Make yourself a home in the forest of E-commerce
Warning: Please be prepared for more tree-related jokes and puns in the following blog post.
Yes, it’s important to remember that age-old proverb: “From little acorns, mighty oaks grow.”
For an established business, it can be difficult to take the first steps into Internet business, the cornerstone of which is, of course, a great website. Many businesses try to throw themselves in at the deep end of Ecommerce, with a large, comprehensive online shop.
There’s a lot for a business to think about in this scenario. “How do we take payments online? Should we list all our products and services, or just the most popular ones? Should we be managing stock through the website?” etc. We often find that people end up not being able to see the wood for the trees (boom boom).
Instead, allow me suggest a much more manageable approach. Until you’re sure people will use your website and buy online from you, don’t worry about an online shop. You can use a clever little site to establish your company’s online presence, list your products and services, and allow people to call or email you to place an order.
For many businesses, communicating with clients is pretty much essential when doing business with them, so this shouldn’t be a major issue anyway. Indeed, many people don’t like to part with money until they have spoken to a representative of a company they’re looking at.
If you’ve got a special deal going on, or some important piece of company news, you can always thicket (haha) on your website too.
So, in this way, you can use a clever little site as a tool to generate business for a fraction of the price of a full blown Ecommerce site. Then, when it starts generating more work than your staff can handle, or all your clients start clamouring for online payment facilities, you can think about upgrading your current site.
When that time comes, you will be able to draw on the experiences you’ve already accumulated, and make much more informed decisions on how your Ecommerce roots should spread (there was another). And you may find that money does indeed start growing on your Ecommerce trees (and another).
Don’t worry about losing your website address either – you’ll be able to take that with you too, whenever you want. Just let us know – we won’t mind. So there’s no need to call the copse (hahaha).
Okay. No more tree jokes. I’m done. Sorry everyone.
