Ecommerce - a Vital Business Ingredient
A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill
What is Ecommerce Anyway?
The term ecommerce stands for electronic commerce - the ability for folks to buy and sell goods and services (or even give them away) any time of the day or night without distance barriers. Probably the most prominent example of e-commerce is the wildly successful eBay.
Other firms are making many millions from ecommerce as well - Intel, IBM, Amazon, Gateway, Ticketmaster - just to name a few. In fact, ecommerce has been so successful with computer manufacturers that it is often the case that there is no local brick and mortar location to visit when it comes time to make your purchase. In the case of Gateway, for instance, you have only two choices. You can log onto their site and order directly from there or you can call a Gateway rep and order by phone. And most who order by phone have done so after perusing the Gateway site.
Important Ecommerce Ingredients
The first obvious ingredient of your ecommerce business offer is your business web site.(Well, actually, the first ingredient is your product or service - but we're assuming you've already taken care of that.) Whether you purchase a "Web Site for Dummies" book and go at it yourself, hire an established web site design firm or find a local community college student who is an Internet design whiz, you must create a web site.
The second ecommerce ingredient is your marketing - the way you bring folks to your web site to buy your product or service.
Next you need an order form - some way to let folks say yes, send me this product or service of yours.
Your fourth ecommerce ingredient is crucial - it's what makes ecommerce the advantageous way to do business. You need a way to allow folks to pay online instantaneously - typically by credit card. If you don't have this, your online element is missing the ingredient that makes it preferable to other sales resources. Buyers want immediacy. That's what you must offer.
You need a way to get the product or service to your consumer. Perhaps you can complete this part of the transaction yourself - at least in the beginning, while your business is still small. At some point you're probably going to want to hand this off to an outsourcing firm that specializes in this service.
Finally, every business, ecommerce or otherwise, needs customer service access. While the Internet leaves you free to hide your actual whereabouts, don't. While consumers are increasingly ecommerce savvy, turning to the Internet in droves for their purchases, they are still wary. If they can't find you, if they don't have a way of communicating with a live person should they need it, they may go elsewhere.
Your ecommerce offering must still include contact info, and the chance - whether by e-mail, feedback form, or phone (toll free is best) for that consumer to ask questions, make suggestions or complaints, and so forth.
Why do I Need Ecommerce Anyway?
The first, very simple reason is that your competition is doing it. If John's Jerseys is selling T-shirts online, allowing folks to order by credit card from the comfort of their own home at 2am, you, owner of Terry's T's, had better not require that they make the cross town trip to your brick and mortar location between 9am and 5pm Monday through Saturday. If this is your only offering, they'll go elsewhere.
The second reason is that you will quite possibly make a great deal more money with ecommerce than you would with just a brick and mortar location. This happens for two reasons. By going online you expand your customer base geographically. No longer are your T-shirt sales limited to those folks who live within a 20 mile radius of your shop. Your New Jersey T-shirt shop can sell to folks in Toronto, Austin, Portland - even Brussels or Weisbaden. You also reduce some expenses - real estate, utilities, staffing.
Ecommerce - To grow your business it's a must!
