Online marketing expert Damon Segal explains how you can get the edge selling on the net
their online presence, with little guarantee their offering will result in an online sales boom. Selling online is a science and with the
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cutthroat competition between online businesses to reel in customers and secure transactions, it is vital that a business that wants to enhance its online presence does so intelligently, by understanding the customer base and thinking rationally about pricing. So, how does an online business
turn 'interested clicks' into completed transactions?
Price Ease of purchase Trust
Price The success of online selling, in essence, comes down to price or originality. With the rise in price comparison websites that offer highly competitive prices for a variety of products, it is important online businesses differentiate in terms of what they offer the customer. The 'big trusted players' such as Amazon or eBay offer a range of products at attractive prices and customers are drawn
nline retail sales increased by 14 per cent last year, to more than £50 billion. This fi gure is only set to grow year on year. But many brands spend millions on driving
to these sites, based on this factor. For new online businesses the aim should not be to outprice these online giants, but to steer away from selling branded or readily available products. New start-ups should also offer customers product groupings. For example, bundling a mobile phone with a phone charger and a phone holder means better management of your margin and proves popular with the customer.
Ease of purchase Ease of purchase is also an essential component of a successful online business. The 'one click check out' facet, companies such as Amazon use, relieves the customer of any difficulty in the transaction process. Customers have a good memory when it comes to buying online, so online businesses that have complex purchasing options will inadvertently divert customers away from their site. It should be one of the primary objectives for online businesses to make purchasing easy for the customer. Trust The ultimate issue that online businesses should address is trust. This is a more long-term goal for online businesses as the reputation of the site has to be built before customers start entrusting the site with sensitive information such as credit card details, addresses and contact numbers. Visual impact and usability are the key
issues here and to an extent they overlap with the ease of purchase. Customers feel happy with sites that they know they can use and that they have experienced few problems with in the past. The massive barrier to entry for start-ups means that online businesses cannot afford to relax over details. To gain the trust of the customer the website and the business needs to have a trustworthy face to it and this requires precision in both the
design and the tools that the website offers. A lot of the success online businesses
achieve comes down to psychology. It will take a user just one twentieth of a second to decide whether they like the website or not and this fraction of a second can be the difference between securing the final transaction or not. If the customer likes the look of the
website in the first instance and, for some reason, the website is difficult to use, the customer is likely to be more forgiving and continue with the purchasing process. The visual impact of an online business is like the shop window of a high street outlet. If it looks attractive and welcoming, the customer will be drawn in by it. b emotio.co.uk
For new online businesses the aim
should not be to outprice these online giants, but to steer away from