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The advent of the Internet has changed the way businesses operate; but more importantly, it has also influenced the way consumers make purchases both online and offline. Consumers are now more discerning and they are better informed. Understanding this new breed of consumers is essential for a business to succeed.

The amount of information that a consumer today has access to as compared to one a decade ago is tremendous. Due to this, a consumer is almost an expert on the product or service that they require before they even walk into a store or visit a website. They have access to multiple channels that can have information at their fingertips 24×7. The advances in mobile technology have also given consumers access to information from wherever in the world they may be.

Social media has had an immense impact on consumer behavior as well. Word of mouth has once again become a very influential factor in sales because of social media. People are not afraid to make their feelings public about a product, service or a business. The exposure that these comments get is vast and widespread.

Consumers are also increasingly becoming intent on having their choices or preferences included in a product or service. In one way this is great for businesses because they have a lot of feedback from the consumer. But on the other hand, by failing to implement a feature which the consumer sees as crucial will only see them defect to a competitor who has implemented it.

These are just a few broad factors that have ensured the evolution of the consumer. Only by understanding them and evolving with them can businesses expect to survive and thrive.

An online business is no different from a brick-and-mortar establishment. One can get legal claims for the slightest errors and negligence, so one must know how to protect one’s business from these that kill profit and cripple the business. First, make sure you and your customer support system provide true and updated information to your customers. A common lawsuit that can arise is related to false claims and advertisements. Customers have the right to basic information about your online company’s products or services, but you will need to make sure you are offering them correct information as any misinformation could easily lead to an outraged customer with a lawsuit in tow.

Make sure product descriptions and photos in your website are as real as what customers get when they make a purchase. Deliberately or even accidentally leaving out any details may be misinterpreted for scheming and scamming your customers. Next, reinforce strict information security on your website. Gaining and keeping customers is all about trust, and you will not gain their trust if their personal information such as email addresses, financial details and phone numbers are shared with a third-party that has nothing to do with the customer’s transactions. Social security numbers and financial information are extremely sensitive and must never leak out into other hands who could use such info for fraud or identity theft. Study your security practices and keep your programs geared towards this updated. Finally, consider insurance. Nowadays, it pays to look for the best type of insurance to protect your online business. Be sure you understand the coverage and provisions so you know against which cases you will be protected from.

The revolution of the Internet introduced a lot of things to people, some of which they never even thought possible. Because of the many opportunities that the World Wide Web offers the public and businesses, a lot of online stores have opened up to give service to the people. Online shopping is a process where a customer directly transacts to the owner of the business in real-time, without any third party services over the web. There are a lot of advantages that this method of shopping could offer, and below are some of the most important ones:

Buy Products at the Comfort of Your Home

Online retail stores are always open - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and most of these businesses cater to people from anywhere around the world. Imagine enjoying the convenience of not leaving your home, which saves you the precious time from travelling, as well as a considerable amount of money due to transportation expenses.

Get Access to Everything You Need in One Seating

When you shop online, not only do you save time and money, you also enjoy browsing almost all of the things you need at your own place and time. All you have to do is to search for the product you need and click on the links provided to you. In addition, you can find rare products online that are not usually sold at common retail stores.

Get All the Information You Need Before You Buy, and Get Bigger Savings

Because the Internet contains a load of information about anything, you can also get all the specifics of the product you are planning to buy like reviews and testimonials. Finally, you have the advantage of choosing the best deals from different online sellers like discounts and money back gurantees.

How many times have you told your friends “hey, that burger place is great!”, “that clothes shop is awesome” or “this new album is the best” and most of them have taken your recommendation? Probably lots of times, but it doesn’t quite seem to work out so well when you do it on the web for a product that you are trying to sell.Quite simply, the problem here is trust. Who are you? You aren’t well known and people who know you well will not make purchases every day. Even if they did, they probably don’t number in the hundreds to make a difference. So how do you become well known enough, like Steve Jobs for instance, to sell your product by simply saying “this is the stuff, go buy it and all its accessories now”? You don’t. You don’t need to. Why waste time becoming a guru when there is a simpler way to achieve your objective?This is where you use a simple tactic that takes advantage of the customer’s mindset when they are ready to buy. It is a tactic that is used brilliantly well by any place that sells burgers and it is called the “do you want fries with that” tactic.How many times have you said no to that question? Probably a few times, but more often than not you would have said “yes”. This is what you need to do, every time a customer puts something in their shopping cart. If they buy a camera, ask them if they would like a camera bag with that; it is as simple as that. Try this tactic out on your website and you will definitely see a vast improvement in your sales.

The following are some simple things you can do to boost your conversion rates.

1. Harness 404’s - 404 error pages are part of online life. You have to have them because visitors to your site are going to see them at some point or the other. This is because of typo’s, mistakes in linking etc. So why should you let this page go to waste? It represents an opportunity to grab a customer. Offer a discount on a product, give them a freebie; this will not only make the page look good, more often than not you will get yourself an instant sale. Besides this, it won’t make your customer run for the hills because they think your site is error prone.

2. Show your rates - Shipping rates can be a big turnoff for a customer. Although you may not be able to offer lower rates, you can display the rates upfront so that the customer knows what they are up against. You can argue that this could turn customers away, but they would do that anyway when they get to the checkout point. So why not save them the hassle? That way they will always come back to you as a first choice for products because they know that the shipping rate is displayed upfront.

3. Arrival dates - Customers are always on pins until they get their product. Instead of saying “product ships in 8-16 days”, tell the customer when the product will leave your warehouse. The give them a zip code based calculator so that they can figure out when it will reach the shipping address.

