Shopfitter Blog

Looming recession - is it time to panic?

2008-03-18T02:58:00.000-07:00

The news has been full to the brim of stories about the so called 'credit crunch', banks failing and being nationalised (Northern Rock) or forcibly sold for a knockdown price (Bear Stearns) to a competitor.

Is this all an over-reaction, are we really seeing the first signs of a major recession? Or are there some positives amongst the doom and gloom?

Well, it's true to say that bad news sells better than good news, a good recent example was when there were numerous reports of a slow down on the high street during the Christmas period. Marks & Spencer confirmed this, however, their huge growth in online sales hardly got a mention. And this is a trend seen across most of the major retailers.

This is most definitely a glimmer of hope, what is really happening is not necessarily a slow down in the consumer economy but a change in shopper behaviour precipitated by the internet.

It seems that people still want to buy stuff, but what's changed is that they want to get what they need at the best price possible - even a few pennies less can make the difference and the internet makes this easy and comfortable. In addition, there just doesn't seem the appetite for traipsing around the shops or phoning them all up to make a comparison. This could well be due to the effect of out of town developments not necessarily having all the competition within a small area as it was when town centres were the main shopping areas.

Statistics recently published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK indicate that total online trading was worth £130 Billion in 2007 and internet retail alone is worth £4 Billion per month, showing a 30% growth.

What this means in real terms is that those of us who are already successfully trading online should either feel no effects of a downturn and may even see sales increase.

Simon's First Rule of Business

2008-02-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time talking to people, both Shopfitter customers and those I meet at ecommerce events or who just ring up for a bit of information. They all want to know pretty much the same thing; how to create a successful ecommerce website.

I think it's fair to say that there's no secret formula, no magic bullet and no one right way to do it. However, there are a number of things that are common to all successful businesses whether they trade online or only in the 'real' world.

As a seasoned conference speaker I've become reasonably adept at distilling much of these critical business activities into succinct 'Rules of Business' and then talking about how these apply to an online enterprise: this is the first.

Simon's First Rule of Business - Know your market

OK, I know it may seem obvious but there's a lot more to selling online than just sticking a load of products on a website.

Marketing is not selling or advertising (although they do come into it) it is about understanding your marketplace and doing things to fulfill it, here's a bullet list of what you need to know to know your own market:

What do people want to buy?
How much will they pay?
How do they find those goods or services?
What drives the marketplace, is it segmented?
What competition is there (and what are they doing)?

So taking those into account it show us that marketing affects what our products are just as much as the way we advertise or sell our products. Marketing shapes our products and services to suit what our potential customers want to buy.

What do people want to buy? To find this out you need to talk to people, ask friends neighbours, existing customers, anyone, what it is (in your line of business, obviously) that makes them want to part with their cash. This information is extremely valuable because it gives you details about what customers' needs are.

For example; if I retail T-shirts and have black and white I need to know if people want other colours, I may be missing lots of sales because I don't have red, blue, yellow or orange T-shirts, in fact, it could be that the market for black or white is only a fraction of the total. I won't know unless I ask people.

How much will they pay? Price is (almost) always a factor, especially on the web because it's so easy for customers to compare your prices with other people. However, price isn't the only factor, speed of delivery, better quality, gift delivery to an alternative address and nicely packaged with a message are examples of why someone may pay more. Trust is a big factor too, if your website is low quality and unprofessional looking it could be perceived that your whole business is the same, so an item bought from a higher priced competitor will be chosen.

How do they find goods or services? This is where website sales differs most from 'real world' sales channels. Something like 80% of visitors arrive via a Search Engine, which one varies from country to country. In the UK Google holds around 70% of the search market whereas it's lead is much smaller in the US (nearer 50%).

This is where there's a sub First Rule - Know your search terms. This applies only to selling on the internet. People type words into search engines, if these terms don't appear on your website then there's no way a search engine will display a link to your site in its search return.

For example, if someone types "red tshirt buy online" into Google and it exactly matches what is on my site I'll get a search listing, if the words don't appear on my site at all I have no listing.
So you must find out what sort things people type into search engines to find the sort of products or services you sell, again, talk to people, guess and test and use the tools that Google et al provide to find how much each term (and their variants) are used.

In addition, this also means that creating a website that follows search engine guidelines is a critical factor in your marketing. But more of that in other posts and pages on the Shopfitter site.

What drives the marketplace, is it segmented? You need to know something about what the most important factors are in people making their buying decision, it may be price, rarity, customisation. Whatever it is there's a good chance that there will be segmentation to understand too.

For example, there may be a market for a higher quality variation of your product for which you can charge a premium price. This will, of course, only be attractive to a segment of the buying public, so you need to know what makes them want premium goods and also how to attract them to your website.

