Sellers Are Becoming E-tailers
E-tailers are merely retailers who use the internet to offer their goods/services to their customers, instead of actual shops. There are 2 kinds of e-tailer, one category whereby e-commerce is the only operation carried out by the business; examples of such organisations consist of E-Bay, Amazon, and Dell.
The other type consists of e-commerce as part of their total marketing strategy, whilst still having a physical, `traditionals` tore, whereby consumers can still enter and buy the good/service. Examples of this type of e-tailer are Dixons, Tesco and WH Smith.
Those business who run purely as ecommerce shops have the ability to achieve higher revenue margins, due to their set up and functional costs being much lower than that of a traditional shop. They do not need to pay any lease on a building– whilst they still frequently have to spend for their Web Hosting, the cost is much less, there are no added rates for such overheads as water, electricity, gas, and so on.
Labour expenses are significantly less, where someone could realistically run a website, bundle goods and address enquiries by means of email; this is unlikely to be the case where a full time store is involved.
On top of these cost distinctions, an online shop can be viewed/accessed 24 hr a day, 7 days a week, from only one area. Shoppers in China, for instance, can acquire items at the touch of a button from a UK based e-tailer, but would struggle to make the 10,000 mile round trip to go to the actual store!
It is becoming vital for merchants to have at least some form of internet based access, whether this is a website whereby goods/services can actually be acquired, or simply informative, so customers can preview items and gather information on the store in general (for instance, their nearby merchant or business phone number/contact details) prior to they visit.
E-tailers should realize that it is insufficient to simply have an aesthetically pleasing website, which has lots of item information together with great photos and in-depth item reviews; this is all well and good, but ineffective without enough understanding of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to target the essential traffic towards the website.
Even something as easy as a suitable domain can have a big distinction on the number of people visiting your site– they must be kept little and concise, preferably without a hyphen, as individuals tend to forget these and this could result in them being sent straight to your competitor! Word of mouth marketing is invaluable, so by using an address that sounds precisely how it is spelt can work wonders for spreading favorable information.
SEO and SEM practices alter regularly, and there is no assurance that any specific approaches will work. The best way to ensure an excellent ranking on the search engines is to use an `expert` like Digital Cornerstone to work full-time at increasing the possibilities of traffic being directed to your website. Whilst numerous web designers might declare to be skilled at SEO, there a relatively few workers currently in the UK with any real in depth knowledge of the topic, so it is worthwhile investing the extra time/money on making sure your business is well represented within the online search engine rankings, and going after that all important # 1 spot.