Your website is up and running and should now be providing your business with a healthy income. Then the time has come for you to act.The barriers to growth, such as customers’ suspicions about online security have already banished. You have to be ready to take the massive advantage of this marketplace. Below are 10 simple steps that will serve as your guide in having a highly profitable web business.1. Customer service.Ultimately if you are selling services for tangible goods, the level of customer service will always be under close scrutiny. In the high street customers will return to shops where they have experienced high levels of customer service; this is also true of a website.Utilizing the internet enables businesses to provide customers with a high level of service for less cost.2. Develop a community.One of the most intuitive means of attracting customers to your site is to act a host for a community. Once established, this captive audience can then be marketed to. But be careful that your sales message is one that the members of the community are open to receive.3. Start a newsletter.Staying in touch with your customers is an important element of any businesses. Web businesses have the advantage that they can contact their customers frequently and at very little cost. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to offer your customers a free subscription to your newsletter. This marketing message will have a direct effect on your business’s profitability. Online businesses have the advantage of being able to react to market trends, and inform their customers of new services and products weeks and sometimes months before offline businesses can. 4. Improve your check-out and trolley.A fast and efficient checkout and trolley system is essential if your business is to avoid terminal abandoned trolley syndrome.Today, online shoppers expect to have to register their contact and payment details, but once this is done, shopping on your site should be as straightforward as possible. No one, whether online or offline, likes to wait in line.Put yourself in their shoes and do some tests on your own site. How easily can you find a product? Is it simple to put this in the trolley? Can you delete an unwanted item? And above all can you move to the check-out with just one or two mouse clicks? 5. Use loyalty cards.The supermarkets have proven that customers like loyalty schemes. Online gaining loyalty points and then redeeming them has become big business in its own right. One of the key things that a loyalty scheme does give you is a customer database, which gives you customer insight. This in turn allows you to segment that database and recognize patterns that then allows you to market to those specific groups instead of to just a perceived average customer.6. Use other channels of communication.Your customers are sophisticated and comfortable with handling and receiving information from a wide variety of channels. It makes sense, therefore, to use as many of these as you can to reach existing customers and gain some new ones.7. Search engine rank.Making your business stand out from the very large crowd can be achieved and then translated into higher profits. A good search engine ranking is therefore important because if no one can find your business, no one can buy from you.Keeping your existing customers coming back to your site is important, but so is finding new customers to keep your business profitable in the future.8. Premium rate content.If your business can offer high quality, unique and authoritative content and can be offered to them at a premium rate, it will become a very lucrative revenue stream for your business.9. Integrate your offline and online businesses.If your website is just the online component of a larger business, do not treat these as completely separate entities. Mail order catalogue companies that are well versed in supplying goods via a printed catalogue have taken this knowledge and applied this to their websites. Make the integration of your offline and online business seamless and your customers will become loyal to your brand, which will translate into a more profitable bottom line for your company.10. Get your site right.If you do not have a website that actually allows your customers to buy your goods, you would not stay in business.The look of your site is important, especially if you are reinforcing an existing brand. However, resist the temptation to use every piece of new web technology. If your basic site structure is sound, concentrate on the content as this is after all what your customers will pay for.