How To Start Trading Online

For many businesses technology means cutting costs, improving process efficiency and getting close to your customers and suppliers.

The internet has without doubt helped in achieving these goals, whether through online trading or extranets and intranets.

It is no longer a question of “can I afford to use technology?” Now, it is “can I afford not to?” It is not simply online access, which offers small businesses significant new revenue and cost saving benefits, but also integrating technology throughout the business.

So, assuming you want to embark upon implementing a technology strategy (if you have not done so already) where do you start?... how do you start?... how much will it cost?... what legal and security issues are involved?... how do you integrate it with the rest of your marketing and business strategy?

But not every business necessarily needs to trade online to remain competitive: however, presence on the worldwide web is becoming increasingly important.

Those companies who keep their heads in the sand and say: “I’ve been fine until now without the web, so why change?” forget the fact that, with every day that passes, their web-wise competitors will be eating away at their market share. There is no such thing as a local or regional market anymore.

You can buy whatever you want on the internet from businesses at the other end of the country, or even overseas. In addition the resulting cost reductions and improved partner and customer satisfaction which results form a successful e-business solution is immeasurable.

Before setting up your website, you need to establish what your objectives are for having a site, how it will fit in with your overall business objectives and how it will work as an integrated part of your business plan. You also need to ensure you have sufficient resources to meet any new demand you generate from your customers or suppliers.

There is no one way to put a website together. Many are simple ‘brochureware’ sites, where companies have simply scanned in their corporate brochure to give them a presence on the web. Some go a stage further. These are more dynamic, perhaps with some interesting graphics. There is a menu bar showing how you can get more information on the company’s history, products and services and the company goes to the trouble of updating the site regularly.

Then, there are sites which really mean business and allow you to buy goods and services online. The most sophisticated ones may even have a ‘virtual’ salesperson who will answer frequently-asked questions (called FAQs) or connect you through to a real salesperson.

Which one is right for you? That depends entirely on what you want to achieve with your website, your budget (of course) and how the website fits in with your overall business and marketing strategies.

Your site is your shop window - not just to the people who pass by your premises every day, but to the entire world. Think hard about the words you use: consider how you would normally talk to your customer base and adopt that tone of voice. For some businesses, this will be professional, even formal, whereas other businesses can afford to be more relaxed - even casual.

Do not use too many words as no one really wants to spend hours wading through text. So keep it brief and to the point. If you do have something which really needs lots of words, such as your corporate brochure it is best to make it available as a downloadable facility.

As the saying goes, pictures say more than a thousand words, but too many will take ages to download. Internet users are impatient people and quickly give up. Therefore, pictures should be very small in the digital sense of the word, making them fast to download whatever the connection speed.

If you have overseas customers, or are looking to expand your overseas business, you need to make sure that you are fully prepared for handling this. There are many international implications to bear in mind, including dealing in foreign currencies, local customs, foreign trade laws and cultural differences.

Also, depending on how many customers you have in each country and the importance of the country in your overall business strategy and objectives, you may want to consider making some or all of the pages available in different languages.

Ensure your site is easy to navigate, with a clear menu bar on the side of each page taking you to any part of the site at any time and with high-visibility contact details. Complicated sites, which take ages to get to the information wanted, can exasperate users and make them give up.

Make sure your homepage - the first one people see - really works for you. Big, well-known companies can perhaps afford to just have their name and a click-to-enter icon. But anyone trawling through a series of websites, looking for a specific product or service, wants to know quickly what you do or do not sell.

The Importance Of Rebranding Your Business

The vagaries of public taste can be the curse of many small businesses but one company has shown that a little marketing savvy can go a long way and help turn an out-of-fashion product into a desirable consumer foodstuff. Forget the humble pilchard. In its place is now the Cornish sardine.

Now down in the west of England they know full well that the pilchard and the sardine are one and the same. However, to the average consumer the idea of a pilchard conjures up images of ring-pull tins and tomato sauce. The sardine on the other hand evokes memories of Spanish and Portuguese holidays and barbeques in the sun.

How the pilchard came to be transformed into the Cornish sardine and its subsequent pride of place on supermarket fresh fish counters owes something to a bit of luck, allied to a slice of ingenuity. It also provides a classic example for SMEs everywhere of how marketing can make a huge difference to a company's fortunes. Though, in fairness, the success of the Newlyn-based Pilchard Works is exceptional by anyone's standards.

Big budgets can turn around products. Marketing gurus point to the success of Burberry in turning a staid tartan fabric into a must-have fashion accessory and television watchers everywhere will have been amused by the adverts for Skoda cars and how they have been transformed from cheap and nasty to rather desirable.

However, throwing large sums at rebranding exercises can often backfire. The launches of Consignia and the torch-carrying logo of BT swallowed up millions of pounds and were deemed failures.

The success of Pilchard Works offers a valuable example to other SMEs. I consider marketing to be delivering value to the customer. Often the publicity around rebranding doesn’t help. The idea of the Cornish sardines is a lovely story, and it shows how a small company has identified a gap between what is being delivered and what the customer wants.

The pilchard conjures up a negative image in people's minds, while the sardine is associated with sunshine, heat and happy times on holidays. Small business can take heart from this example. It is about being close to the customer and identifying what value can be delivered. And that can pretty much apply to anything.

A simple gap exercise to look at what a company is offering and what the customer wants, and how great or otherwise is the gulf between the two, is a valuable one for any SME and doesn’t need to be linked to rebranding.

The Pilchard Works experience highlights some of the key rules SMEs need to adhere to when promoting their products. It also, of course, shows the massive impact a successful strategy can have on the sales of a small company. Too many smaller companies tend to be similar to other companies within their areas rather than standing out.

SMEs can sometimes have an advantage over larger companies with bigger budgets. They can be more flexible and concentrate on one product and a niche customer market, while larger rivals may have a range of products and a varied customer base.

What the pilchard producer has done is understand a target group of customers and aim their product so that it appeals. And that is a valuable lesson whether selling sardines or whatever. They have used a rebranding exercise, but there are other ways of getting a message across, such as redesigning the packaging or using a particular distribution partner.

An example is a drink producer called Innocent Drinks. They produce an expensive, yoghurt­-based smooth drink and have identified a niche, premium market. The drink is seen as healthy and organic and has appealed to the snack lunchtime market. A tie up with Starbucks that has got it onto the shelves of the coffee house has been a further boost.

Whether a yoghurt drink or a sardine, the rules are the same: you can change your image without access to a large PR campaign.