Friday, February 8, 2008

Success and Failure of e-commerce

E-commerce has evolved since the late 1990s. Companies and indivduals have been using e-commerce to do business; furthermore, it allows people to do shopping online. Many have succeed, and many has fail as well. Let us now look at the reasons for the success and failure.

10 reasons for successful e-commerce

1)Target the Un-Targeted

  • Know your customers thoroughly
  • Target needs that are unseen by your competitors.

2)Strong Business Planning

  • Know your source of revenue, break-even and the strategic details
  • Decide on the future goals that you want to achieve

3)Business Friendly ECommerce Software

  • Choose software that is easy to manage and allows you to focus on core business activities

4)Create a Web Store with a Difference

  • Branding is important for the success of your online business
  • Attractive domain name can play an important role in branding

5)Make your “Hot Sellers” most Visible

  • Create your specialty
  • Show your best product/service first

6)Do not let your Customers forget you

  • Customer Relationship Management is important (especially small and building a permenant customer base)
  • Pamper your customers to generate permanent sales

7)Increase your Web Presence

  • Perform search engine optimization for your site.
  • Associate with web sites that provide complimentary products or services (help to increase web presence for search engines and customers)

8)Build Robust Backend Operations

  • Backend operations are the backbone of the online shop
  • Choice of e-commerce solution would determine the strength of the backend operations

9)Learn Faster and Better

  • Be prepared to spot your mistakes and assess the business with no biaseness
  • Learn the loopholes and mistakes and rectify them

10)Surprise your Customers

  • Have incentives by providing offers, discounts etc
  • Make changes that do not sway away from the brand image that has been created in your customers' mind

Reference: http://www.goecart.com/online-business-success.asp

Top 10 e-commerce mistakes

1)Trying to sell the wrong product online

There are products that are not approriate to be sold online. Products which are inexpensive, and could be easily bought from the local store are not worth selling on the Internet. Products that need trying would be diffcult to sell.

2)Lack of marketing

Marketing of the site is needed for both online and offline. Identify your competitive advantage , and to show the customers the best price that can be offer.

3)A poorly designed website

Overcrowding is a major issue for this. A professional website need to feature the items clearly with photos and descriptions. Another issue is too much color, flash animation or graphics that slowed down the downloading process.

4)Falling behind time

The infrequent updating of website would be easily overtaken by competitors, and customers' visitation would fall. In order to stay at the top, updating is needed to feature any new products or news.

5)Poor checkout procedures

When a customer has decided to purchase an item, it should be easily linked to the shopping cart and pay with ease.

6)Not testing your site

Testing of links are important to make sure that they are fuctioning properly.

7)A hard-to-find or nonexistent privacy policy

Most people would not read the privacy policy, but there would be some who want to know whether their privacy is protected.

8)Poor order fulfillment

Information on the Internet spreads like wild fire. If words of unhappiness are being spread around to potential customers, the reputation would be damaged. Therefore, do leave a good impression on your customers.

9)Straying from your objective

Do not lose your primary focus. Stick to your area of experise.

10)Poor customer service

Poor customer service would send your customers runninng away. Provide excellent service would not only satisfy your customer, but also bring in potential customers.

Reference:http://www.allbusiness.com/sales/internet-e-commerce/3972-1.html

3 comments:

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