The Web opens up a whole new market for goods and services. It creates opportunity for a multifaceted arena that offers new efficiencies for sales, marketing, customer service, shipment tracking, inventory monitoring, and many other aspects of the total business model.

Choice has always been the Holy Grail for consumers. Today’s consumers have a wide variety of commerce choices: traditional businesses, mega discount stores, catalogs or direct market mail, and the Web. The Web, taken as a whole, is a powerful medium where consumers browse, research, compare, and then buy online or, after doing their “window shopping” online, make the purchase at a brick-and-mortar business. Businesses that keep in mind the consumers’ desire for choice, and integrate into their website the appropriate means for customer interactions, will succeed.

This being said, the Web will not open vast new markets for every business. However, it can extend a significant degree of power to businesses that recognize how to leverage the efficiencies of this new arena. A good example is 3Com (www.3com.com) which, through its website:

• Offers products and services to a global audience.
• Provides many different technical support features online.
• Offers software downloads including drivers, updates and fixes, which prior to the website would have been mailed to the customer.
• Offers an online store.
• Provides an educational center with online courses.

In short, 3Com’s business and customer base didn’t change — the Web changed the way 3Com services its market — it did not create a new market. Still, overall, 3Com’s business is enhanced by its web presence.

Big companies with plenty of technical expertise and buckets of money have always been able to build their own e-commerce systems, complete with a secure server, a high-speed Internet connection, and custom software. Luckily, costly e-commerce barriers are rapidly tumbling allowing any business to have a credible web presence. What was once expensive and difficult is quickly becoming affordable and easy to use.

Look Before You Leap

Established businesses shouldn’t jump rashly onto the e-commerce bandwagon. They must first institute a well thought out plan upon which to build their e-commerce business model. If you neglect this important step, you risk losing your already established identity, your good reputation, and your customers. Two examples of not looking before leaping are the widely reported Toysrus.com 1999 holiday shopping season fiasco and the KbKids’ website problems. According to survey conducted by Robertson Stephens, a leader in Equity Research, Investment Banking and Sales & Trading, in early 2000, 44% of the shoppers surveyed stated that due to their unhappy experiences with KBKids.com, it was unlikely that they would shop on the online toy retailer again. Perhaps if these retailers had scaled down their initial online effort as Bloomingdales.com did, their website and reputation would have fared better.

Both websites have learned from their mistakes. KBkids.com completely redesigned its web operation. But before creating the new website the KBkids.com designers, web producers, and writers conducted surveys and usability studies, participated in conference calls and held one-on-one meetings with KBkids.com shoppers. The result is a new sleek, innovative website with many customer-friendly features along with the functionality and back-office features needed to keep customers happy.

Toysrus.com took another tack — partnering with the etailing giant, Amazon.com. The two companies entered into a ten-year deal that draws on each company’s core strengths. Amazon.com fulfills orders, handles customer service, and uses its expertise in front-end site design to build a powerful customer-support environment. Toysrus.com and parent company Toys ‘R’ Us identifies, purchases, and manages inventory, using its clout to get the hottest toy lineup. Revenues are split, and risks are shared.

The Challenge

Creating a business model for e-commerce starts with the following basic challenge: Can you define your company? Next, can you state your goals for the company? Finally, — within the aforementioned context — can you state what role e-commerce can play in helping your company maintain or change its identity?

 As this table indicates, online sales are growing steadily
along with the total number of Internet users (148,811,000 in August 2003 to 150,045,000 users in September 2006).
Source: com-Score Media Metrix.

By David McKenzie

For affiliates running their own web site or thinking of starting their own web site the following web design tips should help you convert more visitors into sales.

1. Your main goal as an affiliate is to get people to click your affiliate links so make it very easy for visitors to click your affiliate link. You have to actually tell them to click the link. Have a ‘click here’ for every affiliate link on your site.

2. Content. Content. Content. Give visitors what they want – they want good quality content and lots of it. Articles, tips, newsletter archives and details of each product or service on your site.

3. The fewer pictures the better. Lots of graphics slow sites down and as you are an affiliate you want your visitor to click your affiliate link. If your web site takes a long time to load your visitor may just leave and not even get a chance to click your affiliate link.

4. Use a simple layout with a prominent, easy to find link to each major page on your site. Complicated sites with lots of graphics and the latest design features are great in theory but the keep it simple strategy works best for affiliates.

5. If you offer a newsletter, make it very easy for people to sign up by having subscribe details on every page of your site. Also offer a newsletter archives section on your site.

6. For lots of great content use other people’s articles on your site. Ensure these articles fit the theme of your site and include your affiliate links at the bottom of each page these articles appear on.

7. Make sure you have a ‘Contact Us’ page. When you tell people who you are and how to contact you they will instantly be more likely to trust you. If they trust you they will click your affiliate links!

Be constantly looking for the best ways to design your affiliate web site. Your design should be focused on getting visitors to click your affiliate links. Better web design means better results for affiliates.

By David McKenzie

 There are thousands of business opportunities online. Most of them require some capital to start with. Not affiliate programs!

Here are 7 reasons why you should consider joining an affiliate program as your home based business.

1. Joining an affiliate program requires no outlay of capital.
That’s right, none! You can join an affiliate program for free
and start promoting the product immediately.

2. The internet marketing tools are already provided for you. A ‘top’ affiliate program will supply you with lots of
affiliate marketing tools that are ‘ready to go’. You just
copy and paste and put your affiliate code in. Then you start selling.

3. You do not need a product. It takes a LOT of time to develop your own product to sell online. With affiliate programs, the product is already there. Someone else spent all the time developing it so you do not have to.

4. Affiliate statistics are already provided as part of joining
an affiliate program. You do not have to go out and buy
expensive software to track your sales because the product owner is doing that for you. You don’t even have to pay for it, it’s free!

5. You do not have any ‘time lag’. With most businesses it takes a certain amount of time in the ‘start up’ phase. With affiliate programs there is no such thing. Once you join you can start selling.

6. You do not have to worry about sales administration and technical support. The product owner takes care of the sales process and all the after sales service. All you have to worry about is receiving your affiliate check!

7. You do not have to worry about direct contact with the
customer. In an affiliate program you are a re-seller so if the customer has a complaint they contact the product owner, not you.

Affiliate programs are simple to join, easy to start promoting and best of all they have no downside. If one affiliate program does not work out, you can leave and join a different one.