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The Dirty Little
E-Commerce Secret You'd Never Think Of…
Ahhh…Technology. The hustle-bustle, the abbreviations, the wealth potential.
E-Commerce and Technology go together like death and taxes:
Inescapable, expensive…and horribly complicated.
And like Death and Taxes, a necessary Evil.
I can remember being in the shoes of the budding Internet Entrepreneur –
the one who doesn’t program enterprise wide servers for a living. I
thought to myself “ Am I going to need another degree to do this?”
I remember when the work at home bug hit me. Yes, like a fever is spread
from my brain to my fingertips to my optical mouse…and eventually it
killed my wallet. I tried it all – with reckless abandon based on
sky-high claims and cleverly programmed auto responder sequences (back
before auto responders were called…auto responders).
Even today, the word “E-Commerce” is the Buzz Phrase or Power Word used
to loosely define what we all want to achieve on the Internet:
“Sell Something for a Profit”
Simple, right?
The trouble is, like a good linguistic mutation of any English word,
“E-Commerce”, while short, easy to pronounce with many fine vowels and
consonants, has the same sort of ramifications as that other fine
English word, “Marriage”.
Complicated and expensive. (But Lovely... :))
Here’s the dirty little secret of E-Commerce: Opening an Online Store
Front was, for a long, long time, very difficult and expensive because…
…it kept people employed.
All of the web masters, programmers, Graphic Designers, Flash Animators,
IT Engineers… almost to a person each was needed to Build and Operate a
traditional E-commerce Store Front.
The expense was astronomical. I’m fortunate to have a father who works
for a Fortune 100 company that was a pioneer in E-Commerce. His company
is HUGE…with an operational budget of many Billions of Dollars. The
level of resources that his company brought to bear on their E-Commerce
project read like a list of Atomic Engineers. Spectacular titles, many
with “PhD.” scribbled after their names would spend hours hand coding
cryptic characters into syntax editors to create a shopping environment.
He once told me the cost of one of their mis-adventures - Many Hundreds
of Thousands of Dollars.
“Here’s the Thing”, my dad would say: “ The Store Front was tremendous!
It looked GREAT, it was fast, it captured customer information, it could
hold Thousands of products…but…it’s not working”
I love my dad. He is a man that truly cares about his work. He takes the
time to figure out his projects to the nth degree and will use whatever
resource he can (Even his son’s often jaded opinions) to improve the end
result.
So, I asked him what the problem was. He Said, “It’s not making a
profit”. I asked him how much revenue it would need to make to be
profitable. He said, “How much money did you make this year”? It had
been a REALLY good year for me. He said “Triple That…”
Gag!!
Ultimately, that’s the problem. What my father was soon able to take to
his supervisors turns out to be the same reason that so many motivated,
passionate, work-at-home hopefuls can’t quite seem to make their on-line
efforts work…
“E-commerce is all about Technology. Let is float there as an island.
When you want to open up an On-Line Store, you will need the technology,
but that’s not your goal.”
Your goal is Marketing and Sales.
The faces on my father’s superiors twisted into degrees of anguish and
amazement. “What the hell do we know about sales and marketing? We’re
spending our money on technology!”
My Dad said “My point exactly”
This is getting long; so let me start to wrap all of this up.
People don’t seem to realize that selling successfully on-line is still
the same process as selling successfully ANYWHERE.
You must know what to sell, and you find that out by observing what
people are buying.
You must know where to sell it, and you find that out by going where
people are buying.
You must know where to find your products so that you can sell them to
people that are buying.
You must know how your products benefit your customers so that they will
understand why they are buying.
You must be able to buy your products cheaply enough to make a profit.
You must serve and protect your customers after the sale…
…so they will buy from you again!
Notice how there was not a single mention of SQL Databases, or DHTML, or
Server Side Extensions?
This is how people get confused. When they start shopping for a service
to host their online store, they get so carried away in the technology
of it they forget that their first and most important responsibility is
to get their product in front of the RIGHT customer.
The truth is, the customer only wants a few things:
A Great Product at
A Great Price,
Shipped Quickly and Efficiently from,
People that they trust to spend their money with.
They could give a bunny’s bum (penguins posterior, bears back-side,
alligators a#@) about how fancy your e-commerce shopping cart is; if you
don’t have 3 out of the 4 things above, you have not got a chance to
sell them anything.
Of course, ALL OF IT is meaningless unless shoppers know about you…
Sigh. I’m such a long writer.
Here’s my point.
You want to sell online? Then SELL online! Don’t you dare get caught up
in all of that technological nonsense that web-geeks tell you will make
you money.
There is only one thing that will make you any money for your online
store –
Sales.
You want to make sales online? Figure out what people are buying and
sell it to them.
You want to make money online? Get your product in front of the right
customers and CLOSE THE SALE!
E-Commerce is about Technology
Selling Online is about Marketing.
It’s about Salesmanship on the web. It’s about serving your customers.
To do this successfully, you must not, cannot, shall not let technology
get in the way of your business.
E-Commerce is just a tool. Get it set-up right and leave it alone.
If you want to make money online, go out and find some customers and get
them to come to your “Tool”
This is why I own and operate several successful Yahoo! Stores.
They are great, simple, powerful and inexpensive tools.
You see, a Yahoo! Store has some of the most powerful E-Commerce
Technology in its engine. It’s run on robust servers and fast Internet
backbones. It’s maintained by highly paid network technicians and
programming engineers. It’s already all put together and running. All I
do is…
Sell solutions to problems.
Sell products with emotion.
Sell what customers are buying.
This is what I do to make a profit with a Yahoo! Store:
Feed it customers who are looking for what I am selling.
That’s it. No Bibbity-bobbity-bo.
Ask yourself, what’s your goal online? Is it to make money, to build
wealth? If it is, them why would you focus your efforts on technology?
Focus your efforts on Making Money! Let Yahoo! Stores take care of all
of that wizardry, hocus-DNS, file-not-found ISP crap. Why?
Because they are really, really good at it. They are, after all the
number 1 Internet destination on the web…
And besides, my dad will tell you, no matter how good your technology
is, unless you have customers, you will not make any money.
I guess that’s why a Yahoo! Store can get included in the Yahoo!
Shopping Network. It’s gets 13 Million Shoppers a day and is responsible
for about 38% of my total Yahoo! Store Sales (I know this because a
Yahoo! Store has built in visitor tracking, among other things).
Boy do I ever need a copy editor – I’ll close here.
The quickest path to income online is to actually make a sale. All other
things are secondary.
Technology does not matter, so don’t chase it. You can get it already
set-up with a built in customer base for less than dinner for 2 at the
Outback Steak House.
So, you no longer have any excuses to not sell online.
Sorry about that.
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