ebusiness advantage are far from the reach for SME

After so much advancement in ebusiness, SME are still to be blessed. 

There are so many technical service provider offering ebusiness services, but many of them dont think long term. Recently I was in touch with a service provider they sign a contact with one of our client and I was later appointed as a consultant to finish the project on urgent basis, what I found was that this company was buiding a CMS system and then adding hand coded payment transaction and no backend admin management, I was shocked, I said for this amount a person can buy a ready to use ecommerce software or open a store on yahoo store or some good store.

So, SME got to be smart, there are economical and reliable service provider available, all you got to do is check for the authenticy with the body they are register with a complain if they dont perform well, including me

settingup online store

Many small and medium businesses are still scared of having their website online, there are many factors that delays the setup and finally force them to close down.  Let us discuss some of them

1.  The foremost question is of getting the right ecommerce company that would understand product, market and company requirement

2.  Finalizing the store design and layout that would have all sorts of requirements like promotion area, product brief, etc.

3. All contents like privacy, terms of use, refund policy and more

4. Taxation, Shipping and other additional cost

5. Addon features like color variance, matching shoes, matching ties and so on

6. Marketing aspect

7. Prompt support from service provider, the ecommerce service provider must be sound to look after hosting, addons, critical payment issue, etc

These are few things that needs to be kept in mind

Cost for online marketing

Unlike offline advertising, online advertising doesnt paysoff quickly, it takes time to generate momentum and the results.  Small Businesses would spend huge money on radio, newspaper, magazine and other ads but, they would be scared of spending online.  There are many reasons for that.  Here we will discuss what issues could

 1.   Right Marketing Company
Finding a right marketing company is a difficult task, as online advertising request a company to be live, it should change the its dynamics to produce results.  So check do the company have some R&D and team to do analysis

 2.  Selecting the right solutions
Your online marketing company will comeup with short-term and long-term proposal, you got to select the right combination of both to get results in short-term and sustain in long-term.  There are many options like CPC, CPA, SEO, EZINE, Social Network and more.

3.  Set a budget
Generally business resist to spend on online advertising, and those who spend they rule.  As mentioned above, after select a right company, right solution the entrepreneur should be patient and wait for the results to come.

4. Use tools
Ensure to use tools like word-tracker, google analytics and more to keep eye on marketing activities, you can even watch who are coming from which source, using which keywords and finally which source is generating conversion

Finally ensure the site is healthy, and ensure to use small size CRM to track emails, XML to distribute content (data feeds) and other such objects to keep the site updated

Google Apps or Hotmail Live

Sometimes I think competition between 2 mega-firm is good for small business. For instance the serivces offered by Google and MSN.  Now businesses can opt for GMAIL or HOTMAIL a world class email along with colloboration.

For GMAIL look at http://www.google.com/a

For MSN look at http://domains.live.com/

Yes there is a difference - I found google to be good as it provide with pop access, I am not sure about customize domain for MSN. But even though it works great, I have put one email on MSN and one on GMAIL and both works great with spam filter, contacts and more

practicing ebusiness

eBusiness is booming like never before, never before it was thought that web would change the way we live.  Web tools like wireless, wifi, global call diversion and more. Now business have more opportunity to tap.  We have created this blog to share you our experience here.