Learn How to Integrate An Ecommerce Store Into Your Core Brick-And-Mortar Business

If you are a owner of a traditional brick-and-mortar business, you need to have an ecommerce store or presence if you want your business to get noticed, to capture a new market and gain customers. I am not just talking about setting up an ecommerce website on your business. You need to change. You need to evolve.

Why? These are my genuine observations and I'm sure you have made similar observations yourself. Those business which doesn't change and evolve doesn't stay in business for too long.

For instance, you are a small business owner of a pet shop. Your business has a yearly turnover of $180,000 and expenses of $72,000, thus it has made a profit of $98,000. You think that your business is doing quite well. You are satisfied. But in actual fact, no. Because what you can't see from this simple profit and loss is that you have a declining share, rising cost base and new competitors.

Is your business sustainable? I don't think so. If you don't do something about it, soon you will not have a business to manage.

The Benefits of Integrating An Ecommerce Website to Your Core Business

What to do? Personally, I think setting up an ecommerce website is a good response. What's really happening is that customers are increasingly using the internet to shop, to look for solutions and to compare prices. This will have big implications for your traditional brick-and-mortar business.

So joining in, instead of fighting the trend, will be a smart move. If you have a ecommerce store and if you can get your act together, you stand to make lots of money waiting to be spent by web-savvy customers.

Why wait until your competitors start making the move to then be lumped in with the laggards?

There are some really good reasons why you should consider setting up an ecommerce website that integrates with your core business:

• Customers are global.

Why an ecommerce store? Millions of customers are using the internet to shop around, to look for solution to a problem or to compare prices. We are talking about the era of the internet economy. Customers are more sophisticated, intelligent and demanding.

These customers are out there waiting to be tapped. Setting up an ecommerce website which integrates with your core business offers plenty of opportunities to sell to these customers.

• A relatively inexpensive channel to promote your business.

Barriers to entry are relatively minimal. You can have access to all the infrastructure (software, hardware, skills) needed for setting up an ecommerce website for peanuts, if not for free.

Don't know any HTML language. Nothing to worry. There are now companies specializing in providing all sorts of services. You just need to pay them a fee.

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• Your ecommerce store can be fully automated and allow to operate on autopilot mode.

What's better than having a ecommerce store that opens 24 hours a day, every day of the year? Imagine making money online while you enjoy spending time with your loved ones and time sleeping.

What's the Business Model for your Ecommerce Website?

Sometimes we're so busy creating contents for our website, we forget the end goal- to make some real money online.

Well, to make money online, you absolutely have to think of your business model. Once you have decided your business model, it makes planning for your strategies easier.

Lots of internet newbies set up their ecommerce business and hope to make money from their website. Most of them failed to generate a single dollar from their website. Obviously, they must have done something wrong.

The fact is your website is merely a tool. A superior website but no business model or strategies still equals failure. I hope you get the message.

Your business model is essentially your plan for making money from your business. You need to have a plan first and later strategies on how to achieve goals in your plan.

So, start thinking about how you intend to make money from your ecommerce store. Your customers don't simply buy from you. They only buy from websites that speak to them emotionally and that make a positive impact to their subconscious minds.

Which means you, as a small business owner needs to figure out how to come up with a business model that will convert your visitors into customers.

Internet Business Models

Here are some internet business models that are in play. Warning! Don't forget, these business models do not apply to all business. And you can be sure that some of these internet business models failed spectacularly with some entrepreneurs.

Most often not because it doesn't work, but the entrepreneur have misinterpretated and adopted the wrong model for his business. But that doesn't mean you couldn't do a better job with your ecommerce store.

