Business Strategy – E-commerce Online Stores

The internet in principle is no different than any typical town main street. There are plenty of different small, medium and large stores to choose from, some are well known names and some not so well known. There are also plenty of information centres, recreation and food and beverage facilities all designed to improve the shopping experience. For the majority of proactive retailers however, the internet is now established as being by far the biggest profit centre of all, contributing the lion’s share of corporate gross revenues and yet the online main street store costs far less to develop, far less to maintain and far less to stock than even the smallest traditional main street store. However this unprecedented success has still been achieved largely by accident. At the beginning of the internet revolution most companies viewed the internet as being a source of new enquiries achieved in much the same way as a main street bill board or advertising on TV. The idea of using their corporate web sites as an online store has very much evolved over time. Now consumers can purchase anything that they can usually purchase within their local town main street online via the internet as well. This can invariably be done quicker, cheaper and more efficiently too. So what is the difference between good and bad online retailers? Any good marketing expert will always advise you to feature your product as prominently as possible within any advertising or public relations campaign that you undertake. The internet is no different. Visitors to Harrods in London tend to go there for the Harrods experience. Customers expect in many cases to pay slightly more for products which they could purchase elsewhere for less, but the difference is considered worthwhile because you are purchasing the product from Harrods. The same is true of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdales. Creating the Harrods experience online has proven to be virtually impossible however and the company are still struggling to achieve this goal. Visitors to Harrods online expect to visit recognizable departments in the same way that they would if they visited the store. Providing the same products online is not sufficient in this instance because the same customers would not be prepared to pay inflated prices for products online via the company’s web site if they are not also being provided with the Harrods Experience. Conversely Amazon has done very well indeed online, although the success has not been achieved without problems along the way, but these problems were caused by too much success and consequential delays with supply chain management and distribution. The main reason why Amazon has succeeded ultimately is because it is actually very easy for them to provide customers with a better experience than they would normally have in a main street bookshop or DVD store and they can also provide the products at a more competitive price. Book shop and DVD customers do not tend to be browsers like Harrods customers. They tend to walk into the store with a product in mind and the frustration of searching for it through endless stocks of other books and DVDs has been unceremoniously stripped away by Amazon. Not only that but they have been able to ensure that almost all of your favourite author’s books are already in stock, which tends to increase sales revenue and subsequently purchasing power considerably. It is a good example of where impulse buying can actually be more powerful over the internet than in a typical main street store. Another example of this is Tesco. Always leading the market by determining their customers needs and buying patterns in advance, Tesco has developed their online store in such a way that it more-or-less replicates the shopping experience of a typical main street store. All of the products are still decentralized into clearly recognizable departments. You can still virtually pick up the product and read the ingredients, compare health information, browse through alternative products, put items into your basket and then change your mind and take them out again. You can review the total cost of your daily shopping as you go along and adjust this without the embarrassment of having to face a check out assistant. Supermarket shopping tends to be laborious and hard work, particularly for elderly customers, pregnant customers, or customers who work long hours or who have small children. So it has been easy to strip out all of these frustrations and add in numerous benefits when shopping online. Their web site database remembers your last orders which saves you time can you can still take advantage of special offers. You can have your goods delivered to your home and customers will invariably have the time and the patience to browse around for other products which may be of use. In an industry where profit margins are small and competition is fierce the internet has effectively provided the industry with the supermarket store of the future and it is not impossible to envisage a time when their typical main street or out-of-town counterparts will no longer be necessary. The Academy of Business Strategy has succeeded in developing and facilitating education online, where many mainstream business schools and universities have not. The reason for this is quite simple. ABS provides programmes require the practical integration of academic theory as an integral part of the qualification process and as such students tend to be in full-time employment while training. Many students also travel internationally with work while training as well and as such it is much more convenient for students to be able to study online without having to carry their study material and project studies around with them. You can then make the study experience more interactive, more enjoyable, less daunting and more fun. Individual students can also plan and manage their own study time. Contrary to Harrods for example, ABS can therefore provide its customers with a better experience online than it would otherwise be able to in a classroom on campus. The general message here is quite clear. Those retailers who are able to replicate their typical main street store customer experience within their store online and are then able to add additional benefits from shopping online tend to be those who will succeed. It is not sufficient merely to offer the same products online at a discounted price. Innovation can also play a part. I remember as a child being impressed by a particular department store merely because they had installed escalators. Well I had never seen any before! I thought that this store was very modern and even to this day think of them as being at the forefront of innovation. The brand image has therefore been sustained merely because they have invested in innovative development to improve the consumer experience. This can also be achieved online by being at the forefront of innovative technology, which directly impacts upon user experience. This requires significant and consistent investment but it is still far less costly than developing and managing a typical main street store. The key success factors when developing online stores are therefore as follows: 1.Make sure that your products or services feature prominently. They should always be the stars of the show. 2.Remember to replicate the benefits of your traditional main street store online. 3.Be innovative with the development and management of your online user experience. 4.Your online store should offer additional benefits apart from the most obvious one of cost savings. 5.Be acutely aware of whether you would in fact be able to improve your consumer experience by having an online store, or whether you would be making it worse. Products or services that are considered to be necessities by consumers always tend to do better online, as opposed to those that are considered to be luxury items. This does not of course mean that benefit cannot be achieved online with luxury items, but the e-commerce strategy does need to be approached from a completely different perspective.

