Having slogged it out with your small business and still not getting enough customers could leave any ecommerce and small business owner on a look out for some new way to get customers.

If you have not tried your hand at e-commerce to get the balls rolling, then its time you give it a thought. Ecommerce is enabling business worldwide to spread their wings and scale new heights. Ecommerce and small business can widen the scope of your business as you will be dealing with customers located across a wide geographical are, so you are not dependent solely on the local clientele. Even if you serve a limited number of buyers on a repeated basis it can still help you as your buyers need not come over to you to place the order every time. But before going out you must analyze whether or not your business is suitable to be put online, that is whether there are customers online who would like to but product or services you are selling. Another thing to observe is whether you would be able to serve your current customers by going online. Also as you go online there will be requirement of more staff to handle website related orders, you may also be required to upgrade your customer service, so as to provide online help and support.

As the decision to go online does involve some money you must evaluate if it is going to be fruitful for you or not. After weighing the pros and cons of using ecommerce and small business to expand your small business if you decide in its favor here is how you must proceed:

1. Make a detailed concept and a plan to support this concept. You need to see who your customers are going to be, are you going to limit yourself to your country or go global. Whether anyone can do business on your site or do they need to pre-qualify to start doing business with you. How sophisticated a website do you want will decide which way your budget goes. What facilities do you want your customer should get online also needs to be decided now.

2. Now look for how you can make your small business stand out of the crowd that is how you will differentiate your business from your competitors. And keep this point in mind throughout the process of getting your website designed.

3. Dont delay the step of securing a domain name for your website, the sooner you do it is better, as you will stand some chances of getting the desired name. Let the name be as close as possible to the business name as possible. Also keep it short and simple so it is not tough for your customers to remember.

4. Get on to the designing part; decide on the size of your site, the content, the view, the operations and the site structure. Make sure you have all the basic features which may be required; you can check some of your competitors site to see what all features they support. Use graphics and content in a justified manner so as to suit your customers requirements. Get the email system incorporated.

5. Next organize your funds to see how much you will be spending on hosting, designing and maintenance of the website. Search for good hosting and designing solutions which fit into your budget.

6. Before you put your site online do a few trial checks by placing mock orders to see there are no errors or loopholes. Also you will need to get ecommerce software over a secure SSL server to allow users to make online payment with credit cards on the site itself. To receive payments online you would also be required to have a merchants account, so if you do not have one do open it before you go online.

7. While designing you must keep in mind to include features with which you can collect user information also allowing the user to edit their information. This user data thus collected will later be of help to promote business. Also as SEO is a catching trend in getting more customers to a website, get your website to be more search engine optimized right from the beginning.

8. Put your website online and start with your internet marketing strategies to promote your website. You can get a lot of free online help on hew you can market your website through different techniques. Do make efforts to retain customers as well by keeping them updated with your site newsletter, or any other programs to get them to come back.

So by now you know that the process of going online is not all that simple, it involves a lot of effort and time, as also technical knowledge. As for the technical part of it is always good to go in for outside technical firms. As small businesses always have budgetary limitations, do a lot of market research to find out the best and the most affordable ecommerce and small business packages available. You can simply not be satisfied with making a great e-commerce website for your ecommerce and small business, there is much more to it after the launch. You need to aggressively market your site, and continuously update it with the latest information, so as to maintain the interests of your customers.