Charming as it may be, E-commerce is not just for every service or product. You must do a little market research to know if E-commerce will suit your product or not. It’s best that you also have a ‘real’ store to sell your goods apart from the virtual one, as correct planning and managing of websites is not an easy job.
E-commerce website: How difficult, how easy?
It all depends upon the span of your services. It is all good if you are able to administer payments, and security. It is very important to amalgamate your website with your business well.
Products well-suited for E-commerce
E-commerce strategies work the best for software products, or the products that are difficult to find in local stores.
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When you build up an E-commerce website, make sure you attend to the following topics:
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- Make sure you have good content that will attract potential customers.
- Pricing can be a problem, if you are selling in a global market. It’s best that you support a range of currencies to attract customers from various countries.
- If you are going to sell from different distribution channels, then you require integrated stock management system.
- Make sure you offer help to customers by telephone or mail support.
- Security is the most important concern. You need to be sure that customer transactions and details cannot leak out.
- Customer satisfaction
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It is an important rule of any good business. If your customers are not satisfied, your business cannot flourish. It’s very important to build a strong relationship with your customers.
User-friendly website
Make sure your website is user-friendly, because if the users will find it difficult to use, they will click away in a few seconds.
Global market
If you are aiming towards a global market, it’s best that you make you website as multilingual, and offer transactions in a wide range of currencies.
Maintenance
It is important that you constantly update your website. There might be some bugs in your website that need to be fixed.
Real versus online
Make sure you also have some ‘real’ stores where your products can be purchased. Companies with only ‘dot com’ existence are rare now. Customers trust those brands more, which have a physical presence. They feel that in case of any grievance, they can report the matter to ‘real’ people they can see.
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Think twice before going for E-commerce
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- E-commerce is not an inexpensive enterprise. It will be expensive to create and run a high quality website.
- There are many complications with a global market as a result of packaging and sending your product across different countries.
- The most important factor to consider is security. Customers will not trust your site if there are credit card security breaches.
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It is important to plan your strategy before you opt for an E-commerce website.
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