With all these dot com failures so rampant, you may question, is it still viable to consider an online venture? The truth is: while spectacular rise and fall of many dot com companies have been overly publicized, sales through Internet are still increasing by 20 – 25% each year. Even economic down turn of
recent years has not hampered this growth.Consider this:
According to an annual study of Internet trends by marketing research firm Ipsos, almost two third of Internet users in United States have by now purchased a product or service online. That’s a dramatic increase from only 36 percents of respondents in 2000. Studies show that more than 35.5 million U.S. Internet users made shopping trips to web shops during week ending November 3, 2002, which is roughly 14 million more than almost same time period in 2001.
While hype over new economy is maybe over, one thing is for sure that Internet has revolutionized way we do business and positioned itself as one of biggest and most unique sales channels. Many companies, finally, started to realize that their very existence may get jeopardized if they are slow in integrating Internet to their business model.
But question still remains - is there any effective method of doing business online?
Below I have outlined some components crucial to any online venture. While these might not be only vital components of web based business, understanding them correctly will significantly improve your chance of doing online business effectively. Business Plan Business plans are like road maps. Imagine, you ended up in a unfamiliar town and you have to find an address without a map! How would you feel? Definitely, you would have been much better off with a map of locality! The same thing goes for business plan. Though, many successful ventures may have been started without benefit of a formal business plan, a good business plan improves your chances of success and help you avoid many mistakes.
A recent AT&T study of successful entrepreneurs shows that businesses are more successful if they have a written business plan than ones which don’t. With a written business plan you get a better picture of your planned venture. So, before starting you online venture, take some time and write down what are you planning to do. Product or Service If you are a brick and mortar company merely trying to expand sales of your products or services on Internet your task is easier! You at least don’t have to mull over what to sell. But, what an entrepreneur who decided to start a new venture should sell on Internet?
Actually, you can sell virtually any product or service through Internet. You may say, "Wait a second, you can’t sell big ticket items over net, right?" Wrong! The car and part industries alone forecast to generate US$ 274 billion in revenues from online trade by 2004. There are incidents of consumers buying corporate jets online!
If you are serious about starting an online business, finding a product or service that suits you should not be very difficult.
Knowledge base products like e-books, how-to-reports and hard to find information and data sell quite well on Internet. Drop-ship items are bountiful on Internet. Thanks to global reach of Internet finding manufacturer for any item that you plan to import to your country or export from your country became lot easier. If you have expertise, online services similar to web design, travel arrangement etc. are also good sales. Internet users are paying readily for various types of online contents. Global online content market will add up to 50 billion US$ in 2003. You can consider this too!
Website/ Web store Since you customers take their decision, whether to do business with you or not based on what they see on your site, it is critical to have a professional-looking website with good related content.
You can choose your website according to your need from a vast range of choices. Starting from a completely free website you can shell out thousands of dollars for a decent e-commerce website. The choice is yours!