A Strategy For Coming Up With A Great Book Title

Go into a bookstore and browse through the titles in the bestseller section. Book publishing companies hire high-priced people to come up with a title or headline, because book publishing is a big business; therefore a lot of contemplation goes into making their titles as commercially-viable as possible. Many well-known and highly successful books started out with other titles. According to Dan Poynter, the father of self-publishing:

Tomorrow is Another Day became Gone With The Wind.
Blossom and the Flower became Peyton Place.
The Rainbow Book became Free Stuff For Kids.
The Squash Book became the Zucchini Book.
John Thomas and Lady Jane became Lady Chatterlys Lover.
Trimalchio in West Egg became Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby.
Something that Happened became Steinbecks Of Mice and Men.
Catch 18 became Catch 22

While you are at the store, notice how the other browsers pick up a book, scan the front and back cover, and then put it down again before going on to another book. The whole process takes about two seconds each. Thats all of the time you have to make an impression on a potential reader. In those two seconds, you must appeal literally to three of the five senses that human beings have, sight, speech, and hearing, and figuratively to the last two, touch and smell.

1) Sight: When someone first comes in contact with your books title, it is usually by seeing it on the front cover. So your title must be aesthetically appealing.

2) Speech: If a person stumbles over the words, it will add to the difficult in marketing your book. Even if you are writing only for family members and friends, and you are giving away your book for free, there is still an element of marketing.

3) Sound: Business philosopher Jim Rhone says in order to have effective communication, you must Have something good to say, say it well and say it often. Your title will be heard often, but will it be good and will it be said well?

4) Touch: Touch also means to relate to or to have an influence on. Figuratively, your title must allow itself to touch or be touched by being able to relate to your readers or have some type of influence on them.

5) Smell: Your title should figuratively give off an aroma. In other words it should project a distinctive quality or atmosphere. If the aroma the title gives off suggests that very little thought or concern was given to it, people will assume that the rest of the book is the same way.

On a recent Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller list, out of 20 books, one had a one-word title; five had two-word titles; four had three-word titles; five had four-word titles; three had five-word titles; one had a seven-word title and one had an eight-word title. The point is, most honchos at major publishing companies believe that the simpler/shorter the title, the better. None of the titles were complex.

SEO Services Most Cost Effective Search Engine Marketing Strategy

Today every business is going to be online and want to make its online presence because of the online users are increasing, and in the past few years online customers of goods and services are increasing tremendously. This is because of Internet marketing convenient and time saving process.

SEO is the one of the most important marketing strategy for the online business because of its cost effectiveness and result oriented service. Almost all the user’s research well before purchasing anything in the market, for this they rely on the search engines must. Search engines gives you the result related to your query and the best answer suited are displayed by the search engines.

SEO services are the best service that will keep your business live in search engines. You can get business only if your site will come in top 10 of the first page of the search engines; otherwise you have to depend on the other source than search engines.

Search engine marketing is one of the most important marketing strategies because of its reach to the user and cost effectiveness. You can also do PPC ( Pay per click services ), banner advertising, blog marketing and much more online strategy that you can apply to boost your business. For PPC you have to pay to the search engines for every click that users come to your site.

SEO is the organic strategy to get the customers to your site without paying anything to the search engines. You only have to pay to your SEO marketer for doing on page and off page, content optimization, URL optimization, image optimization etc on the site.

Jake Barrett is a experienced online business strategy maker and have good experience working with Website Development and SEM companies.

The Advantages Of Internet Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing

To grow globally is the dream of every businessman. A person who starts business on his own effort should need strong determination and positive efforts to make his business successful. Even a well established business needs right efforts to make his business /product/ services successful.

For success of any business marketing policy plays an important role. To increase your business growth, you need strong marketing team with knowledge of thorough marketing strategy.

The marketing department of any company can choose type of marketing depends on the business / service type, objectives, target market, capability, efficiency and budget. Selecting Traditional Marketing or Online Marketing very much depends on all above factors.

With change in time, marketing also affected positively with advance technology. Internet Marketing or Online Marketing or E-marketing have added thrill in marketing professionals. The popularity of Internet Marketing is emergent very rapidly in all type of business. But before start adopting traditional marketing or online marketing one should fully aware of its marketing strategy and its outcomes.

What is Traditional Marketing?
Generally the basic of any marketing is creating new customers and sustain existing customer. It is a task to create awareness of consumers in product / company / services by making their brand popular using various marketing techniques. For successful marketing, quality product and customer services are very important. The other important factors are demography, market needs, target market and many more factors require for complete market research to build successful marketing strategy.

