sales.

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