According to the Bureau of Census, U.S. total e-commerce sales for 2006 were estimated at $108.7 billion, an increase of 23.5 percent (±3.3%) from 2005. As a result, business owners feel compelled to look at how the Web can complement or expand their existing businesses. Not only are you missing vast opportunities by not being on the Web, your competitors may be already on the Web and now has the clear edge over you!

Why bring an existing business to the Web? The Web offers a number of benefits to businesses, particularly to small and home-based businesses:

• Broadens your market potential 
• Allows instantaneous communication with your core audience, prospects, customers, and employees (if any) with no waiting, and no down time. 
• Reduces the "time to market" for new products. 
• Offers global access, opening your doors to unlimited prospective customers Instantaneous customization providing the ability to offer products and services in real time; and to tailor them to the needs of completely new markets 
• Offers ability to tailor your goods to the needs of completely new markets. 
• Serves as a door to your business 24/7, allowing information about your business, your products and services accessible anytime, even days, nights and holidays. 
• Provides a new product distribution channel that shortens the path to your markets. 
• Enables Internet users to browse, review, select and purchase your products instantly. 
• Gives customers direct access to sales literature at no incremental cost 
• Allows marketing materials and product pricing to be instantaneously updated without incurring additional cost 
• Educates potential customers about your business

However, expanding an existing business to the Web is not a simple process. It is more than learning how to write HTML. To make your new web-based operations a success, you need to have a deep understanding of the intricacies of selling on the Internet. From product presentation to customer fulfillment, doing business on the Web can add extra layers of complexity to your existing operations.

Below are the five steps you need to take to make the transition to the Web as smooth (and as successful) as possible:

• Navigation: Is the site able to be explored without it crashing or being frustratingly slow?
• Content: Is it consistent with its bricks and mortar equivalent?
• Branding: How consistent are the colors and type on the site with its bricks-and-mortar establishment?
• Effectiveness: What additional reasons are there for visiting the site? Examples would be book reviews, recipes etc., not just the latest ad campaign.

What sells well on the Web? Studies have shown that the following are the characteristics of products that are suitable for the Web:

• High value relative to cost of fulfillment
• Products suitable for shipping by mail
• Digital products (e.g. downloadable)
• Products requiring lots of information (e.g. books, music, travel, banking)
• Products that do not need to be handled or tried on
• Products that are difficult to find locally

The shipping cost will be your biggest concern. Will the shipping cost prove to be a deterrent to purchasing your products? Web customers may not be inclined to purchase a product with high shipping costs if the product is easily and commonly available in their locality. An Internet buyer living near a PetSmart store or a grocery may not think about buying dog food on the Internet, but may not hesitate to plunk an additional $300 in shipping costs for an antique Louis V desk that the buyer will not easily find in his or her locality. Your product must have “value” to make customers agree to pay a high shipping cost.

• Are they willing to use the Web to do business with you? 
• How they will use your Web site: will they buy from the web site or simply use it to check on the availability of your products and new inventory? 
• Will their purchasing behavior change if you have a Web site: will they stop coming to your store and instead purchase items from the Web?
• Ease of communication: will they use the Web to contact you instead of coming to your store or calling you?

When you branch out to the Web, you need to realize that you will be attracting a new set of customers that may be different from your existing customers. Your existing customers may feel that they prefer doing business with you the traditional way, especially if they have been doing business with you for several years (some habits die hard). If they disagree to using the Web for your business, remember that your goal in expanding to the Web is to increase your customer base. Your Web site can be used to attract the Internet-savvy customers, while your traditional business presence can be used to service your existing customer base and those in your local area.

First, you will have to create your online presence. From choosing your web host to installing your shopping cart software to making sure that you have the capability to accept online payments, be ready to do a thousand tasks. Some small business owners, particularly those with limited resources to outsource the creation of their Web site, find the task daunting especially if they are not tech-literate.

But creating your Web site is the easy part! Making customers come and buy is the most challenging part of doing business on the Web. Marketing your Web site can be a time-consuming task that can drain your resources and your energy.

A Web site is totally unlike a retail store: set up a store in a high-traffic location (e.g. mall or shopping complex) and you can be sure that customers can “bump” into you. On the Web, however, you will only be one of the billions of pages trying to rise above the multitude. To be visible, you need to do a lot of work: search engine optimization, aggressive linking strategies, advertising, publicity and promotions, viral marketing, etc.

At the start, use your captive audience – your existing customers – as your initial Web audience. Make sure that they know that you have a Web site: put your URL in your business cards, packaging, display it prominently in your store, and include it in all your business correspondences. Then slowly learn how to market a business on the Web in order to attract new customers for your business.

Fulfillment and delivery are also different for a Web business. Customers can walk in a store, pick out the items they want, pay for it at the cashier, sales clerk or cashier wraps the item and puts it in a bag, and the customer walks off. The whole process – from the product selection to getting the items into the hands of the customer – can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour. On the Web, however, it can take several days to get a product in the customer’s hand. You will have to explore the optimal way to package your items and decide on the shipping alternatives while aiming to keep the shipping costs down.

In addition, you need to craft a return policy. Big chain stores like Gap allows the return of any item purchased from Gap.com to any of their retail stores. As a small business owner, you may not have such luxury. Your return policy should aim to make returning any item easy to your customer while controlling the dent the return will leave on your bottom line.

Be prepared, too, to respond to emails from customers, potential business partners or suppliers that may have seen your business on the Web. For many business owners, answering emails can take a few hours of their time everyday. Part of evaluating customer service on the Web is by determining the speed with which you respond to the email sent.

Expanding an existing business to the Web is like having a new business. You need to be ready for its financial, operational and logistical demands. Evaluate if you will do it yourself, or hire an assistant to help you launch and operate your Web business. More importantly, weigh whether the cost of doing business on the Web will be beneficial to your bottom line or not.