Marketing is an intelligent and creative technique that includes advertising, distribution and selling. Understanding customers requirement and fulfill their needs is the base of success for any marketers. The marketing mix comprises of Product, Price, Promotion and Placement.

Traditional marketing is very costly. It needs long time and budget to get success. Till the date it is consider as proven marketing technique for promoting product or company. In traditional marketing the various media are used for marketing products such as Television, Radio, Print [newspaper, magazines etc.], Outdoor and many other media. Traditional Marketing is very effective, time-tested and proven way to make business or product popular.

The disadvantage of traditional marketing is it is very costly and need more time for to get success. In case of local marketing, traditional marketing is an ideal for product promotion but on international level it is consider as most expensive medium.

You can also use partly or complete Internet Marketing Services while using traditional marketing. Internet Marketing helps to boost your marketing campaign.

What is Internet Marketing?
Internet Marketing or Online Marketing is the medium to promote product or service through internet. The marketing strategy for any business becomes same for traditional marketing or online marketing such as all factors of market research. Today, Internet Marketing is considered as very faster and economical medium for promoting product and business growth.

Internet Marketing strategies covers a various services like search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, SEO copy writing, web development, pay per click (PPC) advertising, banner advertising, directory submission, blog writing and many more.

Read more on Internet Marketing

Importance of Internet Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing

Internet Marketing
Traditional Marketing

Internet Marketing is very economical and fast way to promote product.
Traditional Marketing is very expensive and takes more time to promote product.

Internet Marketing is very useful for promoting product globally [without any additional cost].
It is very expensive and time consuming process for traditional marketing.

In Internet Marketing, you can also work with less employs [you can take more work with less manpower].
In Traditional Marketing, you need more employment with more man power which in terms requires spending more money.

In online business you can sell or buy product 24 X 7, round the year without employing any person.
That is not possible in traditional marketing.

Paying Professional and Experienced Internet Marketing Company is very economical.
Paying renowned Advertising and Marketing Company is very costly.

While comparing both marketing, the outcomes shows that in todays fast growing world, for fast business growth in most economical way, Internet Marketing or Web Marketing is an ideal way to make successful business locally as well as internationally.

If you want to expand your business and increase your profit and if you have low marketing budget than Internet marketing is the best way to accomplish all your marketing objectives.

Before selecting either traditional marketing or internet marketing, through market research is very important for successful marketing campaign.

Internet Marketing Company can offer best and effective marketing strategies as per your business needs. They can help in promoting and increase your business very efficiently within your budget. You can definitely get return of your marketing investment in very short period.

Take advantage of your business using Online Marketing / Internet Marketing from Experienced and professional Indian Internet Marketing Service Company that can provide and fulfill all your marketing needs to give strength and success to your business. Contact at

Using an Internet Strategy as Part of Your Business Management Strategy

As any good technology consultants in Vancouver will tell you, no matter how small or large an organization is, it can increase productivity significantly by developing an Internet Strategy that includes the use of online software, business apps, intranets, extranets, and social media to reduce costs, improve work flow and increase sales. Why Online Software for Business is Important Online Business software is essential because it centralizes vast volumes of data in one location, while allowing access to this information by the authorise personnel, whether it be sales data, production data, budgeting data etc. Integrated business apps facilitate communication and work flow between departments and teams allowing them to share vital information seamlessly and quickly. Administration, accounting, financial planning and Management strategy also becomes a lot easier with applications such as the Google Apps setup. Such applications allow for a more accurate understanding of business performance, via reports that are easily generated. As such business planning, budgeting and improvement plans become more credible. Why Internet Software is Important An Internet advisor or consultant can guide you on the appropriate Internet software for your particular firm. In large organisations, it may be necessary to monitor Internet activity of employees, to ensure that they are not wasting precious time on non-business related activity. Smaller companies sometimes do not pay attention to security of their data and information and appropriate online software can assist with keeping this secure. In large organisations, Internet software can allow data and people to be available online 24 hours a day, so when sales executives for example travel to another city or country, they can have any information they require at the tips of their fingers, by simply logging into the network or having the required information emailed to them immediately. This online business strategy saves time, brings down costs and increases the chance of more business taking place. Implementing Business Software Your organisation can use readily available Internet Software such as the Google Apps setup that is easily obtained and can be quickly understood. Using an application like this, which is utilised by several businesses around the world, also means better integration. Sometimes though, certain organisations – especially those who offer highly specialised services – may require customised online software to be created. In such cases technology consultants can recommend appropriate software developers, who will design such internet solutions based on your company’s industry, size, growth potential and other such specifications.

Brett Price is an expert author for writing articles and currently working for suite-apps.com in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada) and already written so many articles on Online software, Internet Software , Work Flow,Google Apps Setup,Internet Advisor, Management strategic, Online Business Strategy,Intranet, Management strategy , Extranet, Technology Consultants Vancouver. >.