Once you have decided to sell products online, your next task is to determine the best way to take payments and deliver your digital products.
The main reason that many people get involved with an online business is the ability automate the entire operation and free up their personal time. Choosing the right payment and delivery service will be the deciding factor in determining how much time you will have to spend running your business.
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The cyber world has revolutionized the way we live and these days one can find a date or spouse online, read books, find electronics at unbeatable prices and more. The web has taken the place of traditional market places and now without leaving the comfort of home or work one can buy or sell anything. The virtual world is the “market place.”
Google has been a leader in many ways and now Google checkout launched June 2006 is all set to achieve new highs for the giant. Google checkout is designed keeping in mind the pros and cons of online shopping:
E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that
2003 will see online sales reaching US $58.2 billion excluding
travel. According to Forrester Research, another reputable research
company, business to consumer e-commerce will hit US $230 billion
by the year 2008. While offline retail sales are staggering and
will continue to do so in near term, online retail sales will
show a hefty 19 percent consecutive year over year growth! And
by the same year, two third of all US households will buy some
kind of products and services online. In 2003 alone 97 million
consumers will make some kind of purchases through the Internet.
If you are selling products and services offline, you should
seriously consider hopping on to the e-commerce bandwagon, or risk
loosing significant portion of your business to your more
proactive competitors!
To increase sales on your website, you must accept credit
cards. To process credit cards, you could apply for a
merchant account through your bank or other financial
institution.
Sometimes, though, you would be further ahead to use the
services of a credit card processor. This is especially
true when you are first starting out and have more
limited resources. In this way, you may process credit
card transactions without the high front-end costs and
requirements of a merchant account.
NASA was established more than 50 years ago and has been a world leader in studies of our home planet. In October 2005 NASA decided to share their series of the stunning ‘Blue Marble’ images. The satellite photos were divided into 12 calendar months and provided a detailed overview at an entire year in the life of our planet.
Each image took up 10 Gigabytes of hard disk space. To be able to understand how much 10 Gigabytes really is, you can think of that each image consists of 5000 pictures taken with a typical digital camera.
Online bartering has been going on for at least ten years. High profile websites that feature the service have been online for at least five years; a little surfing reveals that they are going through a process of consolidation and realignment.
There are a couple of models for online barter. A few sites charge substantial fees for member merchants to join and advertise. Their membership figures number in the tens of thousands. There are also sites that provide free access to people and merchants who wish to barter. Each site has a method of establishing value for the members’ goods or services, and each member has an account with the service based on what has been sold or bought. The host site takes a piece of each transaction, generally five to eight percent.
The right blend of services, individuals and approach is what makes an e-commerce project successful. Selecting the right supplier to build an online store is a vital part of this process. We point out some important issues you need to consider during this process.
Use a consultant: Strategic thinking is the base on which successful e-commerce sites are founded. It is a good idea to partner with an experienced consultant before selecting a particular supplier. An experienced consultant can set the project criteria on which the supplier’s deliverable and the Web site can be measured. A consultant’s input adds value to the proposed solution.
In recent years we are seeing a great deal of interest in eCommerce from retailers. An increasing number of retailers are adopting eCommerce tools and getting involved in online business. The influx of large number of new players has intensified the battle for customer’s time and pocket book. Gone are the days when you could build a good site and expect a number of visitors to rush in. Today, websites are using every possible promotional method available to attract visitors. As a result, web promotion has become a complex and expensive part of company’s overall online marketing strategy.
However, getting a visitor to your site is just half of the job, even if the visitor is from your targeted segment of the market! One of the primary issues that you have to deal with as an owner of an eCommerce site is to convert a visitor to a real customer. You have to take a number of measures in order to increase this odd. Unfortunately, a huge number of prospective customers leave a site after even placing items in the shopping cart. Most of the site owners grossly underestimate the number of abandoning customers. When asked, none of the respondent site owners gave a figure for visitors from this category more than 30 percent. But, the reality is quite different! According to various studies, the abandonment rate can be a staggering 67 percent for an average eCommerce site! So, what do you have to do to reduce this number and increase your sales?
