Will a website help my grandad's offline business?

My grandad has his own shop selling fires and fireplaces. He is not doing very well at the moment and is just about breaking even. He has NO website whatsoever..

Will me making him a website boost his sales? Should i build a website just to advertise the shop or would it help selling some on the internet too?

Thanks for any help. Ben.

Firstly lolage, welcome to Focused!

I would also like to take this opportunity to offer your granddad a free domain (.com) and life time web hosting account on behalf of Focused and Alloy Hosting. Please open a sales ticket at alloy referring to this ticket and we'll get you setup!

I would like to mention that an online presence on the internet can help improve the overall business image to current clients and potential, both local and alien (from other cities). An example would be if some one was looking for a certain brand of fireplace and they found your shop from natural organic searches in the search engines. They could find the details online and either start a live chat (Using Live person or a range of other software) call or email (which could be piped to a ticket system for better management).

Also, services like Google, Yahoo and other major players in the searching industry offer services related to their maps. E.G. If you type in Google Fireplaces in London (Click here to see) they will offer a list of local businesses in that area offering what you are looking for. This could help your granddad get a lot of local potential customers near by.

There is always the option of taking it further one more step. You could setup an online commerce site (there are pre-installed scripts with Alloy Hosting's Fantastico) which would allow him to start selling online. This would increase his market that he could appeal to, and will allow him to target potential alien customers out of his city / state. Services such as Adsense could be used on a pay per click basis. If you make those campaigns well, they can make you 1000% ROI (Return of investment) figures from $1-2 investment. Another option would be to find a company that you can purchase leads from. You would pay them say $40 for example, when they send some one to your website who is interest and fills out a sales email / ticket. If you do decide to venture online, you could setup an affiliate system for your existing customers which will allow them to send links to friends and family. If they generate a sale, you could give them 5% for example.

If you do decide to start an online commerce site, it would be a good idea to make business accounts with couriers such as Fedex, UPS etc. I would stay within the country you live in to start with, not offering international sales until you have the money and sales to ship items that far.

Another option is eBay. eBay have a built in feature for stores and the market is already there. Every hit you get will be targeted as they have searched for that item. It is fairly cheap to list, but on top of that you have eBay's final selling fee and if you decide to go with paypal, you have paypal's percentage to pay as well.

I hope the information has helped .

__________________
Make a free blog with focused!
Arcade167 - The free arcade!
Leicester Personal Trainers

I also suggest starting with a free domain and see how many visitors he gets. If there is a large need for the site, then you can later purchase a domain name and hosting.

It will help a lot. If you can identified in your local SE, then you can boost up the website presence. Many offline workers have gotten into online for this purpose. Sohan has drawn very important tips for you. You should learn from the experts, read their success stories and articles/stuffs etc.

good luck

E-commerce is on rise, just go with this idea.
I ensure, it wont let you down.

No, if you want to start your own business, you should start using paid .com domain.
And promote it everywhere.
Free domain won't have better rank than paid domain.
And by selling online, you should have online payment, not just credit card, because many people hate to reveal their credit card.

Additionally, You have to prepare yourself when you online because once traffic starts to flow, there would be issue about customer's services, refund policies, delivery timing, taxes etc etc... just think about it also.

It does add to the business' portfolio once it has an online presence-- adding to its image and enhancing the scope of the business in more ways than one. So, go for it, but make sure you do your research beforehand.

A website almost ALWAYS helps in one way or another for a company, It can be used in advertising, and pure reference about the company.