Growing your business
Every business knows that to survive, it must grow
Business as usual will not keep pace with ever-increasing expenses, squeezed margins and new competition. Growing your business can be done a thousand different ways but you conclude that you need to reach a larger audience as opposed to increasing the size of your present location. Expanding into new markets with additional stores may not be cost feasible, but reaching those markets via other channels such as direct-mail, telemarketing or a catalog seems quite attractive.
On with our story . . . After weighing the possibilities, you decide to create a catalog of your widgets to reach new customers and those who shop repeatedly at your store. You pull together photographs of the different types of widgets, give each an identifying number, a price, and add some descriptive comments. The catalog will include an order form but you soon realize that you will need to rely upon your customer to calculate the sales tax, add the shipping charges and total the order correctly.
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A moment of panic grips you when you visualize your customer deliberating . . . “is the sales tax applied where my order originates, from where it ships, or the address I am shipping it to? No matter, they’ll call if there is a problem. Hope it arrives at my brother’s house in time for his birthday or I’ll just have to return the order for credit”. |
The possibility of so great a chance for errors and the potential after-sale support causes you temporary mental anguish, but the need to increase sales demands new marketing techniques and some additional risk taking. The catalog is soon ready for the printer and you are faced with another decision of how you are going to distribute your catalog to potential prospects.
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Another frightening thought forces reality into your illusion of financial salvation when you realize that your supplier changes prices and part numbers quite often. You think to yourself…“why that will require frequent reprints of my catalog and cause people to order incorrectly from old brochures. I’ll have the same issues when I want to add a new widget or drop an obsolete unit or a slow moving product.” |
It seems there are a hundred other concerns with your new marketing scheme. Clearing out-of-state checks, chasing low-ticket bad debt, processing phone orders, obtaining the best mailing list, deciding how many catalogs to mail, the increasing costs of bulk mail, and your worry list grows steadily. You lie awake at night tormented that the anticipated increase in sales will not cover your additional costs and that the risks outweigh the return. Surely there must be a better way.
The Web offers a better, less expensive solution
Creating an online store vs. producing a direct mail catalog (or opening a new location) offers substantial savings for businesses of any size. Decisions about CPM, choosing the right zip codes, the hassles of bulk mailings, catalog reprints, price or model changes, tax and shipping charges, advertising expenses and a slew of other problems literally disappear with an online store. If you were to speculate as to how many people on this planet may be a prospect for your widgets, there is no other feasible means of achieving such potential as provided by the Internet.
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Imagine your storefront open to potentially millions of possible shoppers, 24
hours each day, 365 days per year having
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Imagine updating or redecorating your electronic catalog with a few keystrokes and incurring no additional printing, inventory or distribution charges. |
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Imagine being able to deliver personalized sales suggestions customized to the individual buying habits of your customers. |
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Imagine receiving all of your orders complete with correct calculations for state and local taxes and shipping charges. |
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Imagine operating a global business . . . from a computer on your kitchen table. |
Such is the promise of the Internet and the
instant advantage of building an online
store.
Next, we will discuss what are the considerations in doing electronic commerce.
