Capturing customers

Most customers for your online business will not be "cruisers" who simply stumble over your site, although there is a new online "marketing community" that is trying to find a way to make money off, well, stumbling around the World Wide Web. More often, though, customers will head to you directly, straight to your URL. This should clarify for you the type and scope of marketing that you need to do.

Some business advisors dispute the notion that there are separate models for online versus offline business. "Business either is or is not," writes Andre Gofman at Vmarketing.biz, although he notes that "implementation" of certain activities will certainly vary according to the business location. In addition to marketing efforts, some online business people may neglect financial discipline, specifically in the area of vendor and supplier costs.

 Negotiation, virtual and otherwise

Another important area for online business owners to focus on is vendor relations. The best business relationships are personal ones, and the old saying – "People don’t do business with businesses, they do business with other people" ­– is as true as ever in cybercommerce. The offline issues in this case involve personal contact with vendors and suppliers, rather than reliance on e-mails, chat windows or the telephone.

Just because your business is online, and "virtual" in some ways, does not make you or your suppliers any less real and human. And real humans want to shake hands, look each other in the eye and get "a feel" for each other. As a great amount of our communication with others is non-verbal, it really is important to get out and meet your vendors, suppliers, clients and customers face to face. There is nothing that can replace that "up close and personal" touch.

Bottom line is the bottom line

Finally – although there are many more issues you will run into in your continuing research into the matter – there is the matter of financial reporting. It doesn’t matter to the IRS where you do your business, they want their cut, as do the sales tax authorities, license bureaus, etc. You may be used to a computerized, paperless business model, but tax agencies and bureaucracies live on paper, forms, ink and envelopes. Regardless of how efficient your computerized records are, one of the important offline issues for online businesses is recordkeeping.

Sure, your Excel and Quicken and Peachtree Accounting files are fine sitting on the hard drive of your office PC, but the IRS wants hard copy of some specific things. You will need to develop, process and provide various other figures, reports and lists for local, regional, state and federal organizations of different kinds, depending on your line of business and a host of other factors. Business owners who spend too much time cruising in "the parallel universe" can forget that there are some very important things to take care of right here in our four-dimensional lives (that’s the three dimensions of space, plus time, which there is never enough of). You would be well advised to take care of the offline issues of your online business before they become real problems. Any number of mistakes might get you grounded, and keep you from your next cyberspace journey – and that would really be an issue, online and off!

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