E-commerce Sites

A web commerce specialist recently published the opinion that, if you're in retail and you're not on the web yet, you won't be around much longer. Sounds about right to me. But what is this "being on the web". If you're a small bookstore, does it mean you have to set up a site to rival Amazon? If you're a small auction house, does it mean you go up against eBay? And where do you get the millions these sites are losing every year?Are you expected to just hold a closing sale and quietly disappear?

It turns out that there are a few things favouring your small neighbourhood business over the big web-based sites. Sure, they don't have to pay for an often relatively inexpensive store front and they don't have to hire lots of sales staff at comparatively low wages. No, they have to have lots of super-expensive high tech equipment in high-quality, air-conditioned offices with lots of high-cost telephone lines, back-up power and redundancies. They have to hire expensive, highly-skilled programmers and engineers with high turnover because they're always leaving for even better paying jobs. Running a huge web site is not cheap.

Ok, so they don't have a cost advantage. But they have volume, selection, speed etc. Your business is small, you've got a limited selection and the customers have to come down to the store to buy - who's ahead?

As I said, you have a few advantages. Most of the big web sites are not or only marginally profitable. I've designed a few small commercial web sites which have all made a profit. They were all distinguished by their simplicity and by offering only one or a small selection of products. The key is convenience of use. Within a few clicks you have seen the product description, the price and are ready to order. Why browse a site when you can go directly to the URL that has what you want? On top of that, a substantial percentage of customers still want to go and physically buy the product. They are one of your local target market segments.

Now you can see the picture. Put up a small site highlighting your best, most successful products. Keep it simple and advertise the site locally. You're using the web to leverage your inherent advantages and you'll be successful.

A small pre-built e-commerce site goes for about $100.00 per month plus commissions. Too expensive? Try BigStep for a free site. No catches that I've been able to find except that you have to use their credit card company if you want to take credit cards.

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