If you are considering an online presence for your brick and mortar store, you are not alone. In a recent study 72% of Americans who use the internet expressed interest in taking their businesses online.  More and more brick and mortar businesses are realizing that their survival in the rapidly emerging internet economy depends heavily on their ability to leverage brand recognition, customer base and core expertise on a global scale.

The basics of ecommerce marketing are essentially the same as brick and mortar business marketing except that you have many more options. With an ecommerce site your customer will have access to information about your business 24 hours a day 365 days a year. You can use audio, video and so much more. Most importantly, your customer will be able to buy from you 24 hours a day – even while you sleep!  It is no wonder that ecommerce is the fastest growing segment of our economy. It allows even the smallest businesses to reach a global audience with its product or message at a minimal cost. The primary objective of ecommerce marketing is to create a strategy to deliver the right messages to the right people that will entice them to visit your site. Once there, you want them to become a customer.

With the change of business to business metrics and the similarity of products, factors like getting something at the right time and at the right cost have become increasingly important for online businesses. In order to understand the nuances, you will need the help of an expert. The only way to make the transition from brick to click successfully is to find the perfect web hosting provider.  A hosting company will charge you a monthly or yearly fee in exchange for letting the world see your site online. While you could create your online business without a hosting company, it is not advised. They simply have knowledge and resources that you don’t have. You weren’t born knowing how to launch an online business.

Must-have features to consider in your quest for the perfect web hosting provider:

The ability to measure traffic: It is important to understand how many people visit your site, when they visit your site and how long they remain on your site. You need to know which keywords attracted visitors, which search engines referred visitors, which websites may have referred visitors, and how many “unique” visitors go to your site in any given month. It is also important to understand what country your visitors are from, and how many times each page on your site was viewed.

The ability to optimize search engines: Each webpage of your online business should be perfectly optimized for search engines. As a business owner, it is highly unlikely that you are an expert at search engine optimization. Let your web host guide you through this process. There are three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are several smaller search engines as well. Every single page of your website should be submitted to every search engine. The problem you have here as a business owner is time. Who has time to read through search engine submission guidelines? Make sure your hosting company has the ability to automatically submit each page upon its creation and when any changes are made.

The ability to accommodate RSS and blogging: The 12 million people who are writing blogs have become influential fixtures in cyberspace. While some marketers have scoffed at the idea of blogging for business, those 12 million people have more than just opinions to offer. They also have money to spend. The trick is to learn how to harness that power and to direct the right segment of those bloggers to your ecommerce business. The present and future of online business will be significantly affected by RSS and blogging.

The ability to provide timely and helpful advice: This is by far the most important element in your search for a web host. Fast, reliable help should be at your fingertips 24 hours a day.

Of course the ultimate success of your business depends on you, your tools and your budget. Your web hosting provider can help you optimize these tools and set you up for online success.  So if you have been considering going from brick to click, there is no time like the present.