How retailers are selling online
Merchants Are Ending Up Being E-tailers
E-tailers are just retailers who use the web to offer their goods/services to their customers, instead of real shops. There are two kinds of e-tailer, one category whereby e-commerce is the only operation undertaken 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 overall marketing method, whilst still having a physical, `traditionals` tore, where consumers can still enter and buy the good/service. Examples of this kind of e-tailer are Dixons, Tesco and WH Smith.
Those business who run simply as ecommerce stores are able to achieve higher revenue margins, due to their established and functional costs being much lower than that of a traditional shop. They do not need to pay any rent on a structure– whilst they still often have to pay for their Web Hosting, the expense is much less, there are no included rates for such overheads as water, electrical power, gas, and so on.
Labour expenses are substantially less, where someone might reasonably run a site, plan products and address enquiries by means of email; this is unlikely to be the case where a full time store is included.
On top of these price differences, an online shop can be viewed/accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from only one location. Buyers in China, for instance, can acquire items 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 actual store!
It is becoming necessary for retailers to have at least some type of web based gain access to, whether this is a site where goods/services can actually be bought, or simply educational, so clients can preview items and collect info on the shop in general (for instance, their nearby merchant or company phone number/contact details) prior to they visit.
E-tailers must recognize that it is insufficient to merely have a visually pleasing website, which has lots of product details together with excellent pictures and comprehensive item reviews; this is all well and good, however useless without sufficient understanding of Online search engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to target the essential traffic towards the site.
Even something as simple as a proper domain name can have a big difference on the variety of individuals visiting your site– they must be kept small and concise, preferably without a hyphen, as people tend to forget these and this could lead to them being sent out directly to your competitor! Word of mouth advertising is valuable, so by using an address that sounds exactly how it is spelt can work marvels for spreading out positive details.
SEO and SEM practices change routinely, and there is no guarantee that any particular approaches will work. The very best method to make sure a good ranking on the online search engine is to use an `specialist` like Digital Cornerstone to work full time at increasing the possibilities of traffic being directed to your website. Whilst many web designers may declare to be adept at SEO, there a reasonably few workers currently in the UK with any genuine in depth understanding of the subject, so it is worthwhile investing the additional time/money on making sure your company is well represented within the search engine rankings, and chasing after that very important # 1 spot.