When redundancy looms, then opportunity knocks… online
Sunday, 08 May 2011 00:00
With a constant stream of redundancy announcements in the private and public sectors, there are many experienced people looking for their next move. As a result, it is likely that many will be looking at ecommerce.
There are good reasons for this. The first is that there are currently few parts of the economy growing significantly, yet online retail is one of them. Further, ecommerce is still constantly changing and this creates better opportunities for start-ups. Finally, the costs of creating an ecommerce business are much lower than most alternatives.
The problem is that making a decision to pursue such an opportunity is one thing, actually making it happen is another. For instance, what do you plan to sell? Why on earth would anyone want to buy from you as opposed to the myriad of others? Will you use an off-the-shelf package or pay a developer to produce a bespoke solution? How will you let the world know you are in business?
What to sell?
The first question that you need to ask is what benefit you are planning to bring to your customers. Most of us may feel we could make money, but that’s not possible without customers. Excepting fraudsters, no-one attracts customers unless there is a good reason for them to buy.
To address the issue, you need to determine the customer requirement that you will meet, and how this differs from your competition. Maybe you can provide a more complete product range in a specialist field, or provide some aspect of service that distinguishes you from others? One of my customers delivers beds the same day that they are ordered – it’s their unique selling point.
When you’ve established this business proposition, you need to both deliver it and communicate it. In particular this needs to be strongly promoted on your website. Ask yourself whether you as a customer would clearly understand the reasons for buying. Get someone else to give you feedback.
Remember the principle that it’s much easier to become a specialist and compete with larger players when you focus on a narrow area.
Which technology?
The best starting place with ecommerce technology is to try to pay as little as possible, leaving the maximum for marketing. You can also spend too much money on design and I’ve been intrigued by the number of ecommerce sites that succeed despite being very average looking. Focusing on making the site fast, always working and easy to use is probably more important.
Without a compelling reason, you should never use a bespoke development for your ecommerce store. There are now lots of powerful ecommerce packages available. Paying bespoke prices when off-the-peg will do the job better and more flexibly is not only a short term waste of money, it’s likely to be a long term nightmare.
Your ecommerce system can sit entirely on a web server, or can be a more conventional PC-based system with a web element. There are advantages and disadvantages in each approach. Independence, control and resilience to web-based attacks are the main benefits of the desktop approach. Easy access from any web browser, coupled with quicker setup of the system are the biggest advantages of a fully web-based system.
How to get the word out
When you have your site up and running, it’s time to get the word out and the most reliable method is through search engine marketing (SEM). When people are actually searching for the types of things you sell, SEM brings your site to their attention. The methods of achieving this can be found by searching in Google for terms like “Pay per click marketing” and “Search engine optimisation”.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have created a new frontier to explore. People haven’t settled on the best ways of marketing through these networks which means that there is an opportunity to get ahead of the crowd. Be prepared to invest a lot of time and commitment.
Good old fashioned email mailshots can work to encourage customers to buy again, but do make sure you obey the law and only send to those who have bought from you or subscribed to get your newsletters.
First things first
The top problem is finding something to sell that people want, and ensuring you can achieve this profitably. After that there’s marketing, measuring results and then adjusting your methods. If you can’t get any visitors to your ecommerce store, there’s no future for the business. So these are the areas to focus on.
If you’re interested in reading more, download my book for free: ‘Selling Successfully Online – over 300 top tips for running an ecommerce website’
Written by Chris Barling, CEO of ecommerce and EPOS supplier, Actinic. Originally published on New Media Knowledge.