Have you considered starting your own internet retail business? Whether you have an existing shop working on the high street or are just considering working from home, online retail stores can often prove to be hugely successful, with much fewer overheads. However, if this idea does sound appealing it must be approached with caution. Whilst the figures will tell you that a billion pounds is spent online every day and that the internet is the fastest way to make a fortune, it is best not to get too excited just yet - there are many pitfalls waiting for you if you're not careful.

Let's consider the situation from the point of view of someone who already has an existing retail store in town. This can prove to be an advantage in many respects because the business is already set up and running, the accounts are in order, the stock is catalogued, the brand has been created and the business name / feel have already been thought through. There's also the advantage that the website can be promoted from within the store as well.

However, it can also prove to be detrimental and limiting. From finding an appropriate domain name to creating a website which represents the store, there are any number of decisions that must be made. But above all the biggest challenge, and the one most often ignored, is how to market the online store. This is such an obvious aspect, yet so frequently overlooked. How many times have you seen a small, possibly family run high street store advertise a website, and when you've visited that website, it's little more than a business card for the real shop?

Assuming you're paying for hosting, and possibly even paying someone to design the site for you, that works out as an expensive business card. Not only that, but if you're directing customers to it, all you're really doing is directing them away from your shop to your business card. Shouldn't it work the other way around?

The truth is that marketing an online retail store is quite different to marketing a store on the high street. Trying to squeeze a high street store into a website effectively is rarely successful, and even some of the bigger high street names have got it wrong initially. The problem is that your high street store has been marketed to appeal to the local people who happen to pass by the shop window. Websites don't work that way. In fact, websites don't even try to appeal to real human beings to begin with.

But surely real human beings are the ones you are trying to attract? They're the ones who place orders and have the money after all? This is to ignore the way the internet works. Publishing your website will not instantly generate thousands of visitors a day. In fact, if you publish a website you will be very lucky to have even a single visitor in your first month unless you market it properly.

Marketing a retail store online means thinking about the search engines and working to their rules. The vast majority of people looking for a product or service online start by typing in a search in one of the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. From the many thousands or millions or results, the first page, usually consisting of ten results, will be the only one which will be looked at by 60% of people.

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