There was a time when it was pretty easy to infiltrate the e-commerce market because it was a new phenomenon that had still not been adapted by many businesses. Nowadays, attempting to market your product or service online has become a necessity. Competition has increased and with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, the consumer has the ability to become much more involved with the whole buying process and what results from their purchase. This all started gaining popularity a very short time ago, so coming up with an e-business model is not an easy task. The article posted on the Professor's latest blog highlights some excellent success factors and since they only broke it down into four general categories, it keeps it simple and easy to understand.
The main thing that I am going to stress the importance of for anyone that is pursuing an e-commerce model - Content! Lets repeat that one more time - Content! Everyone has something to say on the web, especially with the latest trend of social networking. You have to build a reputation as being an "expert" in whatever product or service you are selling and you can't do that by just having a website with a fancy design and a checkout page. The way to build your reputation online is to release unique content. This can be anything of relevance to your product such as articles, pictures, videos, podcasts, blog entries and much more. The key here is to be creative!
If you are a small business owner that has just started a website selling car parts, you can do a weekly video journal showing step-by-step car maintenance and repair tips. This will help you build a following and will also help your website get its page ranking up which will increase traffic in the long run. Search engines generate large amounts of traffic and if they don't see that your site is constantly being updated with new, unique content, it will hurt your overall ranking and number of visitors. It is important that your site is easy to navigate and integrated with other websites that make sharing easy, such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
Since I am interested in small business, I came across an article which highlights some success factors for a small e-commerce site. It is always going to be harder for a small business to compete with a big company and this is no exception on the web. The article says for a small business owner, instead of trying to battle it out with the big players in the industry, "develop your personalized message and emphasize the human touch that you provide." This is the right mindset to have because it will show that you are someone who visitors and potential customers can relate to.
For the area of relationship building, the article suggests focusing "on taking small steps to develop your website as a social hub." It is important to ask your customers for feedback, offer them incentives and listen to their suggestions.
To sum things up, do your research when developing your e-business model! It will definitely pay off when your site is up and running.
-Max P
I agree that what separates one e-business from another is original content. And there are so many ways to create and share content these days the possibilities are endless. I think one thing that a small company can have that separates it from a larger one is making their content and service more customer oriented. It is easy when you are small to pay more attention to each customer and create personalized content catered to them. Larger companies try to do this but I find over time customers get sick of "cookie-cutter" content and may search for a more personalized experience. I've seen some online clothing stores, for example, that will actually broadcast a model wearing outfits via webcam for interested customers. I doubt a large company would invest the time and resources to do something like that. They usually just put photos with tons of white space that leave you clueless of what the product looks like on a moving model.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Small companies are the ones that can get the most benefit from this since by doing a very good social media campaign the can build their name without having to invest much.
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