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CHAPTER 1
NEW TOOLS AND STRATEGIES FOR YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS
The Internet is a pervasive and everyday part of the business landscape these days. Whether you’ve been in
business for 20 years or 20 minutes, the keys to success are the same:
1.
Having a good idea: If you have something to sell that people have an appetite for, and if your competition is slim,
you have a strong chance of being successful.
2.
Working hard: When you’re your own boss, you can make yourself work harder than any of your former bosses
ever could. If you put in the effort and persist through the inevitable ups and downs, you’ll be a winner.
3.
Believing in yourself: One of the most surprising and useful things from the online business people was that if you
believe that you’ll succeed, you probably will. Believe in yourself and proceed as though you’ll be successful.
Together with your good ideas and hard work, your confidence will pay off.
Online Business
Online business isn’t just for large corporations, or even just for small businesses that already have a storefront in the real
world and simply want to supplement their marketability with a website.
The Internet is a perfect venue for individuals who are comfortable using computers, and who want to start their
own business and believe that cyberspace is the place to do it. You don’t need much money to get started. If you
already have a computer as well as an Internet connection and can create your own web pages, making the move
to your own business website may cost only $100 or less. After you’re online, the overhead is pretty reasonable,
too: You may pay only $10 to $75 per month to a web hosting service to keep your site online — or pay nothing,
if you sign up with one of the specialty marketplaces that give you a platform for creating web pages and selling
products, and charge a fee only if you make a sale.
With each month that goes by, the number of Internet users increases exponentially. The growth is greatest
outside the United States. To be precise, in summer 2012, Internet World Stats released data indicating that the
number of Internet users worldwide was nearing 2.5 billion — double the number of users five years before. Asia
had by far the largest number of users, with more than 1 billion individuals online, a full 44 percent of the world’s
total. Amazingly, that still means only 27.5 percent of the Asian population has Internet access at home, setting
the stage for continued growth in that continent. We have long since reached that critical mass where most people
are using the Internet regularly for everyday shopping and other financial activities. The Internet is already
becoming a powerhouse for small businesses.
New technologies and ways of shopping and selling are always popping up in the world of online commerce. One
of the biggest new developments is the proliferation of devices like the ones in your own pocket or on your work
table. Buyers — the people you want to connect with online — are finding new ways to shop and make purchases.
Consumers can shop wherever they are in the world. They’re surfing with small screens, using mobile apps, and
taking charge of the e-commerce experience more than ever before.
At the same time, those who seek to start or grow an online business have new opportunities to help them along.
They can get help from the same engaged customers with whom they engage on social marketing sites like
Facebook and Twitter. They can find the funding they need by turning to new resources like Kickstarter. And they
can follow the example of the many ambitious small business owners who are triangulating their business
processes — using websites, social media, and storefronts to connect with customers from many different angles.
Commerce
It is a basic economic activity involving trading or the buying and selling of goods.
Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce)
It is about the sale and purchase of goods or services by electronic means, particularly over the internet.
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E-Commerce is going Mobile
Many consumers now shop thru their smartphones. They compare prices and research the products they see in
front of them. They don’t always follow through and make purchases with their mobile devices. But more and more
shoppers throughout the world are going through the purchase process on the small screen.
eBay reported $13 billion in sales volume in 2012; that represents 13.5 percent of its entire volume of $175 billion.
The company projects that its mobile commerce figures will grow 20 percent annually through 2015.
DESIGNING FOR THE SMALL SCREEN
The first way to attract mobile shoppers is to make sure your website or online store loads quickly and is easy to
navigate. For big companies that have their own IT and web design staff, that means adapting the site they’ve
designed to appear on a big desktop monitor so that it works on a 5-inch or smaller smartphone screen.
If you don’t have a designer on staff, you can get your own mobile site by signing up with a hosting service that
provides you one for free. You can also turn to a company like Mobify (www.mobify.com), which specializes in
creating mobile sites for online sellers.
Selling Mobile, Selling Local:
Two Examples
There are many ways to sell online, but some of the newest involve mobile technology and reaching local
customers online. Here are just two examples of entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of these approaches.
Lisa Bettany, a professional photographer, spent a year and a half creating an app for the iPhone called Camera+.
She was pretty much destitute while she was doing this. She hired a programmer to help make her idea a reality. Since it
was released, she has generated $4 million by selling 4 million of her apps in iTunes and other locations. You can find
more about Lisa at www.MostlyLisa.com.
What if you aren’t technologically savvy, but you have a great deal of knowledge, even passion, for a particular
subject? Dean Pettit was a worker for NASA in Florida when he was laid off. He loves the outdoors, especially the area
called the Space Coast. He created an aggregation website called Space Coast Outdoors (www.spacecoastoutdoors.net),
which collects information about a single topic in one place so it’s easy to find. It’s the kind of aggregation of information
that has worked since Yahoo! started back in the 1990s.
You’re probably wondering how this kind of site makes money when all you’re providing is information. You build
as much traffic as you can, and when you get to a certain number of visitors, you can start to sell ads.
Dean Pettit isn’t getting rich from his site, at least not yet. But the extra spending money helps while he’s between
day jobs, and he’s hoping to build enough monthly income so eventually he won’t need a day job.
Facilitating Purchases and Searches
You need to list yourself where mobile shoppers hang out. Make sure you’re on the local directory Google Places
for Business (www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness) and places like the review site Yelp (www.yelp.com), for
example. List your products on venues like eBay Local Shopping (www.ebay.com/local). People love to look up reviews
on their mobile devices, so make sure you’re there.
Mobile commerce is also about making it easy for shoppers to tap the Buy button on their touch screens. Here
again, the choice of service provider is critical. Some specifically focus on making shopping and purchasing as easy as
possible for mobile buyers.
BUSINESS PROCESSES ARE BECOMING SOCIAL
Those who believe in political or human rights know the power a group of people can have. In the online business
world, some forward-looking companies have enlisted the participation of the “crowd.”
Crowdsourcing
People such as customers or buyers who participate in the improvement of a product
or the managing of business.
Choosing Merchandise with Customer’s Help
At the women’s vintage and retro clothing site ModCloth (www.modcloth.com), enthusiastic buyers use their
smartphones and an internal app developed by the company to provide real-time feedback on how much they like
sweaters, other clothing, and accessories that have just been made. The site invites users to “be the buyer,”.
ModCloth can gauge the sentiment of its customer base within minutes and use that information to do strategic
purchasing. If the clothing vendor is in its facility while the feedback is being registered, ModCloth can tell the vendor
immediately whether it wants an item, and whether it wants to purchase 50, 100, or 500 of that item.
Instead of making such decisions by intuition or by the gut feeling of a few sample shoppers, ModCloth can back
up such decisions with user data. The community has even suggested new dress designs and new colors for sweaters, for
