Netparkone - ICT In Business

Selling Online

If anyone was under any doubts that online sales were ever going to rival the high street, these must surely now have been put to rest. The phenomenal growth of sites like www.amazon.co.uk and www.ebay.co.uk are prime indicators of this. Debenhams online store now generates as much revenue as any one of their top 5 high street stores, with a fraction of the operating costs. The Internet has become a sophisticated and viable place to do business.

The way you sell online will be determined by the nature of your product or service and your business strategy. In many respects this isn’t dissimilar to the real world. If for example you currently sell through a network of retail or trade outlets, you may well end up doing the same online. For example, if you manufacture bathroom radiators, you would probably sell through established online retailers like www.plumbcenter.co.uk or www.bandq.co.uk. These sites have already established a reputation, buyer confidence and high traffic levels that it would be difficult to compete with. However, you will be selling at a lower margin since the site owner will take a percentage of the sale price.

Another option is to sell through “marketplace” sites like eBay or Amazon, where you can now operate a fully functional online store with automated bulk upload features and many enhanced features for virtually no upfront set up costs. Thousands of people and small companies now generate most of their revenue on eBay. By selling through these sites, you benefit from the huge traffic levels that they enjoy, and avoid the need to set up your own e-commerce website. However, most traders back this up with a website of their own, to build buyer confidence and perhaps offer additional product details.

Decisions about how to sell online need careful consideration, but are not based on technology, just good business planning and market research.

If you decide that you really do want to sell products directly from your own website, then you may need to consider an “e-commerce” system to enable users to select items and pay for them online using a credit card. Until recently, this has been perceived as an expensive and technically challenging project for the small business, but now there are now easier ways to set this up without breaking the bank.

Transaction processing services like www.worldpay not only offer a secure channel for credit card payments, but can provide tools to enable users to browse your site adding items to a “shopping cart” as they go. They can then compile the order at the “checkout” stage, add VAT and delivery charges etc and take the user’s credit card details. You will probably need to ask your website designer to integrate this into your site, but the process is relatively straightforward and shouldn’t cost the earth for a small product catalogue.

If you have an extensive product range, you may need to use a more sophisticated shopping cart system like Actinic catalogue. Your web designers will need to implement this or Actinic themselves can build a solution for you. There are lots of other suppliers – see the Google Directory

Generating sales on your website

It’s one thing creating your new e-commerce enabled website, but generating enough sales to get a return on the investment may be quite another. Firstly, you have to attract traffic (visits) to your website and secondly, you have to persuade those visitors to buy from your site, rather than another site 2 clicks away with the same or similar products on offer. Success will only come from effective marketing of your website and by instilling confidence in your naturally wary potential customers.

The process of marketing your website can be more complex than setting it up in the first place and will certainly demand more effort. Normally, this will involve a blend of offline (advertising, direct mailing, networking, PR etc) and online (search engine optimisation, banner advertising, link trading etc.) activities. You will need to develop a strategy for this, which may involve some external advice and input from a knowledgeable marketing agency.

Do some reading on the web to become familiar with the issues and possibilities. Here’s a good starting point - http://marketing.about.com. You could also invest in a book or two on the subject eg 101 ways to promote your website by S. Sweeney.