“Thanksgiving Online Sales Reach a Record $1.73B, 37% of Sales Made On Mobile Devices”
“Record Black Friday and Thanksgiving eCommerce Sales”
“Brand loyalty is becoming a thing of the past!
Customers are driven more by price and quality than they have ever been”
In a former life as a Stockbroker, I often heard the phrase “Don’t fight the tape” which means that if you are trading stocks it is very risky to buck the trend thinking that it will end soon and you know more than the masses of investors fueling that trend.
With this thought in mind, if you are a business owner and think the Internet is going away or that people truly prefer the personal touch and need the help of your experienced sales person to buy your stuff. THINK AGAIN! Your customers right now are potentially online and shopping and part of the headlines above. If you are not selling online they are buying from your competition.
Should your business convert to an eCommerce model?
The decision-making process of whether or not to invest in an online store or eCommerce is one that should not be taken lightly. There are many questions that need definitive answers before you commit to a program that once in play is very difficult to unwind:
- Does your business currently have inventory controls in place?
- Are there any issues that need to be considered to ship your products?
- Do you have a customer service staff already in place?
- Is your product easy to understand or needs to be demoed to sell effectively?
- Are you going to present all of your SKU’s online or just a portion?
- Do all of your SKU’s have quality images and descriptions available?
- Are these unique descriptions or swiped from the manufacturer?
- After doing an online search can you be competitive with other online vendors?
- Do you have a budget for expected SEO and Adwords expenses?
- Are you collecting sales tax now and could you easily expand to collecting sales tax nationally if regulatory winds change the discussion.
What kind of upfront costs should be expected?
The cost associated with the initial creation or expansion of an existing site should be considered carefully. Your site will require expanded hosting facilities, an SSL certificate for encrypted transactions, A shopping cart sufficient to handle your products with features that make it easy to use, a database large enough to easily facilitate all images and products, a design that is intuitive and engaging for your prospects and customers, ability to fund ongoing sales specials and offerings to entice new users. There is obviously more but any effective eCommerce design and launch is going to require a degree of online marketing including SEO and Google Adwords to showcase products on specific keywords.
We would love to discuss your ideas with you and provide a real life feasibility and opportunity profile for you to consider. All of our quotes are Free as are our initial discussions. It is this investment in YOU that has been our best marketing tool period!!