$96 Billion dollars is how much money was spent online in 2003 by American consumers. The year before that was $76 billion. This is significant jump in any industry. That year online sales accounted for only 4.3% of overall American retail sales. This was four years ago and since then the industry has continued huge amounts of growth and internet opportunities are more available than ever before. It looks likes internet shopping is here for the long term. In business the most important factor for success is finding a market that is under served, if you can achieve this you have a direct path to all of the customers looking for a product or service that they cannot find. Right now there are many services and products on the internet that have a large customer base and no one to satisfy them.
Besides the huge market opportunity, the largest reason you need a website for your business is that it will give you an advantage over any of your competitors who are not using e-commerce methods like internet marketing. However simply having a website for your company isn’t enough. To be successful you need three things.
1. First you need a well designed website that is going to keep your visitors there and is very simple to navigate and purchase from, without this you will lose customers in the time it takes to click the back button.
2. Secondly you must appear in the top search results for all the major search engines, if you can’t be found why anyone would buy your product/service. A good website combined with search engine optimization will help you do this.
3. And finally your company needs to be realistic and competitive. This means that your company must have value, and because of the internet your pricing is going to have to be adjusted to whatever your competitors are already offering. The internet has reduced the chain of supply and because of this you cannot expect to have unreasonably high pricing and be successful even with a well marketed and well designed website.
As we look at future spending trends it becomes increasingly obvious that internet spending is increasing exponentially year after year. And because of this internet marketing is going to become paramount for every business. In addition to adults spending more time and money on the internet the future generations are being conditioned with new technology and their trust in the internet will be so strong that a much larger percentage of this generation will buy products online. In combination with the new generat
ion of internet shoppers there will also be many news ways to buy online from laptops to cell phones and handheld devices. The future is tomorrow, are you ready?
March 27th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Those numbers are so high, I really can’t believe it. This definitely means the internet is a new source of revenue for all kinds of different companies.
March 27th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Impressive numbers, and just scratching the surface. We’re in an era where almost every business really needs a web presence, and needs to understand the basics of web marketing.
Educating the business owners is of course the first step, but I believe within the next two years we will see less and less resistance from the small business sector. I look forward to this new age, and I wish you folks at Utah web Works the best as well.