- E-Commerce
- How to Prevent Abandoned Shopping Carts
- A Look at Your Online Customer Service
- Checkout Options for Your Online Store
- General
- 10 Tips to Look for when Buying from a General Merchandise Wholesale Supplier
- Cash Flow Protection Strategies For Your Wholesale Business
- Keep Bad Check Losses Away from Your Bottom Line
- Marketing
- Marketing Plan For Your Wholesale Business
- Tips for Doing More With Less in a Down Economy
- Blogging and the Wholesale Business Owner
- Search Engine Optimization - SEO
- Basic SEO Tips for Online Wholesalers
- The Basic Rules of Search Engine Optimization
About Us and the Small Wholesale Business
By Sarah Pearson Published: 05/03/2009
You know by now that in order to keep your wholesale business competitive, you need a strong web presence. A strong web presence means you should have a good, easy to use and easy to read website, and preferably a blog and profiles on some of the more popular social media and social networking outlets on the Internet like Facebook and MySpace. The Internet is the ideal way for your small business to really soar, since it is the “great equalizer” in terms of your ability to compete for audience attention and sales against the big corporations.
You have the ability to hold your own and even excel against those big guns by using your website properly. Consumers (even if you are involved in business to business sales only) grow weary of giant companies that do not interact well with the individual. Since you are a small business, you can give your customers the personal attention they aren't likely to receive from a giant corporation. But how do you let them know you do that and therefore deserve their trust and sales?
One way is to present a great “About Us” page on your website. The “About Us” page is the place to let your company's personality and values shine while you tell potential customers what they want to know to gain your trust. To accomplish that properly, you need to include several components to your “About Us” page.
The first is to tell people who you are. Let them know that there is a real human being on the other side of their computer screen. Include a photo, talk about yourself and how much you enjoy what you do – anything that lets people see you are real. This goes a long way towards establishing that you are indeed a “real” business, since people are often wary of getting scammed. Include your physical address, even if you plan to only sell online, because it helps reassure people. Make sure all of your contact information is prominently displayed.
Also make sure to state how long you have been in business. People generally regard longevity as being the same as stable, and are more apt to trust you. If you are VERY new and your years in business will not sound very impressive, then bolster that by talking about previous businesses you've been involved with and similar past experiences.
Now that you've got the concrete data down, you are ready to move on to including information about your business and business model. Along with the concrete data and facts, you must also include other information to help establish credibility with your website visitors.
Your “About Us” page should show your customers that you deliver on whatever it is that you promise. You may promise to sell them the best widgets at the best wholesale prices around, but what proof can you offer them that you do actually do that? One way of displaying that proof is through the use of testimonials. Testimonials are short blurbs written by current or previous clients, companies or associates that demonstrate what a great business you are running by talking up all of your most positive points. You should always get permission from people to use their comments, and contact information for the person offering the testimonial should be included to add further credibility, such as a name and website url.