1. Research - Running an online business is not a spur of the moment idea. With that kind of approach your business will die as fast it appeared. Give your venture a lot of thought. Identify what you want to sell, to whom you want to sell it to and at how much you want to sell it. Have a sound reasoning behind all these factors.

2. Budget - Plan your expenditure and set goals for your income. Obviously your business will not have money flowing in overnight, but you need to set yourself some goals or else you will be waiting forever and going bankrupt slowly.

3. Sales plan - You need to plan out what you are going to dangle in front of the customer and what you are going casually mention. The first product maybe small and inexpensive, but the second is probably where the big profit is.

4. Feed the need - Always ensure that you solve a customer’s problem, because when you do - you make a sale. From the customer’s point of view, you become a go to person and a trusted place to purchase from. Give them as much value as you can in your solution and you will stand out ahead of your competitors.

5. Follow up - Get your visitors and customers to join in an opt-in mailing list. Use this list to send informative material only. Do not waste their time and clog up their inbox’s. Build up your reputation as someone who does not spam.

6. Strategy - Plan out your marketing strategy and stick to it. Do not stray from it no matter how tempting it is. Once you have made decent amount of money, you can start looking at more expensive types of marketing strategies (like paid advertising).

An online business, done properly, can do wonders for an existing bricks-and-mortar business. Getting it started can be a daunting task, especially if you have very little or no knowledge of implementing an online store. But the difficult part really is only in the beginning. Once you get past this stage, you will need to spend far less time on it than you would on an offline business.

Once you set up the store you will quickly realize that you are suddenly on a level playing field. You may have been running your business from a small corner store, but on the internet that does not show. What does show is how well you have designed the site, how user friendly it is and how good your services are.

An online store allows you to reach a global audience. All at once, you will find yourself exposed to a vast customer base which you are free to plunder. The different time zones are never a factor, because your store is open 24/7/365. The tools that come along with any online site, help you analyze customer trends as well. This will give you enough feedback to know the profiles of your customer groups. This in turn will help you fine tune your website in order to focus more on those groups.

It is never too late to start your online venture. Even if there are a hundred different websites that sell the same product that you do, you can still be successful. All that is required to do so, is to find that unique selling point that sets you apart.

Connections - Connections are as important in the virtual world as they are in the real world. In ecommerce getting traffic to flow to your website is very, very important. One of the ways you can do this is by working out deals with other websites. Generally this is known as affiliate marketing. This involves you compensating the person who sends traffic your way. Usually this remuneration is based on a percentage value. For example, if a person buys something from you for $20 and you have agreed to give 5 percent of the sale value to you affiliate, then all you have to do is give 50 cents to that person. Where this becomes lucrative for both of you is when there is a large volume of traffic that is sent from your affiliate of which a large amount makes purchases. For example, 100,000 visitors sent of which 20,000 make a $20 purchase each. This works out to $400,000 in total sales and $20,000 to your affiliate.

Optimize - Search Engine Optimization is a key factor in getting visibility on search engines. There is a lot you can do with your website as well as other methods you can employ to maximize your SEO. Some of the other methods include article marketing, social bookmarking, forum marketing, etc. In other words, you have to try to get your website mentioned in as many different online environments as possible. The more links a search engine finds pointing back you, the better your ranking will be on a search result page.

In ecommerce, your business can be at three levels.

1. Ahead of the game.
2. On par.
3. Not even on the radar.

While your final goal should be to get to the first level, your immediate goal should be to get to the second level as fast as possible. Doing this is not as hard as you think.

Social Media - Facebook and twitter are a big phenomenon at the moment. One of the simple secrets in ecommerce is learning to take advantage of emerging and popular technologies. The two social networking modes mentioned above will give you access to a wide market. It even allows you to target certain demographics and concentrate on them. Use this method wisely and you can easily get some great publicity and awareness. This method is also great for driving traffic to your website and to keep an open dialog with your customers.

Video - In terms of video marketing, there is no other place than YouTube to turn to. That website has firmly established itself as the go-to place to find anything from tutorials on PC hardware installations to cross stitching to rearing freshwater fish. So it makes sense to put up information about you and your company there. The videos can include product demonstrations, walkthroughs of the office, details on the manufacturing process, etc. However, your video won’t get popular on YouTube automatically and this is not your goal at all. The idea is to create awareness and promote the product and the company by using video as an enhancement. If you have done your social media work properly this shouldn’t be a problem at all.

It is no doubt that today’s online business world is a cutthroat industry. If you can do it well, someone else will do it better. So where does the business come from? How do you make money? The answer, as it is with many successful brick-and-mortar businesses, is repeat customers.
Repeat customers do not come to a store for the pricing. They come there because they feel comfortable and because they trust the store. This is exactly what is needed for an online store to be successful. Amazon may not be the best place to shop online, but it gets unmatched numbers in direct traffic. This is due to a successful and long standing brand building system. This, along with good experiences and word of mouth, have gone along to build a loyal brand following.

Faced between an unknown website selling a Nikon DSLR camera for $375 and Amazon selling it for $425, customers will often choose the latter even though it is priced higher. This highlights the need for every online marketer to strive towards the human relationship element more than ever.
Don’t bother with the lowest of low prices tactic. This does not work anymore as many online vendors differ by only a few dollars. Focus more on the value you can add to the product. Increased security in the transaction phase is definite plus, as is a 24 hour hotline service. Although it is not an easy task to build brand loyalty, it is the most rewarding of methods in the long term and will ensure that your business does not turn into a fly by night operation.