1. The Ecommerce Business Model for Small Business Owners who sell Physical Goods

This internet business model involves making money online by:

• selling their products or other people's products at their ecommerce store to customers at prices that are attractively above their costs and making a profit.
• selling their products or other people's products to customers at cost (or below) and make money by selling advertising to other merchandisers who value the audience attracted to the site.
• selling their products or other people's products at their ecommerce store to customers at breakeven prices but collect information on buyers that can be sold to other merchandisers.
• buying products from manufacturers and distributors, marketing them to customers at their ecommerce store, and filling orders from stocks held in their warehouse. The business owner is simply using his ecommerce website as the sales site instead of brick-and-mortar retail outlets.
• utilising the ecommerce store for marketing and selling, using contract manufacturers to make the product and outsourcing the distribution function to warehousing and shipping specialists.
2. The ecommerce business model for small business owners who sell services

This business model involves making money online by:

• selling the small business owner's services or expertise at the ecommerce website for a fee. For instance, if you are a financial planner, you can set up a website to offer advice and provide consultancy on financial planning.
• becoming an 'internet middlemen' (also known as 'infomediaries' or 'e-markets') and using the instant communications capability of the internet to match buyers and sellers.
3. The ecommerce business model for small business owners who sell information or digital products

This business model involves making money online by:

• using the small business owner's intellectual capital to develop music, games, video, software and text that he/she can sell at an ecommerce store for a subscription fee (or membership fee) or pay-per-use.
• creating high-quality content at the ecommerce website that attract website traffic and then selling advertising to companies wanting to get a message to users of the content. The more 'eyeballs' the website can attract, the easier it is to sell advertising and the higher the rate that can be charged.

These are basic models currently in play. Many small business owners have used a combination of models to make money online.

Use your creativity. You don't have to follow the same route as everyone else. Look at all the best internet entrepreneurs around and one of the things they share is the ability to be one step ahead, to think out of the box and to come up with ideas that other people haven't thought of.

What I am suggesting is that it's entirely up to you what business model you choose for your ecommerce store- it's no good for me telling you what that internet business model should be.

You have to decide how you intend to make money online from your ecommerce business.

Strategy for your Ecommerce Store

Now that you have figured out the internet business model for your ecommerce business, you need to have a strategy.

What's the internet strategy for your ecommerce website? Obviously, your strategies will vary depending on your business model.

I am not going to give you any specific advice on the strategy that you can use for your ecommerce store because it changes too quickly.

The strategies below are not complete by far. So, add your own. But internet strategies others are using and worth considering are:

1. Pay considerable attention to creating an attractive ecommerce website
• Web site needs to have a professional look.
• Web pages need to be interesting.
• Web pages need to be easy to read, with lots of eye appeal.
• Easy to navigate. Visitors don't get lost in your website.
• Web pages download quickly.
2. Generate lots of "buzz" in your ecommerce store
• Your ecommerce website needs to be cleverly marketed.
• Intrigue your visitors enough so that they will return again and again to your website.
3. Keep your ecommerce store innovative, fresh and entertaining
• Constantly add high quality content, new features and capabilities to your ecommerce website.
• Keep enhancing the look and feel of your ecommerce store.
• Heighten your visitor's interest with audio and live video.
• Expand your products offering.
• Create a strong sense of community feeling among visitors to your ecommerce website.
• Engage lots of entertaining features that add value to your visitors' experience of spending time at your ecommerce shop.
4. Spend on advertising to build widespread awareness on your ecommerce store, draw traffic and start the process of developing customer loyalty
• Hiring professional website marketers to market your ecommerce website.
• Advertising campaigns incorporating online banners with an Affiliate Marketing Program ,pay-per-click advertising, print media, viral etc. when launching your website.
• Hiring search engine specialists to optimize your website for the Search Engines.
5. Be a first-mover or at worst an early-mover

• Be a first-mover or a fast-follower to enhance your business's chances of being the best known online retailer for a particular category of product.
• This will also improve your business's prospects for dominating its market niche and fighting off challenges from newcomers.
6. Add new product lines to help generate high and growing levels of traffic at the ecommerce store
• Expand the website's product lines.
• Enter into alliances and joint marketing agreements with other businesses with an objective of boosting internet sales.

Sure, the list is not exhaustive. There are many more strategies that can be used. But for now, ask yourself what is your business's biggest challenge (or opportunity), and what kind of strategies that you can adopt to meet those challenges.

Even though I'll be happy to provide you with many other strategies for your ecommerce store, it's equally important that you hone your strategy crafting skills.

One last advice. Please remember that not every strategy applies to every small business owner of a brick-and-mortar business.

Don't make the mistakes of some internet newbies. Whatever strategy works for you does not mean that it will work for small business owner of another ecommerce store.


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