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BeOnTheNet's
Electronic Commerce |
Volume 1 Number 6 August 1998
ISSN: 1520-8095
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Read "20 Reasons for your business to be on the Internet" at http://www.beonthenet.com/20reasons.html
In This Issue:
The Government Wants You To Have an E-mail Address.
What do Online Shoppers Want Most? And how to make your web site satisfy them.
New Survey Shows Explosive Growth in Utilization of Web Sites By Businesses
New Study predicts that Home shopping via the Web will grow ten-fold by 2002!
The Government Wants You To Have an E-mail Address.
The Clinton administration wants all Americans to have an e-mail address to go along with their street address and has asked the US Postal Service to deliver the project's technology . The idea is to connect physical and electronic addresses. Then a company or government agency, for example, could send bills or bulletins to your electronic mailbox as well as your home.
The administration said the move would "accelerate and universalize the growth of electronic commerce," according to the Postal Service.
The administration is looking ahead to the day when most Americans have access to the Internet or at least e-mail from their homes. "Everybody would have an e-mail address, and for those who cannot access it right now, it would be downloaded and sent to them through the mail" so that they could use it at a library or other facility with Internet access.
What do Online Shoppers Want Most? And how to make your web site satisfy them.
According to 9th WWW User Survey from the Graphic, Visualization, & Usability Center's at Georgia Tech GVU9, at :
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/
here is what online shoppers want most:
- Variety. Give them more choices than they can get from that store at the mall.
- One of the major reasons for the success of Amazon.com and CDNow.com is the extensive "Back lists" of both companies. These "Back list" items are the real profit generators as well. Customers know that they can go into these sites and "let their fingers do the walking" for a few minutes and find virtually any title they want. Sure beats trolling through one store after another looking for that particular book or CD!
- So be sure that your "Virtual store" has an extensive "inventory" on its shelves. It will cost you only a "pittance" to put an item up for sale. You may not even have to keep the item in inventory at all. You may be able to get your suppliers to "drop ship" the item for you . Or supply you with it quickly enough to make the sale and deliver in a timely fashion.
- Security. 76% of those surveyed say the vendor's reputation -- not technology -- is the biggest factor in their decision to provide credit card information.
- Online vendors must create a credible web site that makes the customer feel secure in doing business with that vendor. If you have a real store put pictures of it on your web site. If you are representing one or two manufacturers trade on their reputations. Put up pictures of their manufacturing facilities. Include satisfied customer testimonials in your web site!
- Easy to use ordering. You would be amazed at the number of e-commerce sites, including lots of big and famous ones, who get this one wrong. Make it easy for people to find and buy the merchandise on your web site.
- Quality information about products. Internet users are inherently "information junkies". 68% of Web users log on to do product research at least several times a month. And 8% log on several times a day. Give them all the information they want about the product - remember that they can't touch it and feel it. Try to develop copy similar to what you find in mail order catalogs that virtually leaps off the page and says "buy me". But remember that on the net you don't have the space limitations that a mail order catalog has, so give them plenty of information to make their purchase decision.
- Reliability. The reliability and credibility of the seller is of paramount importance. Would you have a problem buying on the net from the US Post Office or Macy's? Of course not - If you don't have that kind of Brand Name presence devote space in your web site to telling the customer all about yourself!
- Low prices. Web users believe that Internet stores have a lower overhead than stores in the real world. And they expect prices to reflect it.
- Fast delivery. To tap into impulse buying, you've got to get the goods there faster, too. Our own experience with online shopping sites, such as www.salami.com , shows that an unbelievable percentage of shoppers want 2nd day or overnight delivery and are prepared to pay substantial premiums to get it quickly.
New Survey Shows Explosive Growth in Utilization of Web Sites By Businesses
A survey published in the August Issue of Business Marketing showed that the top Business-to-business sites are increasing their utilization of the web and the functionality of their web sites since the last ranking of b-2-b web sites by the magazine in November of 1997 they have found the following changes:
- 66% of firms take orders and payments online a major increase from the 46% of firms who did so last November.
- 96% of companies use their web sites to provide customer service and support.
- 86% are using the Internet to distribute product, such as software a 10% increase since last year.
- 76% of the companies are using their web site to recruit new employees.
New Study predicts that Home shopping via the Web will grow tenfold by 2002!
A joint study by International Data Corp. (IDC) and RelevantKnowledge, Inc predicts that Home shoppers will spend $54 million online by the year 2002, that's more than ten times the amount spent in 1997 by people shopping at home this explosive growth will be fueled by an increase of home net users from 30 million to 102 million by the year 2002. The joint Web Usage Trends 1998 report says the percentage of those users making ecommerce purchases from home will grow from 36 percent to 50 percent in that same period.
You can now get a Master's Degree in E-commerce
National University, located in San Diego, Calif., added a master's degree in e-commerce to their curriculum. Wile many other schools throughout the country -- and even around the world -- are beginning to offer training and education in e-commerce, where knowledge is still being gained in the trenches. This may be the countries first graduate program.
Short Notes - A collection of interesting Internet E-Commerce quotes
Dell is now selling $5,000,00.00 worth of computers a day 7 days a week on their web site and reports ( August 1998) that those numbers have been sustained through the last two months
GVU9 Survey reports that 42+% percent of Internet users have household income of over $50,000 per year with 21+% reporting income in excess of $75,000 per year! Obviously this group has money to spend
GVU9 Survey reports that 47.5% of Internet users are in the 31 - 49 year age range.
According to Active-Media the number of online merchants doubled in 1997 and will grow to 1.6 Million by 2002. What are you waiting for?
According to emarketeer ( http://www.emarketer.com ) "eStats estimates that roughly 40% of all medium to large-size businesses have a web site, and another 20% will get one by the year's end. " Are you online yet? Visit us at www.beonthenet.com and get a free consultation.
" eStats estimates total online consumer revenues were $1.5 billion in 1997."
What's selling online? In general, the more difficult and time-consuming it is to find and purchase a product , the more likely it is that consumers will prefer to use the Internet versus standard physical means for their shopping. Ask yourself "how easy would it be to find your kind of merchandise in a city with a population of less than 50,000?" 80% of the population of the US lives in areas less densely populated. So while you may have many competitors in your geographical region you may have very few of them in cyberspace. And you may very well be the only source of your kind of merchandise for people in the hinterlands!
That's it for this month. -Gene McMahon
