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Blogs, Podcasting, and RSS - How will these technologies affect eCommerce
At this moment in time , Blogs , Podcasting , and RSS are not going to fundamentally change any aspect of your online business, but rather, offer your company new ways to speak to your customer segments..
Blogs, Podcasting, and...
Building eCommerce Websites That Work - Part 1
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir You want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very big family. Right off, let’s be clear - there are lots of ways to do business on the internet. And lots of ways to both make and lose money. Successful eCommerce...
Getting Started In Ecommerce - Part One
In 2004, Enquiro.com conducted a study of the search behaviors of men vs. women. They found that women spend more time in their searches and at specific sites. The study also revealed that women tend to be more deliberate in reading search...
How To Achieve ECommerce Success – You GOTTA Plan!
Before becoming a netpreneaur, I was an entrepreneur. First, I owned a successful child care center which grew to capacity in less than two years. When I sold that, I bought a little flower shop that had less than 300 customers and grew it to what...
Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0: Ecommerce Web Development – Overview For Programmer
Microsoft “Project Green” phase one is reflected in Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP 9.0 realization. It is exposed to .Net developer currently through eConnect and as time goes – more and more eConnect object will have XML web service interfaces....
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A Successful eCommerce Website - Part 1
So you want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very large group. First off, lets be clear that there are a lot of ways to do business on the internet - and a lot of ways to both make and lose money. No way can I cover all of them in a few fairly short articles.
This article is going to assume that you have some of the fundamentals, that you understand the language and that you are serious. Im not going to tell you how to set up a web site or get a decent hosting account. Were a bit beyond those basics. The basics here have to do with factors which will influence the success (or failure) and the degree of success an eCommerce web site experiences.
First and foremost, you need to provide value for your customers. Absurd as it seems to have to repeat that, a lot of so-called eCommerce sites provide no or very little value for their visitors. Pretending to offer value is not the same thing as providing value. Promoting miserably written, hackneyed, cloned ebooks filled with questionably useful and/or outdated content doesnt make for a high value site. Sure you can make some money. Once. And youll likely have a high refund rate. Essentially you'd be taking advantage of the inexperience of your customers and abusing their willingness to trust you. Not a good path to a long-term business with steady repeat customers.
Value on the net is not very different from any kind of off-line retail sales -- a quality product line that will attract potential customers and a competitive price that will lead to purchases. An honest, quality product that will meet the expectations youve created in your buyers. Hyped junk wont do it.
Next, youve got to have a smooth, user-friendly, easy to follow process all the way to your thank you page. The simpler, cleaner and clearer you can make the process, the better. Where it makes sense you can augment this user-responsive site profile by adding live-response chat.
If you do use call-in or live chat, its imperative that your operators be well-trained, understand your products and your system and BE customer friendly. This can be a difficult job if you outsource. The less expensive out-source alternatives can be a bad investment. Youll need to check very carefully and be certain the operators do actually speak and understand the primary languages(s) of your targeted customer group. Youll need to provide extensive background information and highly flexible, well-written scripts. You should also collect customer evaluations of these services - separately, and carefully monitor your results to be sure you are getting a decent return on the investment.
You need to have an attractive website. Some can do well with an ugly site, but, in that case, you need to really understand what you're doing and why it might work. The ugly site tactic is not for the inexperienced and very few individuals truly have the grasp of marketing and customer psychology that can lead to a successful "ugly" site.
To provide a pleasant experience, you need to be careful in what you use - colors, text-size, graphics, animation and white space can add value to your site or turn it into a user nightmare. Test your site with people who will tell you the truth. Just because you love it doesn't mean anyone else will. In general, aiming for a professional appearing site is your best option.
Wherever you can, provide incentives for customers to buy and to return. The return factor is a critical piece of a long-term strategy for success. Anyone who buys is your best possible future customer. Keep them, track them, make them special offers. Use coupons, discounts, special deals, customer-only offers and back end sales. Your customer base is your gold mine. They have at least some faith in you, enough to have purchased. Do your utmost to never damage that faith and treat them with the care they deserve.
The next article in the series will discuss factors such as personalization, security and assisting your staff in dealing consistently with customers customer support.
About the Author
Contracting the computer bug in the early 80's (yes, pre-www) and never cured, Richard, a PhD Clinical Paychologist, now writes on eCommerce, RSS and Niche marketing at http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com
You may freely reprint but the link must be live and spiderable
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