Perhaps the most fascinating thing about eCommerce is the sheer size of the opportunity and how quickly the industry has developed.
Back in the dinosaur ages of the Internet (1994), there was no such thing as real time credit card transactions. In those days, you had to make your purchase over the telephone or via email and your order would be processed offline.
Thankfully times have changed.
Instead of sending cheques via the post, customers can now make instant payments and businesses can receive their money almost immediately.
However, even through the technology has rapidly progressed, the fundamental rules of eCommerce remain the same.
To generate sales on your website you still need to do two things:
- Drive quality traffic to your website
- Have a sales system in place to convert browsers into buyers
Without these two components, the process of collecting the money (eCommerce) is irrelevant.
And that’s why many eCommerce sites fail - they jump the gun by worrying about all the ‘bells and whistles’ before developing a plan to generate traffic to their site.
Clearly, the most successful eCommerce sites are not the ones that just come up with a great ‘idea’ but the ones that build their businesses around a pre-existing demand in the marketplace.
