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.

People spend as much as 6 hours a day on the Internet, according to ecommerce statistics. Rain or shine, as long as the connection isn’t on the blink, chances are quite a few of the 1.6 billion people with internet access will be online.

If you have subscribed to an ecommerce shopping cart software service and are running a web store, you’ve probably spent quite a bit of time marketing your store. A typical ecommerce shopping cart provider usually includes lots of features to help you market your products. One such feature is eNewsletter Broadcasting.

Find out more about creating effective eNewsletters…

It is easy to build a rapport with customers or visitors at a conventional store. A store manager can cordially go around chatting with customers while subtly finding out information like how a customer thinks the store can be improved, gather feedback on store campaigns  and other suggestions. Engaging customers in this manner gives a store a warmer, more welcoming feel and does wonders for customer retention as well as word-of-mouth marketing.

As you can imagine, the playing field is totally different at a web store. How do you engage your online visitors to increase your customer retention online?

The answer may be simpler than you thought…