E-commerce on the World Wide Web
E-commerce seems to be the new buzzword even though the dot-com industry has peaked and crashed. The stability of the survivors has been eyeballed by just about every business that avoided the rush. If you think about it, do you consider a business to be legitimate if they don’t have a website for you to see?
Not just established businesses are going on-line. As easy as it is to register a domain and get a “home page” going there are millions of people doing the same thing. They are offering just about everything under the sun in a medium that promises quick exposure to the buying public.
Got an idea for a company? There are countless offers to help from huge access providers like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and many others. Don’t know much about designing a webpage? Not a problem as far as they’re concerned. All of them offer quick and easy to tools for you to use. If you can start a computer and get to the Internet chances are you can build a great looking site by using one of the free templates they’ll offer you. You won’t even need to understand html code.
Then what? You’ve got a great looking website. How do people find out what you’re offering? Word of mouth only works so far and then the site just sits there, with you paying the monthly fees for hosting, without so much as a whisper of a hint at a sale.
Here’s where you find out that having a website is not enough. Yes, people are looking for exactly what you’re offering but they aren’t seeing yours. You may have had a quick burst of interest for a few weeks before all the attention went away. What happened?
The Internet happened, that’s all. For all the power claimed for the Internet, it can be the most frustrating, irrational, and obnoxious creation since teenagers. There are ways to get your message out there but it will take time, energy, education and a fair amount of luck for your efforts to bear fruit. Don’t feel bad, though. Established companies have the same problems you do.
There are two ways to get noticed on the Internet. 1) Pay For Advertising, or, 2) Design better websites. Most people (and companies) flounder around with the second option until somebody gives up in disgust and just pays to get the results they want.
The big problem with designing better websites is that you are trying to second-guess someone else (the Search Engines) who (for the most part) won’t tell you what will give you the results you want. You can get good results but it does take time and concentration to make it happen. Plus, you can have millions of competing websites that are trying to do the same thing.
If you see advertising that “guarantees” you a specific result in Search Engine Results – BEWARE. There are several ways for someone to promise this but no one can guarantee you a specific result for anything besides your own unique name, which you can get without paying for it to happen. Take a healthy, heaping dose of skepticism and good sense to the Internet just as you would anywhere else.
(Next week – Search Terms and the Search Engines.)
Mike Myklin is an author, a lecturer, and an e-commerce owner. If you have questions about the Internet and e-commerce, you can send them to him and he will try to answer them in his column. You can also read this article on-line at http://www.myklin.com/.
Not just established businesses are going on-line. As easy as it is to register a domain and get a “home page” going there are millions of people doing the same thing. They are offering just about everything under the sun in a medium that promises quick exposure to the buying public.
Got an idea for a company? There are countless offers to help from huge access providers like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and many others. Don’t know much about designing a webpage? Not a problem as far as they’re concerned. All of them offer quick and easy to tools for you to use. If you can start a computer and get to the Internet chances are you can build a great looking site by using one of the free templates they’ll offer you. You won’t even need to understand html code.
Then what? You’ve got a great looking website. How do people find out what you’re offering? Word of mouth only works so far and then the site just sits there, with you paying the monthly fees for hosting, without so much as a whisper of a hint at a sale.
Here’s where you find out that having a website is not enough. Yes, people are looking for exactly what you’re offering but they aren’t seeing yours. You may have had a quick burst of interest for a few weeks before all the attention went away. What happened?
The Internet happened, that’s all. For all the power claimed for the Internet, it can be the most frustrating, irrational, and obnoxious creation since teenagers. There are ways to get your message out there but it will take time, energy, education and a fair amount of luck for your efforts to bear fruit. Don’t feel bad, though. Established companies have the same problems you do.
There are two ways to get noticed on the Internet. 1) Pay For Advertising, or, 2) Design better websites. Most people (and companies) flounder around with the second option until somebody gives up in disgust and just pays to get the results they want.
The big problem with designing better websites is that you are trying to second-guess someone else (the Search Engines) who (for the most part) won’t tell you what will give you the results you want. You can get good results but it does take time and concentration to make it happen. Plus, you can have millions of competing websites that are trying to do the same thing.
If you see advertising that “guarantees” you a specific result in Search Engine Results – BEWARE. There are several ways for someone to promise this but no one can guarantee you a specific result for anything besides your own unique name, which you can get without paying for it to happen. Take a healthy, heaping dose of skepticism and good sense to the Internet just as you would anywhere else.
(Next week – Search Terms and the Search Engines.)
Mike Myklin is an author, a lecturer, and an e-commerce owner. If you have questions about the Internet and e-commerce, you can send them to him and he will try to answer them in his column. You can also read this article on-line at http://www.myklin.com/.
posted by Mike Myklin at 7:00 AM
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