Retailers Are Ending Up Being E-tailers
E-tailers are just merchants who use the web to offer their goods/services to their consumers, instead of actual stores. There are 2 types of e-tailer, one classification whereby e-commerce is the only operation undertaken by the company; examples of such organisations include E-Bay, Amazon, and Dell.
The other type includes e-commerce as part of their overall marketing method, whilst still having a physical, `bricks and mortar` tore, whereby clients can still enter and acquire the good/service. Examples of this type of e-tailer are Dixons, Tesco and WH Smith.
Those companies who run purely as ecommerce shops have the ability to attain higher earnings margins, due to their established and functional expenses being much lower than that of a conventional store. They do not have to pay any rent on a structure– whilst they still often need to spend for their Webhosting, the expense is much less, there are no included rates for such overheads as water, electricity, gas, etc.
Labour costs are significantly less, where someone might realistically run a website, package items and respond to queries through e-mail; this is not likely to be the case where a full time shop is involved.
On top of these price distinctions, an online store can be viewed/accessed 24 hr a day, 7 days a week, from only one area. Consumers in China, for instance, can purchase products at the touch of a button from a UK based e-tailer, however would have a hard time to make the 10,000 mile big salami to go to the real shop!
It is ending up being necessary for retailers to have at least some type of internet based access, whether this is a site where goods/services can in fact be acquired, or purely educational, so clients can preview products and collect info on the shop in general (for instance, their closest seller or company phone number/contact details) before they go to.
E-tailers should recognize that it is not enough to simply have a visually pleasing website, which has lots of item information together with terrific pictures and in-depth product reviews; this is all well and good, but useless without enough understanding of Online search engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to target the necessary traffic towards the website.
Even something as basic as a proper domain name can have a huge distinction on the variety of people visiting your site– they must be kept little and succinct, ideally without a hyphen, as individuals tend to forget these and this might result in them being sent out directly to your rival! Word of mouth marketing is valuable, so by using an address that sounds exactly how it is spelt can work wonders for spreading out favorable details.
SEO and SEM practices change routinely, and there is no assurance that any specific techniques will work. The very best method to make sure a good ranking on the search engines is to use an `expert` like Digital Cornerstone to work full-time at increasing the chances of traffic being directed to your website. Whilst many web designers may claim to be skilled at SEO, there a fairly few workers presently in the UK with any real in depth understanding of the topic, so it is worthwhile spending the additional time/money on making sure your company is well represented within the online search engine rankings, and going after that all important # 1 spot.