Ecommerce statistcs and starting a new business gurus constantly state that customer retention is an important factor in the survival and growth of a company. It does not matter if you are a manufacturer specializing in the production of specialized instruments with two or three clients or an online web store with thousands of customers — every customer is important. Remember that one bad remark can go a long way towards destroying a company’s credibility and eliminating a customer base regardless of its size.

In this article we will explore the use of reward points (a feature available with InstanteStore’s shopping cart service) in retaining customers as well as improving sales conversions for new visitors.

Out of 10 people who dream of starting their own online store, only ONE actually makes that dream a reality. Many sign up for free trials but most lack the confidence to sign up for a paid shopping cart service. But those who do actually sign up surprisingly progress really quickly in terms of store set up and marketing.

It’s obvious that these folks did quite a bit of homework before signing up. This does work, and we encourage everyone with the intention of starting up a home business work at home setup to do the same.

To help you get started, we will be looking at budgets – a brief look at how much should be put aside to run a web store for a year. Just to digress a little, beware of sites promoting absolutely free home based business opportunities. Many of these claims are just bait for clever scams. As far as we know it takes a bit of effort and some money to get a home business work at home setup going. Money-wise, all you need is a small business start up financing plan to get a clearer picture of what you might be getting into.