E-commerce is gaining speed! Research firm eMarketer forecasts that
2008 will see internet sales reaching US $58. 2 billion, excluding
vacation. According to Forrester Research, another reputable research
company, organization-to-consumer e-commerce can hit the US $230 thousand
by 2008. When offline retail sales are generally staggering and
will continue and do so soon, online retail sales can
show a hefty 20 percent consecutive year-around-year growth! And
through the same year, two 3rd of all US households will undoubtedly buy some
kind of services and products online. In 2003 by yourself, 97 million
consumers could purchase the Web.
If you are selling products and services off-line, you should
seriously consider hopping onto the e-commerce bandwagon, or danger
losing a significant portion of your company to your more
proactive rivals!
Is it difficult to start marketing products or services online?
Maybe, at first, in the Internet era, this was a frightening
task, but today, with the correct planning, it is pretty straightforward.
– Choose the products or services that are practical to sell over the Internet
– Develop an online presence
– Create an internet product catalog
– Select payment methods
– Market
Select products or services to sell
Though some products are easier to sell online, contrary to
general consideration, most products and services are genuine
and marketable on the Internet. Currently, textbooks, electronics,
information, and vacation-related products are selling much better online.
But that does not signify there is no room for various other products
or services. You can sell just about
everything over the Internet!
It depends more on the market industry segment
you choose and how fine you are in marketing. As you know,
classic items you can get in the nearby grocery stores
were not done adequately on the Internet. However, that is
planning to change very soon! According to Forrester Research,
many of today’s gradual categories are poised for significant
growth as resistance. Fight? Combat? Defy? Rebel? Go against sb/sth? Disobey early online product sales leaders like travel
and electronics will experience marketplace maturity and
slower development. Prediction is:
The food and drink category will grow by 49 percent,
achieving $18. 2 billion through 2007. The home products group
will grow by forty-two percent over five years, from $7. Three billion dollars
in 2002 to $42. 0 billion 3 years ago. Flowers, cards, and presents
will grow by forty-one percent, from $951 mil in 2002 to $5. 3
billion in 3 years ago.
That’s not all! By the yr 2008, today’s best-selling item:
books will have a mere three percent share of the complete business to
a consumer on the internet sales.
So, if your services and products can generate offline product sales
there should not be any problem with selling these items online.
Build on the internet presence
You can choose to build a good e-commerce website either
by hiring required specialists, i. e. web developers or by
appointing a website development company to do the task for
you. In both cases, you have to be prepared to invest
a significant amount of money. An E-commerce website is a comprehensive terminology! Depending upon your demand, it can hit you up for
from modest US hundreds of dollars to anywhere over 3 000 000 US dollars!
That’s not most! You have to be prepared to spend ample
time on it. Publishing the technical scope, deciding on
the appropriate design for your site, and creating good content will take a lot of your time and effort. And
there is no guarantee that you may do everything right!
Therefore, if you are new to e-commerce and want
to spend a fortune in the first endeavor, you should believe
in making your online existence by choosing one of the
available, on the web, Web Store services. There are
massive advantages of using these services:
– You can build one for any fraction of the cost required to create an e-commerce website.
– You can choose the design of your online store from numerous accessible templates.
– Simple publisher allows you to create your webshop all by yourself.
– You can be ready to go within days.
– You can find dating a merchant account from a single offer by the service provider.
There are several Web Store service providers on the Internet, similar to Yahoo! Store, Bigstep, Rusbiz, etc. Compare and decide on
the one which best suits your requirement. As an added
edge, some of the Web Store service providers can
integrate your store, which has a shopping mall or e-marketplace
entirely. This will instantly expose your online store
to a large qualified prospective customer audience.
Make an online catalog.
You don’t require an online list if you sell only one or a couple of companies that do not add
products or services frequently. However, if you have a product brand of over 10
products and an individual constantly add or alter products, you
should consider an online store with the facility of your online
product catalog. This specific feature of web store service allows
rapidly developing and maintaining your digital catalog
without spending large amounts on creating one yourself.
Look for a web store service provider who also offers wizard or
web form base product adding technique to the electronic catalog
and uses some standard solution classification codes.
In the future stage, if you choose to sell solutions through
e-marketplaces, this will allow someone to integrate your
products to help e-marketplaces and easily make sales deliveries.
Choose a payment procedure.
If you are planning to sell ebooks, accounts, whitepapers, etc.
I would suggest someone consider using ClickBank’s marketplace.
Like this, you don’t have to worry about getting a consumer credit
card merchant account.
Around 80 percent of all sales financial transactions that occur online use credit card payments. To accept credit-based card payments over
the Internet, you must first have a merchant account.
Payment processing allows a vendor to be able to process credit card
transactions. Should you build a web store online with one web retail outlet service provider, you will see that they
offer you gateways to one or many merchant account providers
and have collaborated with them. In general, you get a far better
deal with them. However, since charges vary significantly from
one merchant account provider to a new one, make sure you shop
around before committing yourself to one.
Advertise you site
To sell your current products through your site, you will need to draw
traffic. There are a plethora of possibilities for promoting your site
over the internet. This includes:
– Search engine articles
– Adding your site to be able to access online directories
– Opt-in email campaign
– Web page link exchange
– Banner, in addition to link ads
If you try to promote your site, it is best to combine as
many traditional and online promotional procedures as possible. With cardiovascular disease traffic, you can increase the likelihood
of selling more products from your Web Store.
Read also: 6th Reasons Why You Must Be In Any Network Marketing Business
