Have you been missing your sales target for more than a year? Are your competitors taking away most of your potential customers? Or are you perhaps simply looking for a bigger market base to sustain your business? One of the most innovative electronic sales and marketing solutions for all types of businesses could be your answer: e-commerce.
E-commerce is a one-stop online solution where businessmen like you can sell products, check inventories, promote products and services and communicate with other companies to manage your supply chain.
- Benefits of e-commerce
In 2012, a medium-sized media company based in Ohio reported almost double income growth from the previous year when they improved their 20 online stores. It claimed that e-commerce was now their fastest-growing business.
E-commerce provides more benefits than just accepting orders. It has all the capabilities to offer a full back office support to companies and a comprehensive shopping experience to customers. The key areas of e-commerce are customer service, operations, technical systems, online merchandising and marketing. The media company exploited all these in their websites, and because of which they were able to build and accommodate more services.
E-commerce customer support provides online assistance and tutorials anytime a customer needs them. Because of the inherently fast-paced nature of e-commerce, customers are able to have their issues addressed much quicker than traditional methods.
Shopping cart is one of the most important applications in an e-commerce site. It is what customers use to view catalogs and make their purchases. It is also what connects them to the back operations and technical systems of the website. Not a few companies compete for customers by how their shopping carts look and perform. To get the best of both worlds, many of them go for custom module development and template installation.
Successful e-commerce sites make use of other features such as online content and blogs that contain tips and stories related to their line of business. This makes them more than just a shopping site, but a destination site as well.
Additionally, innovative marketing applications such as autoresponders, ad trafficking and affiliate programs help to draw traffic to a website. Businesses that are content on just selling merchandise and using minimal marketing features may find it hard to maintain and expand their clientele.
- E-commerce gains in 2012
E-commerce has been helping many businesses find new success by making sales and marketing activities cheaper and more efficient. As more and more customers move away from physical stores to retail websites, companies are introduced to new opportunities for growth. In 2012 e-commerce sales in North America grew by 13.9% to $364.66 billion, compared to 2011’s $301.69 billion. This was according to eMarketer.com, one of the world’s leading provider of information related to trends in e-commerce and digital marketing. Furthermore they expect growth to top $409.05 billion by the end of 2013.
ComScore, another leading e-commerce analytics firm, estimated 2013’s first quarter retail sales in the US to be at $50.2 billion. Evidently there is great potential for growth for any company in e-commerce. This is supported by the fact that more people are shifting to doing business online not only in the US, but also across the Pacific.
If you are looking for ways to amplify the results of your sales and marketing strategies, try e-commerce, one of the hottest and most effective sales and marketing solutions for any business to date.