Trends in eCommerce - time to develop a new eCommerce site.
Ecommerce is coming up as a great alternative for business with comparatively less investment and more profits. In the economic recession that we are facing today across the globe, ecommerce still shows an upward trend, which actually is good news. If ecommerce can yield profits when the market waves are against, imagine what ecommerce would do when the market waves are for. In 2007, Forrester Research reviled that 21% growth of online sale was reported and 14% p.a is expected across the next 5 years to come. Note that the upward trends predicted is for the time when the economy is in great depression. Clearly, it shows the expansion capacity of ecommerce.
One of the major challenges in developing ecommerce is to put together a website where the customers place orders. Unless that is the case, expecting the ecommerce to deliver profits would be a little unrealistic. An Australian business is right now struggling with the same situation. They have websites up but then how to make them to generate profit has become a challenge. Its not that the Australian market is not there, it's still unexplored. If you have the right vision about ecommerce then Australian market would turn things into gold for you. But again, putting up a website that would generate profits for you is a concern. Phil Bonnano director of retail from The Leading Edge believes that most of the websites that are on the internet net claiming to be online stores are nothing but catalogs uploaded. This type of model doesn't work for all products and especially services where the order process needs to be tied into other applications. This is what is great about CartStore is that it can tie into other applications to serve as ordering system while taking on designs of current websites. Without a application like this innovation is just missing and the basic element that would attract the customer to purchase stuff to make profits for your business is zilch. Hence, clearly the success of the ecommerce business would greatly depend upon the way the website markets your product. The best think to keep in mind while putting such a site together is to think like you are opening a new physical store. Think from the prospective of the customer and list all the components that you as a customer would expect from an online store. Incorporate the same in your website and you are good to go.
Just keep things simple by making the customer's shopping experience enjoyable and less complicated. This could be achieved by the right combination of ecommerce techniques and a web design that is proven to yield results.
Another great thing about ecommerce is that your ROI could be measured in absolute terms. When we use different marketing strategies we notice that it takes at least a month's time to start to give results and then to measure which strategy gave us what is not an easy mathematics. This limitation is due to in adequate data availability. But ecommerce offer analytical tools such as Google Analytics that would clearly let us know the returns that we are getting on the initial investment. Telling us about which strategy would help the most. David Jones, Myers & Woolworths or a small retailer with a store online would have equal opportunity to trade. This is a vast difference between the big business fishes and small once in the pond when it comes to the tradition way of operating business.
Every thing calls for an investment. Its just ecommerce offers you a platform where the investment is quite less relatively - ensuring an increase in your profit margins and relative decrease in the risk factor.
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