1. Sell only products you fully understand

World Wide Web was created mainly to share knowledge. Be an expert in your area and share your knowledge, that’s the only way how to genuinely improve your ranking in search engines and people will also trust you and buy from you.

2. Be honest

Create impression, that your customers can talk to you: always display who they are dealing with and give them a telephone number, possibly picture of your office, tell who you are, name people behind the company on About Us page, don’t try to look bigger than your are, if they want to buy from a big company, they’ll go to Amazon or Tesco.

3. Don’t rely only on sales over your own website

Promote trade/wholesale and use your website as a catalogue, sell everywhere - sell on eBay, Amazon, but have your own shop with cheaper prices - encourage to buy directly.

4. Rent premises

There are plenty of empty premisses in Belfast and you can negotiate a good deal. The ideal situation is to have a high street shop and also sell online. You can rent a shop from £100 per week in Belfast city centre.

5. Try to sell abroad only light postage items and heavier items locally

i.e. washing machines in Belfast.

6. Use good quality photographs (large size) and use an informative description

You’ll mainly need a good light for shooting good photographs. Create description for each photograph like you would explain what’s on the photograph to a blind person, this will not only help screen readers, but also Google to display your product image in Google Images.

7. Main sites pages should be your main product categories

Your website is about your products, reflect it in your information architecture.

8. Treat returning customers

Provide discounts, loyalty scheme, high quality newsletter about your latest products or maintenance tips, not just an advertisement.

9. Secure some support package with your web designer/developer

For example monthly retainer. Always ask what will be an approximate yearly maintenance fee, you need more than just a web hosting for good quality customer experience.

10. Prepare your catalogue first

Before you go to a developer prepare your catalogue as a spreadsheet such as: product title, SKU code, category, net price.