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Gloom
in the Tech Markets:
E-Commerce
Still on the Rise
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by John
Detwiler
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| With all the doom
and gloom surrounding the tech markets these days, one fact that gets overlooked
is that E-Commerce is still on the rise. According to the US Dept
of Commerce, retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2001 were
up more than 8% over 20001.
A joint study released in January by Nielson Netratings, Harris Interactive
and Goldman Sachs reported that E-Commerce sales for the last two months
of 2001 were up 13% over the same period of 20002.
While the sky-high
stock prices of the late 90’s are a thing of the past and many ill-conceived
dot-com companies are long gone, the Internet as a marketing, selling and
customer service tool is still very powerful. As long as you understand
how a business should be run, you can take full advantage of the Internet.
In fact, for anyone who is geographically mobile, the Internet holds many
great advantages.
E-Commerce
Benefits
When all the hype about the ‘New
Economy’ is stripped away, the main benefit of E-Commerce is that you can
connect your customers/clients from anywhere in the world. As a person
who is comfortable living anywhere and who has mobile interests, it is
possible to sell your product or service from wherever you are currently
at. Mobile phones, fax forwarding, e-mail, and global Internet access
are but some of the many things, which are available to make this happen.
The Internet is a great tool that
allows you to convey information that is important to you. As a professional,
you have a specific knowledge set which only you can convey. Sharing
expertise in your subject can lead to new contacts, which then leads to
new business. Use your site to showcase your expertise and educate
your customers or potential customers. |
 John
Detwiler is an E-Commerce systems developer with experience at several
large B2B direct marketing companies. He also has a background in
Import/Export and media production. He is a member of the Internet
Society, an organization which exists to assure the open development, evolution
and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.
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Other benefits include the ability
to react quickly to changes in the marketplace and to experiment with ideas
that would be too costly and time consuming to test with other forms of
media. This isn’t to say that other media forms, whether print or
broadcast, don’t have their place. Every marketing channel you have
access to must work together. E-Commerce has the unique ability to
act as a marketing, sales, and customer service tool that can be the centerpiece
to all other efforts.
| Challenges
One of the characteristics of the
last several years is that many dot-coms fell apart because they did not
have any other means of reaching the marketplace. You can’t rely
on your web site to sell on its own. It is very difficult to make
this happen. Your E-commerce site is an important, necessary element
but it must be one marketing channel of many. Wide-scale branding
is important. Any form of media, including the Internet, is nothing
but a tool to help you get your message across. Utilize every means
of communicating your message and use your E-Commerce site to reinforce
that message and act as a central point of contact.
Customer service must be top notch.
If your customers can’t get in touch with you they will quickly become
someone else’s customers. Your business is only as strong as your
reputation. Trust is important and that is built by responding |
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to your customers in a timely
manner. You can either keep a central location with staff on hand
to communicate with the customer or you can utilize one of the many companies
around the world which offers outsourced customer care services.
Your site must look professional
and be easy to maintain. Professional does not mean complex however.
Large splash pages (we have all been to those sites where we encounter
some fancy animation that take forever to download and consists of a 3-D
company logo flying around. You have to either wait for the animation
to finish downloading or hunt for a very tiny ‘skip intro’ link to get
to the information you need) are never necessary, and can be destructive
to your marketing efforts, especially in parts of the world that have no
other option to connect to the Internet other than slow dial-up.
A poor looking site does not instill confidence in your business.
Take a look at companies like Citibank, Amazon.com or any other big corporation
that has a successful Internet based business. You want to look like
a major player, not somebody’s personal home page or art-school project.
At the same time, the site must be
easy to maintain so you don’t have to spend all of your time playing webmaster.
Unless you are a professional webmaster, the more time you have to spend
working on your site is time taken away from your main business.
Keep your site simple and easy to understand and you will save yourself
many hours of unnecessary frustration.
| What Is
Necessary To Make E-Commerce Work?
The first step is to find talent
who can develop the look, feel and functionality of both the front end
of your E-Commerce system, which is the website, and any associated databases
or programs to automate the transaction or communicate with other systems.
If you know how design and build a proper site then you are now ahead of
the game but if not you need to have a professional do it for you.
Five years ago web sites were a hobby, something companies put together
as an experiment. They are now a serious business tool and should
be treated as such. You are already used to thinking globally, so if you
feel a need to hire professional talent, your designer/developer can be
anywhere. It is more important that they know how to build good,
professional sites (and are price competitive) than where they are located.
You can find good designers in most areas of the world. Check out |
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their portfolios and compare their work
to the sites you have identified as models. Get in touch with them
and ensure that they understand and can fulfill your requirements.
Where do
you host your site from?
The nice thing about E-Commerce is
that it doesn’t matter where your site actually resides. All you
need is reliable, robust service. If privacy issues are a concern,
check out the various offshore locations with strong privacy protection.
However, for most businesses, this won’t be a significant issue.
Your most pressing concern is the quality of the tech support and the ability
of the hosting
| center to stay securely connected
and running 24/7, even when conditions get difficult. You probably
don’t want to spend much time worrying about the nuts and bolts of the
technology running your site so it is important that the hosting center
staff can reliably do it for you. Also, it’s not a bad idea if your
web site designer and the hosting center tech staff can speak the same
language so that any problems can be fixed as soon as possible.
Again, is it easy to get ahold of
a real person at your business? If your customers want to place an order
or need to contact you about a service issue, make it easy for them.
E-Mails must be answered same day, or at least within 24 hours. Better
yet, include a phone number where customers can reach a live person.
If you don’t have a central office location, use an outsourced customer
care service. If you sell yourself as a |
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global company you can even arrange
contact personel to be available 24 hours a day. If you are more
of a local service this may not be as necessary but at least make it easy
to do business with you.
What Does
This Mean?
With the right idea, a bit of technical
knowledge, and the understanding of proper presentation and customer service,
your business can thrive on the Internet. The important issue is
you treat your efforts as a business, utilizing the idea that you are there
to make a profit. The days of vast amount of venture capital being
dumped on any crazy dot-com idea are over. Utilize common sense,
keep a close eye on spending, and above all take care of your customers.
These are the important issues, as they have always been. Utilize
your E-Commerce efforts as a tool, not a social revolution and you will
be a long way towards building a successful business, no matter where you
are in the world.
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Contact
author John Detwiler
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