E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that 2003 will see online sales reaching US $58.2 billion excluding travel. According to Forrester Research, another reputable research company, business to consumer e-commerce will hit US $230 billion by
year 2008. While offline retail sales are staggering and will continue to do so in near term, online retail sales will show a hefty 19 percent consecutive year over year growth! And by same year, two third of all US households will buy some kind of products and services online. In 2003 alone 97 million consumers will make some kind of purchases through Internet.If you are selling products and services offline, you should seriously consider hopping on to e-commerce bandwagon, or risk loosing significant portion of your business to your more proactive competitors!
Is it difficult to start selling products or services online?
May be, in beginning of Internet era, this was a daunting task, but today, with proper planning it is fairly easy.
- Choose products or services that are viable to sell over Internet
- Build an online presence
- Create an online product catalog
- Choose payment methods
- Promote
Select products or services to sell
Although, some products are easier to sell online, contrary to popular believe, most of products and services are, actually, marketable on Internet. At present, books, electronics, information and travel related products are selling better online. But, that does not mean that there is no room for other products or services. As a matter of fact, you can sell just about anything over Internet! It depends more on market segment you choose, and how good you are in marketing. As you know, traditional items that you can get in nearest grocery store were not doing very well on Internet. However, that is going to change very soon! According to Forrester Research many of today’s slow categories are poised to significant growth as oppose to early online sales leaders like travel and electronics, which will experience market maturity and slower growth. Prediction is:
Food and beverage category will grow at a rate of 49 percent, reaching $18.2 billion by 2007. The home products category will grow by 42 percent over five years, from $7.3 billion in 2002 to $42.0 billion in 2007. Flowers, cards, and gifts will grow by 41 percent, from $951 million in 2002 to $5.3 billion in 2007.
That’s not all! By year 2008, today’s best selling product – books will have a mere 3 percent share of total business to consumer online sales.
So, if your products and services can generate offline sales there should not be any problem in selling these items online.
Build online presence
You can choose to build an e-commerce website either yourself by hiring required experts, i.e. web programmers or by appointing a website developing company to do job for you. In both of cases, you have to be prepared to spend a significant amount of money. E-commerce site is a very broad terminology! Depending on you demand, it can cost you from a modest US $800 to any where over a million US dollar! That’s not all! You have to be prepared to spare considerable time on it, as well. Writing technical scope, choosing appropriate design for your site and creating proper content for your site will take a lot of your time. And there is no guarantee that you will do everything right!
