Online business is the trend that just keeps on growing. The 21st century has been the boom times of online retailers such as Amazon, Wish and Alibaba and many smaller operations have all taken a piece of the pie.

From online mom and pop stores to handcrafted fashion, online retail is at a fever pitch. But beyond the business and craft of any given store, there lies a very technical aspect to internet-based retail, including:

• Cloud-based systems

• SEO

• Marketing

Utilizing dedicated cloud-based servers means guaranteed security for your business, the correct implementation of SEO can drive organic traffic to your site and marketing media is now an absolute must for any online business.

Get Your Head in the Clouds

You may have heard of the cloud, but you may not know what it actually is. While it is commonly thought of as separate storage for digital media, it originally referred to the internet which is drawn as a cloud on network diagrams.

These days, cloud technologies, that is, internet-based systems, are used for all kinds of things such as accessing office suites, storing photographs or even cybersecurity. By using dedicated servers, remote access to powerful applications is possible over a cloud-based system.

For an online business, this can mean developing an e-commerce strategy with strong security without worrying about downtime or loss of data. Many managed IT services provide comprehensive IT infrastructure systems at relatively low costs since using systems like this can allow you to hold a network without physically installing one.

It’s All About Rankings

The art of search engine optimization is a profound and skilled technique that can be applied to websites in order to help search engines such as Google and Bing display the most relevant data in results pages. Bloggers are prolific users of SEO but any web page or post can have SEO applied to it.

By identifying keywords or phrases, understanding relevant data and meta descriptions the proper use of SEO can boost your online business ranking to the first page, or hopefully the top position of a search engine page result.

The higher your SERP, the more likely a potential customer is to click on the link to your page or post. Learning SEO is easy but takes time and practice to master. There are specialised companies who optimize your site for you if you don’t have the time to do it yourself.  

You Need a Web Presence Yesterday

In a world of fast information and digital content, marketing has evolved from simple telecommunication, newspaper ads and flyers. While these are all viable forms of marketing, modern times demand that a business establishes a web presence.

A website is a good starting point for a marketing web presence, but the vast majority of people now get their information from quick sources such as YouTube, Facebook and Pinterest. The benefit of these is that they all require different mediums of delivering information.

YouTube for example requires digital video so vlogging is an excellent medium of delivery for marketing your product. Just like you might mention your product in a blog post with a link, the same can be done with a quick ad inside your own vlog video.

While Facebook and Pinterest are both social media platforms, they operate very differently. Facebook requires straight-to-the-point summary posts with a link to your product page while Pinterest is excellent for infographics, a special kind of image that can convey a lot of information in one picture.

Creating infographics is quite a skill but there are some free online apps such as Canva that can help you get started.