What competition is there (and what are they doing)? Your competitors are doing you a favour by existing because they act both as a barometer of your marketplace but also give you the chance to create some differentiation. In a price sensitive market this would be lower prices, or it could be free delivery, or providing unusual sizing, for example.

You can also look at how and where they advertise and compare your own activities with theirs and come up with something different and better. Never be afraid of competition, they force you to improve what you do.

I hope thats been of use, much of it goes without saying - but it's definitely better to state the obvious than overlook it when there are so many other things going on when you're trying to improve your online selling.

Good luck and don't hesitate to get in touch if there's any way Shopfitter.com or I can help.

Simon :)

Online sales up by 50%

2007-12-18T15:57:00.000-08:00

Yes it's true, the BBC news is reporting that once again businesses who are selling online are taking advantage of the opportunities for growth available in virtual market places.

While high street sales are in decline this Christmas internet based retail has grown again, this year by a massive 50%.

And that's something we at Shopfitter can confirm, in fact we're seeing a 300% increase in the number of sales through our servers. Naturally we're very pleased to see our users becoming more successful each year, and the longer the e-commerce sites exist the better they seem to do.

Over the years we've had people hesitate over whether to take the plunge and start trading with a webshop, concerns over security and not being able to cope with increased demand put many small businesses off.

Fortunately, the buying public has, on the whole, got over the worries about security, online systems are now seen to be as secure as any other form of transaction.

With regard to not being able to cope with a massive influx of new orders, the reality is that it takes months or years to really build up the order numbers - and because it's fairly organic growth it's easy to extend the capabilities of your business as you need to.

One thing that's certainly clear, the internet retail growth is set to continue. So if you don't have an ecommerce website at the moment but would like to share in the online boom next Christmas then now is the time to be planning and building your webshop.

Remember, it will probably take a couple of months to build your site, even with an easy to use system like Shopfitter 4, then another three months for Google and the other search engines to notice and index your site. That takes us into early summer, just right for getting ready for Autumn and the busiest month online - November.

So don't put it off too long, the sooner you get started, the better you'll do next Christmas and the one after that...

Improve Web Sales Figures

2007-06-21T02:46:00.000-07:00

With the launch of Shopfitter 4 getting closer I've been thinking about 'spreading the word' by looking at our site analytics to see where visitors are coming from at the moment.

As always seems to be the case, I got sidetracked into looking at an interesting (if you like reading about e-commerce ;) ) site called WorkZ based in the US. Speciifically a really good article about improving conversion rates (turning browsers into buyers) by using your site statistics.

Have a look at Improve Web Sales Figures Forever And Ever Amen! written by Steve Jackson.

He mentions a number of website analytics, also known as stats, systems but it's well worth looking at Google Analytics because they're very good and completely free. Plus there's a new panel in Shopfitter 4 (Tracking Code on the Advanced tab) where you can paste their code to make it work.

There are some good tips in the article so it's well worth a read.

E-commerce software

2006-12-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

I thought that for the first topic it would be good to write a brief definition of what we at Shopfitter mean with the term e-commerce software.

Lots of different systems, applications and services provide website owners with the capability to create an online catalogue (or catalog for US purposes) and shopping cart.

But these are just part of the requirements of selling online. We feel that e-commerce software should give its users the facilities to build an entire website and not just the product, cart and checkout pages.

A proper e-commerce software system should also provide 'back-end' functionality. What that means is a secure order processing system that stores order details: customer contact and delivery details, payment method (and there should be a choice - more later). It should also store all details both for the shop owners records and to comply with any statutory regulations.

Then there's the need for a confirmation and notification facility. In general, this is fine by e-mail; a summary of the order details, price and a unique order number should be included but no payment details, especially credit card numbers - e-mails are not secure.

The security of an e-commerce software system will be of paramount importance to customers of goods and services online shops, therefore the system should have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - that is, connects to the personal and payment details pages via an HTTPS web address.

This will then adhere to Data Protection legislation in most (if not all) international regions.

To provide more reassurance to both the online shopper and webshop owner the online order server should hold a security certificate from a recognised body; in the case of https://orders3.shopfitter.com this is from Thawte, one of the best known in the business.

That more or less covers what we mean by 'e-commerce software' - a full end to end website building program that includes e-commerce and non selling pages, a secure order processing and customer details storage system and a confirmation/notification system, usually by e-mail.

New Blog - Ecommerce and beyond

2006-12-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

Hi all, and welcome to the new Shopfitter blog.

We've been advising people for a couple of years that running a blog is a great form of marketing for your website. And as many people have found the marketing of your site is a lot more involved and time consuming than submitting to Google, Yahoo, MSN et al.

In the coming weeks and months we'll be posting content here that will be topical both for the Shopfitter system and service as well as trialling tools and providing knowledge we've got that will help YOUR online shop become successful.

E-commerce success doesn't happen by accident, this blog should help everyone learn what to do and how to do it.

Good luck

Simon