posted in business strategies
on 11 January 2007 by Andrew Lang
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Finding a niche on the net by careful research
There are a lot of things to consider before launching an online business - the most primary being the business model itself - what is the purpose of the website? What are the chances of this purpose being fulfilled?
If it's to sell running shoes, then that particular online market should be explored. Is it a viable market? Is it already saturated with competition? If so, are there any niches in the market that could be exploited?
Either you're incredibly lucky to find yourself with an untapped customer base on the net (highly unlikely) or you're going to need to carve out a niche in an already established market.
A lot of online businesses fail because they don't offer anything unique to the visitor - they're no different to their competition - same products, similar prices, similar promises of service - they're invisible.
A lot of ideas quite rightly don't materialize into websites - they may just not be feasible given the resources at hand, or the market may be too competitive for the seller to feel confident in entering.
Given there are practically an infinite number of ideas to choose from, it's no waste to turn down some ideas before they get to the drawing board - the main thing is to research each idea carefully first - what are the competition's strategies? (these are often obvious by visiting their websites). Do keyword searches on search engines that are relevant to the market you're considering entering. Start a Google Ads campaign and see how much these keywords cost per click. If they're expensive, the market is saturated. It doesn't mean it's a mistake to enter the market, but you should definitely find something unique to stand out from the crowd.
Even after formulating a robust business plan, it still needs to be executed professionally. And this is where web development comes into play (part #2 tomorrow).
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Trust is very important to convince someone to buy anything from your website. One way to win trust is to put all your cards on the table and show feedback from your previous customers.
The puresilva e-commerce website solution has a feedback facility built in, so buyers can give feedback on quality of product, service, speed of delivery and value for money - as well as leave comments.
There's no such thing as 'perfect feedback' - even if you delivered the perfect product with perfect customer service at an an unbelievably low price, you will still get some unsatisfied customers - because it's all about perception - and perception is subjective.
If you receive 100 feedbacks, and 97 were generally happy/very happy with 3 dis-satisfied - in our opinion it's better to show all 100 feedback comments. This adds integrity to ALL of the comments by not editing out any of the negative ones.
Having said that, the puresilva feedback facility allows you to play editor to customer feedback in terms of what comments to show. You cannot control the feedback on quality of product, value for money, speed of delivery and value for money.
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