Changing face of E-Commerce

The concept of online stores or e-commerce market place has matured over the passage of time with the advent of Internet. The virtual stores are turning out to be the business model for the millennium. As per the general perception, the pace with which the e-commerce is growing, it might outpace the business of physical stores one day. However, the recent report published by Forrester suggests that the presence of location of a physical store online enhances the total sales of the online stores. The estimated sales value of physical stores alone is calculated to be the 45% of the total sales value.

In general, the franchisee and franchiser relationship in the online business is maintained by the constant flow of information for the availability and replenishments of goods and services by a concrete enterprise resource planning and a supply chain tool. This tool enables franchiser to know the inventory status of the franchisee once they update their sales data regularly. Subsequently franchiser can plan to replenish the goods and materials in the franchisee’s stores if it has come down to a minimum storage level. All this franchiser can do by monitoring the data of all the franchisee stores because all their data are stored in the central server or monitoring server administered by the franchiser.

The location of different franchisers in different region is aimed to cater the need of the customer by shipping to reach the goods and materials faster with minimum turn around time of 24 hours. The encouragement of buying online largely is because of the great ranges of choices and heavy discounts. No heavy operating cost involve on maintaining the outlets and retail establishments, make e-commerce a profitable proposition for the customers.

As the volume of sales grow, the e-commerce company benefits enormously by selling virtually online with operating and shipping stores at different locations. The mode of reaching goods to the customer remains on shipping by courier in minimum time.

The recent trend which allows the customer to fetch the materials directly from the physical stores at the same price makes huge savings on shipping and handling and in turn increases the profits of the online stores. In the bargain franchisee, franchiser and customer are in benefit.

Franchisers sees the greater sales volume, franchisee makes a cost savings by handling and shipping and customer gets the goods and materials faster without any hassles.

Think of a scenario, Mr. Murthy is a book lover and day after tomorrow happens to be his son’s birthday. As a gift, he wants to presents his son a full set of R K Narayan’s book which is available on www.flipkart.com at 30% discounts rate with payment on arrival. But the minimum shipping time required is 3 days and Mr.Murthy is not sure if he places the order it will be delivered to his son on his birthday. Ironically, the flikart store is located a kilometer away from Mr.Murthy’s house and eventually he passes the stores everyday while going to his office.

If the flipkart allows Mr.Murthy to pay and pick the books from the stores, he would be able to ensure that his son gets the birthday gift what he planned; in addition to that he makes a cost savings too. Therefore, the current model of adding physical stores location online and allowing customers to fetch goods and materials directly helps e-commerce grow their business at a faster rate and maximize their profits.

Content is the King

Internet invaded my life nine years ago and now it’s the part and parcel of daily bread. The way it has grown from merely having some informational web sites years ago to the level of dynamic informational super highway is quite astounding. No matter, what you think, you can get some information on the Internet related to your search. A decade back, we had never thought that we would be so obsessed with the internet that for all our needs we would be looking to search hundreds and thousand of web pages. Today, from buying and selling to attending virtual conferences, all happens on the Internet.

The new age solution to your entire problem is Internet. During the advent of the Internet critiques were in vague to forecast that it was just another invention and would not have much impact on human life. That was traditional way of thinking in general which lacked clear foresight and knowledge about changing human behaviour. Things have changed drastically, the way business is transacted and information is exchanged today. Perhaps few golden oldies did not realize its importance that it is going to rule the world and overshadow even the great industrial revolution. The internet brought the communication revolution, which continues to happen every second and minute of our life.

Today, all the businesses, education, information, written communication and verbal communication are offered through the Internet. In helm of all these, one of the greatest inputs which has come to play greater role is the content. Content on the web pages are no more some beautiful description of your thoughts and minds. Your web site is no more another fancy addition to detail about your business on the Internet along with some other medium of information transaction. Internet is the main medium of information about you and your business. I would not surprise to know that even a cobbler in my lane has his name and addresses available on any of the websites or have launched a kiosk to advertise his business on the Internet through google adsense. These are the reality.

However, the journey of transacting through the Internet matured only when people realized that good contents with clear knowledge can take them to places. Business houses realized the importance of good content on their web sites and its mileage. Your web pages is your image and it interfaces with the people first before any thing happens. A job seeker before applying to any job, browse the web site of the company. Impressive the web site greater the magnitude of first impact it creates on the mind of job seeker. The crux is, clear and condensed information communicated through the well written content on the web pages. People do believe what you say on the internet and contemplate your image in real life. Its the virtual image of you in the real world at first place.

Whatever business you are doing and how big you are, is judged on the basis of how good your web site has communicated. Some of the web sites of giant corporation have very poorly written content which does not reflect the real image of its business. You might be big and better than others but if you do not present yourself well on your web pages, you are going to lose something to someone who does not know well about you. Because people have not seen the size of your business operation, revenue earned or spent per year, and your share value on the stock markets. To them, your web site is the first interface. Therefore, building a web site with quality content always creates good image.

Web content writing was never as demanding as it is now and the requirement of seeking good content writers are increasing. This is the new emerging area of interest for those who want to be in writing. This was not the case few years ago. Prices too are offered reasonably well if you have perfected the art of communicating as per the need of intended audience. This has happened in the recent years. Web sites have become the subject of creating face value and adding the new age content is need of the business.

Taking the advantage of the situation some paper tigers have even looted simple people through their superb content on the web pages. But these can be tackled well before you believe them. Internet has another option for people to search about these misguided mongers on another site reading as reviews. Some of the sites which has fantastic visuals and no good content does not relate to its viewer. The perfect blend of visuals with right content gives good mileage. To knowledgeable viewers the importance of visual is to reduce the time and efforts to convey complex content into simple knowledge. If the visuals are not able to justify the intent, its better that content is the king.