* Ecommerce Guide

This site at http://ecommerce.internet.com/ is a great general online resource. The articles provide insight into what is happening with ecommerce right now. Recent articles as of this writing are: “Dot-Com Sales Lower This Year”, “Amazon Sales Jump 21%”, and “Payment Made Easy (online merchant accounts)”.

* Big Picture Cyberatlas Statistics Toolbox

This site (http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/stats_toolbox/article) has recent stats on Internet usage, ecommerce, demographics, advertising, and more. This is a real treasure trove of valuable data. Here are some of reports you can find here: “Top US ISPs by Subscriber”; “Online Populations”; “Hispanic Ownership of Selected Home Media Technologies”; “Lycos Top 50 sites for week ending June 29, 2002”; “Surfer Traffic, May 2001 to May 2002”; “Newspaper Site Traffic”; “2001 Worldwide PDA Shipments”. As you can see, there is tons of information here that can help you plan a marketing campaign, or roll out a new product or service.

* eMarketer.com

This site provides excellent reports, but alas they are not free. However, for a reasonable price you can get highly focused and detailed reports for any segment and topic you are interested in…check it out.

This is just a quick list to get you started. You can always do a Google search on ‘market research’ or ‘statistics ’. By way, many of links mentioned in this article can be found on our Resources page at http://www.profitmonkey.com/resources.html

Michael Martone is the webmaster at ProfitMonkey.com and is also the editor of the free newsletter Ebiz Edge. Additional articles on eBusiness and a Free welcome basket are available at http://www.profitmonkey.com/newsletter.html

And for many adults this is an experience worth saving for, or travelling hundreds of miles for -- making Disney a leader in its field, and a phenomenon in marketing industry.

But suppose you're not as big as Disney, and are offering something that many other entrepreneurs also have ability to offer?

This was situation for most coffee shop owners before Starbucks entered scene.

Although they offered same thing (coffee & pastries) in essentially same way (in cups and plates), Starbucks made its mark by opening shop in busiest cities and promising urbanites a distinct experience:

The chance to break away from chaos of city life, sink into a quiet couch with a steaming cup of coffee, and relax hours away without anyone bothering them or asking them to leave.

Your Turn --------- Based on these examples, you can see how it's entirely possible to turn any feature into a benefit, and then package all your benefits into an emotional experience.

The question now is, how do you work in this image / message / promise into your marketing materials?

Here are 3 ways:

1) Show. Experience your product through eyes/ears/nose/skin of your client, then translate those sensations into an image they can understand.

This "image" may be an actual photo, a video, or a compelling paragraph of words. Use them on your website, in your ezine, on your pop under ads -- and make sure you truly deliver on your promise, so first-time clients become long term patrons, who in turn tell others of their experiences with you.

2) Testify. When you use client testimonials, you actually give potential customers most convincing evidence for buying your products: actual accounts of other people's positive experiences with you.

Because a testimonial comes from someone outside of your company, it quickly eliminates most prospects' doubts, because they're more inclined to accept it's true.

3) Demonstrate. With interactive capabilities of Internet, it's now easier more than ever to actually let potential clients get a first-hand taste of what you're offering before asking them to commit to a purchase decision.

This act of giving them full control of process is a positive experience (for them) in itself, usually leading to a satisfying ending -- both for client, and for you.

So no matter what you're offering -- whether it's widgets or ebooks or software or potato chips -- people will always remember if buying & using it was enjoyable, or easy, or frustrating, or fun.

And THAT first experience is what could make them want to do it all over again and help you convince others who haven't tried it to say YES.

© Tatiana Velitchkov