eCommerce - The global marketplace called Internet
Internet opportunities grow with the number of Internet
users. The world-wide-web is globally pervasive. Internet has attracted
more users in more countries than any other communication tool. Even
though it most concentrated in US and Europe, most growth over the next
three to five years is expected to take place in Asia and Latin America.
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Website Advantages
Cost
Compare the cost of a small ad in a magazine or how
much you could spend for printing and mailing catalogs to a website on the
internet.
Access
With magazines, catalogues and any other ad media, you
are limited to a specific geographic area, people all over the world can
have access to the info that you put on-line (any info.). Websites can
carry a much larger amount of info.
| Marketability |
- Visually show your products
- Customers, partners can access your info. immediately
- Provide up-to-date information about your business
- Interactivity – get your customers’ feedback immediately,
customers are able to browse, find and shop, as well as communicate
any concerns, complains or questions
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| Things that you can do from your web site: |
- Post photos of your products
- Publish monthly newsletter
- Sell online
- Have people e-mail you
- Obtain info. about your on-line visitors
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Tips for creating
a successful website
| Designing your page: |
- Rule of thumb: 80% education and 20% marketing
- Make it intuitive, simple to navigate
- Give each page a short, unique, descriptive title s
- Use bulleted lists to make it easy to catch the key points and
benefits
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| Promoting your page: |
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1. Submit
your site to search engines:
- Alta Vista
- AllTheWeb
- Excite
- Google Search
- Hot Bot
- Infoseek
- Lycos
- Open Directory Project
- Yahoo
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2. Trade reciprocal links with other sites
Trading reciprocal links means that you approach other
sites asking them to place a link to you in their site in exchange for a
link in your site. Naturally you would want to approach busy sites that attract visitors with similar interests to your own. One good way to find
such sites would be to go to a search engine and type in one of your
keywords. The sites that appear at the top of the search results page
would be good prospects.
3. Swap or buy banner advertisements on other sites
As opposed to text links (#3, above), banner ads
deliver short-term bursts of visitors to your site. That can be expensive,
but there are services that swap banner space on your site in exchange for
displaying your banners on other sites. Swapped banners usually generate
less-qualified traffic than targeted banner ads, but they cost much less.
Some say that the Internet is as important to the
marketplace as the printing press or electricity. Others say that it
increases efficiency, but is not revolutionary. At the time electricity
was invented, people spoke of it in terms relevant to the era such as
horsepower or Candles. Today everybody agrees that electricity
revolutionized economic activity, and not only that but human life in
general. All I want to point out is that by the end of 2005 more than two
billion human beings will be linked by networked systems of mobile
communications devices. Internet is contagious! Humans will talk. Humans
will exchange messages. …A slow-down of Internet usage might be observed
in US, Europe and Japan due to saturation. The majority of future
opportunities though will be created in the developing countries, or will
be targeted to audiences there.
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