In: Categories » Internet » Internet marketing and advertising » How to define Products and Services you want to promote online
|
It is important to define the products and services you want to promote on-line. Sometimes the products and services you offer off-line in your physical store are the same as in your online store, but quite often there are differences. Business owners who have a bricks-and-mortar location sometimes assume that their online storefront is an extension of their offline storefront and that they will provide exactly the same products and services online as offline. In some cases, fewer products are offered on-line than in the physical store. This is often the case if you are test marketing, but also if some of the products you sell in your physical location are not appropriate for online sales because of competitive pricing or shipping logistics. In other cases, your online store might offer more products or services than the bricks-and-mortar location. For example, your offline bookstore might not offer shipping or gift wrapping. If your online bookstore does not offer these services, you will lose a lot of business to your online competition. When a site’s product offerings include items that are appropriate for gift giving, it is essential to also offer wrapping, customized cards, shipping to multiple addresses, and shipping options. The consumer is “king” and is very demanding. You have to meet and beat your consumers’ expectations online to garner market share. People shopping for gifts online are looking for convenience, and the site that provides the greatest convenience and the greatest products at the lowest prices will be the winner. Web sites and Internet marketing strategies differ depending on the product or service being sold. A company that markets toys has to develop a fun and interactive Web site that is attractive to children. The Web site should also give children a way to tell their friends about the site as well as a reason to return to the site. The toy company might want to offer an electronic postcard service whereby children can send a colorful and musical message to their friends and tell them about the site. Another idea is to provide a “wish list” service. Children can make a list of the toys they want, and this list is sent to the parents via e-mail. The parents can then make better informed purchasing decisions and might become loyal to the toy company’s site. Likewise, some toy companies offer reminder services that send an e-mail message to visitors who have registered and completed the appropriate questionnaire to remind them of a child’s birthday and to offer suggestions for gift ideas. Once again, this promotes sales and repeat traffic and increases customer loyalty. In another example, a software development company might want to provide downloadable demo versions of its software products and allow people to review its products for a specified period of time before they make a purchasing decision. When consumers decide to buy the software, a robust e-commerce system needs to be in place to handle the orders. A travel agency’s Web site might include features such as an opt-in mailing list to send people information on weekly vacation specials or a page on the site detailing the latest specials. The travel agency’s site might also want to include downloadable or streaming video tours of vacation resorts to entice visitors to buy resort vacation packages. Another idea is to have a system in place to help customers book vacations, rent cars, and check for available flights. The travel agency might also want to store customer profiles so they can track where particular customers like to sit on the plane, the type of hotel room they usually book, and their credit card information to make bookings more efficient for the customer and the agency. If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about. Visitors to your site need some reassurance that the service you are selling them is legitimate and valuable. Therefore, you might wish to include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers. This gives prospective customers more confidence about purchasing your service.
|
legal disclaimer
1) Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringements, please read the Terms of service and contact us to investigate the problem.
2) The E-articles directory team is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this tutorial may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. Please read the Terms of service
Useful tools and features
If you like this article (tutorial), please link to it from your web page using the information above. Linking to this page, this is the only way to help us improve our service, the same time providing your visitors with a way to improve their online experience.
related articles
There is no denying the marvelous potency of article marketing. It is a relatively easy strategy that is loaded with a lot of advantages for your online business. Article marketing involves the submission of articles to as many article directories as possible. There is more to it than just that, of course. You could use the steps outlined below for a truly efficient article marketing campaign. 1. Pick a topic relevant to the subject of your website. As with our running example, if your website is de...
2. What should I do to get more traffic to my website ~ Traffic from joint ventures (The 1st Stage)
Let me make this statement: A great part of your success in the online world will depend on the people you partner yourself with. You have to accept the fact that no man is an island. Two heads are always better than one, more so when you have three or more heads working together for a common goal. Joint ventures, fondly called JVs, are partnerships with other Internet marketers with the ultimate purpose of increasing everyone’s profits. This can be done in a variety of ways: ...
3. What should I do to get more traffic to my website ~ Traffic from joint ventures (The 2nd Stage)
Your adventures with joint ventures won’t stop there, however. You see, finding partners will not be an easy task. Some of them will even say “no” to your offer. They have their own interests to pursue, after all. And in the online world, just like in the real world, it still boils down to a question of “what’s in it for me?” So, what’s in it for them? You must present them with something that they will find difficult to resist. This may be a revolutionary idea you have conceptualized ...
4. Why Is Content Management Needed
It would be surprising if anyone involved in maintaining and evolving a successful commercial Web site did not recognize some of the following basic trends: The amount of information and functionality on the site is expanding rapidly. There are requirements for expanding the site to encompass new areas such as business-to-business relationships, multilingual sites, and integration with suppliers and partners. The content on the site needs to be more up to date and the process for updating sit...
5. What Web Content Management Cannot Achieve
Content management is a great way of improving efficiencies by shifting as much mundane processing work as possible to the dumb computer, which will work all night like a slave for no money. Unfortunately, the system is only as good as those who configure it: It can only do what it is told. So it is worth noting a few of the things that a CMS cannot do for you: It does not automatically organize your content for you. It certainly gives you the tools to help you structure and organize your content and will then happily...
6. Identifying Purchase Perceptions that Affect Consumers` Internet Buying
Perceptions believed to influence consumers’ purchase decisions are extensively researched and documented in the context of traditional consumer behavior literature. Jarvenpaa and Todd (1996-97) cluster e-commerce purchase perceptions into four general categories: 1) Product Perception 2) Shopping Experience 3) Customer Service 4) Consumer Risk. Each of these four general factors contain multiple items which, taken together, form the basis for exploring how each of the four purchase ...
7. The 4 Essentials Steps To Make Money From My Website
You already know what these four things are but the main issue is that they are all mixed in with a plethora of other issues and concepts. What I’ve done by drawing attention to these four key elements is to help you focus your mind on the most important attributes your website must have if it is going to work and make money for you. The 4 attributes are: 1 Integrated With Your Business 2 Visual Design 3 Technical Construction 4 Magnetic (h...
8. What are Google Reader and RSS Feeds
RSS is a way of delivering information to your PC without you having to go out and visit a website to get that information. It is a special format used by websites and blogs to, in essence, broadcast information. Because the information is sent in a special format, you need a special reader to read the information. You view the information in the reader itself. The reader software enables you to choose which RSS feeds you want to read out of the many thousands available. Choosing an RSS feed is commonly called subscribing to the ...