How is website different from your physical shop?

I have often read and initially also believed that having a website was like having a shop online. Get new and unique stuff or service to sell from your website, build a positive image of the service/product and the process of selling will begin. For a layman it could be true. But that's just one way of looking at it. As a webmaster you need to look beyond to find out what's more to it than the eyes can see. 

A website is not just your usual shop, departmental store or office where you go in physically and after finishing, walk/drive a small or long distance to reach the next showroom, office or store. Neither can a website boast of an ever smiling and helpful team of sales people who are always eager to show you around. A team who can hold you in their shop a little longer and you may find something of interest and decide to buy it.

Sorry, but no such luxuries are there when you have a shop online, i.e. when you are operating your business through a website. Forget a sales team as a webmaster you are not even aware when a visitor comes to your site and spend time. Your sales team comprises text, photographs, animations and videos. Everything happens quietly on a website. Your website and a physical shop are two very different things.

The worst part is that there is a chance that there might be ten more websites open in various browsers or windows. Even a slight diversion, or distraction can make the visitor shut the website and check out the next one. Or like it often happens, have a look at several more all at the same time. Dividing attention between five websites and looking at none.  Your shop and your websites are two entirely different scenes. When a visitor is on your website whatever has to happen, must happen while he/she is there on the website. A visitor will stop paying attention to it the moment she finds something else or unsuitable. Without giving a second thought she will move to another site. No sales people here trying to woo her back. No need to walk or drive extra distance to visit the next shop. Everything simply happens with a click of mouse.

However unique and useful your products or services might be, but if they fail to keep the visitors glued to the website long enough, the whole effort of putting up a website becomes futile. This is where text starts to mean serious business. Do the written words compel the visitor to say a minute longer & read to find out more? Does the spider consider the website content good enough to prefer it over thousands of similar sites vying for attention and rank it higher in the search engine? Or simply rejects or blacklists the site on the basis of irrelevant or inappropriate content?   

To hold attention of your costumer as well as search engine robot, the key is good content. Optimized content. And relevant content. A good website is one that achieves success by keeping its readers and spiders, both happy. Don't make the mistake of thinking that website and shop are one and the same thing. One is a physical while the other virtual. Its more than that. 

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