With the rapid down fall of world economy and dot-com companies in recent years many brick-and-mortar companies and new start-ups ask themselves: To Be Online or Not to Be Online?
Not a long time ago, I read a comment of a well-known industry observer, where he stated that companies that are not selling through the Internet by 2010 will probably become extinct. As dramatic as it might feel, although exaggerated, but there are some truths in it.
Consider this: Although diminishing due to bad economy, average growth of e-commerce is around 25 % per year. 81% of small businesses that have an online presence during last year’s holiday season reached new customers, leading to an increase in sales and profitability according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive. Thirty percent of small businesses with a web presence and fewer than 20 employees now generate more than 25% of their revenue online claims Gartner research.
If this does not convince you to take your business online, below I pointed out 10 top reasons why you should start doing business online right now.
1. New Economy:
The Internet has created a new economy, which by its explosive growth and sheer size already changed our perception of traditional way of doing business. Companies like Amazon and Ebay have successfully created domination on areas, where just few years ago traditional brick-and-mortar companies were kings. However, in order to be successful on the net, you don’t have to be a giant like them. Many small and mid-size companies managed to build online businesses quite profitably. In fact, studies show small and mid-size companies will be the main growth force of e-commerce in coming years. Now that the economy is slowly growing again and people have extra money to spend. It's a great time to get your company online.
2. Internet is a perfect venue for Business:
In order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your shop. On the Internet, your shop could be only a click away from your prospective customers. With proper marketing your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a brick and mortar shop.3. Company’s Image:
Whether you sell products or services online or not, in today’s world you have to have a corporate presence on the Internet. Otherwise, as you must have noticed that people simply don’t take your business seriously if you tell them that your company does not have a website. A nice corporate site definitely increases the image of a company, especially if it has great product or service related content to go with.4. Provide better Customer Support:
Customer accusation and retention is one of the key factors of business value chain. Thanks to Internet technology, business's can provide customer support more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability.5. Make Information more easily Available to Customers:
Just a couple of years ago, companies used to require days to deliver products or services update information to their customers. Things have changed since then. Today you can add or make any changes to your company and product related content virtually in a matter of couple of hours, publish on your site and share with the whole world.6. Cut Costs:
New technologies allow you to take virtually any part of your business online, that includes supply chain management, billing, shipping, procurement etc. Streamlining these business processes through online systems will allow companies to cut costs significantly in almost every sphere of any business. For example: companies can reduce more than five percent of their maintenance, repair and operation costs by adopting e-business solutions. This five percent savings can turn into 50% of a company’s net profit.7. Ability to do Business 24 hours:
How else can you continue making sales, while your staff are sleeping! The biggest advantages of online shops are that they are open 24 hours a day year round. Thanks to Internet off time, when your shop is generally closed, sales in some cases can be more than your regular business hours!8. Low Start up Costs:
Building a web site does not require big investments. There are many low cost tools available today, which can help you create sites from scratch. Many business portals allow you to build web sites from templates. For less than 100$/month you can have a full-fledged corporate e-business site with all e-commerce features.9. Your Physical Presence Could be in any Location:
The World Wide Web allows you to do business from any part of the world. Your physical location, except for few cases is not that important since you conduct your business online. This is a great aspect of bringing your business online. Were you use to only generate profit in your current location, now you can be severing the product nationwide.10. Go Global:
Thanks to the Internet you can instantly become a global player. In fact, you don’t have to invest large sums of money to do this. There are literally hundreds of vertical and horizontal e-marketplaces available on the net. These marketplaces allow you for a nominal fee to get access to a large audience of prospective customers from all over the world. According to AMR Research more than $1.3 trillion of goods and services will flow through the B2B marketplaces. Who wouldn't want a piece of that pie?The right determinant of e-business success is the same like any off line business. You have to have a great idea, you have to have a business plan, there should be a value proposition for prospective clients and you should have belief in it and your ability! Getting online is becoming cheaper and easier thanks to emergence of new technologies but marketing on the Internet is becoming more expensive. Take your business online now, before the marketing costs become way too expensive for small companies.
Now, let's take a look of the affiliate marketer who is actually selling someone elses product. When you are an affiliate marketer, you have to have the same mindset just as any business owner. It might not be your actual product, but you need to treat it as if it was. I have mentioned before in previous articles that as an affiliate marketer you don't need a website. However, it is strongly suggested that you do. There are other avenues of marketing that we will later discuss such as: Social Media Marketing, Article Marketing, Email Marketing, and Mobile Marketing. I strongly suggest using all avenues of marketing as an affiliate marketer as they all generate sales. As far as a website goes, you will want to have one website per product that you are promoting. You don't want to have just one site, promoting six different products at the same time. You need to focus and have a good strong site dedicated to one product that you want to promote.
Having multiple sites does get costly, and like I have mentioned before, you will want to focus on one product before you take on more. Having a website is a great start. However, you need to drive traffic to that site and also do a lot of SEO work on it so that it gets ranked in search engines. Otherwise, you won't be making any sales, as no one will know you exist. We will talk about SEO and Rankings in the future.
In closing, Websites are 100% necessary not only for business's but also affiliate marketers. This was just a basic run down of both and we will go deeper into both aspects down the road.
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