Should you be selling a product or a service?

The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain,
educate and research. It is thus no wonder that
nonperishable, information-intensive products - including
computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics,
magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online
products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based
sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range
of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.

Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and
investments have successfully translated themselves to the
Internet.

Unique services such as Online driving schools have been
prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment
sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log
on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses,
such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.

However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the
Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face
selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give
lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the
scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place
offline - i.e., not on the Internet.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the
Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best
on the Internet are those that take advantage of the
convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the
primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the
first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any
site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales
clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.

Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract
online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not
try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus,
few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with
daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare
cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can
and do sell on the Net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well
on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products
that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping
costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products
and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high
shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people
from buying online more than any other single reason. An
Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online
shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too
high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with
credit cards being stolen.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages
as well as disadvantages of selling either products or
services. However, in the recent past, online services have
known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell
products you need to rethink your product offering if the
total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than
what is offered elsewhere.

Take some time to evaluate your products or services. There
is a growing market of potential customers on the Internet,
you just need to offer the products and services they are
looking for.

What businesses are succeeding on the Net?

This week we will address the most basic question any
Internet business owner will have to answer at one point or
another…”what should I sell?”.

After the settling down of the dot-com bubble, sanity checks
have brought realistic expectations to the fore. Initially,
a backlash was seen, forecasting the doom of the Internet.
Finally, merits have made the Internet gain its rightful
place. In breakthroughs that show the promise of e-commerce
wasn't all smoke and mirrors, four dot-coms recently
reported their first quarterly profits. The list of the
Internet’s publicly held moneymakers includes eBay Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc.,
Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc.
Several privately owned dot-coms, including search engines
Google and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.

In 2001, the last full year where numbers are available, the
Department of Commerce broke out e-commerce sales versus
total U.S retail sales which revealed the $3.16 trillion
retail industry saw a total of $37.7 billion in sales take
place online -- comprising 1.2 percent of the total. This
year e-commerce is tracking about the same. Through the
third quarter, the last full quarter where numbers are
available, total retail sales were $856 billion versus $11
billion in e-commerce, about a 1.3 percent share.


There were big gains made in Home and Garden, a 78 percent
increase; Furniture and Appliances, a 75 percent increase;
and Toy shopping online with a 61 percent increase in the
year 2002. There is no doubt that online shopping is
growing.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that more than 35.5 million U.S.
Internet users made shopping trips to virtual department
store sites during the week ending November 3, 2002 - that's
a 20 percent increase from the week ending October 20 and
roughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in
2001.

There is a growing tendency amongst Internet users to pay
for valuable content online. There are many reasons for
this. First, only a few websites operated by big companies
can afford to provide valuable content without being
compensated. The rest of us can't be so generous. And trying
to recapture our expenses by selling advertising on our
websites has failed to pay the bills. Online advertising and
click-through rates are on the decline.

Second, many people are now more than willing to pay to
receive quality services and products even if they were
offered for free earlier. Several paid content websites have
already proven this unmistakable trend. The discerning buyer
values his/her time as also the quality of information or
service and is willing to pay for it.

However, not all products can be sold on the Internet. Some
products may be better suited for online sales than others;
others simply will not work on this new commercial medium.
According to an Ernst and Young study, the most popular
online purchases are computer related products (40%), books
(20%), travel (16%), clothing (10%), recorded music (6%),
subscriptions (6%), gifts (5%) and investments (4%).

Businesses offering paid services have also prospered
enormously. The top three categories (Business
Content/Investment, Entertainment/Lifestyles and
Personals/Dating) accounted for 62% of all paid content
revenues in the first three quarters of 2002. The total
market for paid online content in the U.S. grew to $361.4
million for the quarter, a 14 percent gain over the previous
quarter and a 105.3 percent gain over Q3 2001. An
interesting statistic put forward by this report is that 85%
of money spent by U.S. Consumers for online content goes to
the top 50 sites in most of the categories.

The graph below (Top 3 Content Categories) is indicative of
this change.

In terms of “stickiness” of different categories, Business
sites - especially finance and investment rank the highest.
In other words, users are more likely to spend longer time
surfing through a business website compared to other
categories. This study was conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The table below shows the most addictive web categories for
2002.

Category Time per person(hr:min:sec) Audience
Business – Finance and Investment 0:21:33 51,586
General News 0:15:47 64,822
Entertainment 0:14:32 45,922

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

According to the above figures a person spends about 22
minutes on a finance website on an average.

Why should potential customers hire your service company?

Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain
what your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to
your customers? What pain does it cure, what solution does
it provide? Compare your service with that of your
competitors and highlight what makes you stand out from the
competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly
separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there
must be a convincing reason for doing business with you,
instead of your competitor.

Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating
phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with
you and to trade their money for the benefits delivered by
your service.

As you start to work through the above four steps, you may
find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it
off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy,
everyone would have a great USP! Come up with a tight, sharp
USP that sells your service to your customer.

Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word
when a one or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action
language and be interesting. The page should be so clearly
organized that, in seconds, visitors can understand and get
convinced to buy your product and be able to anticipate
where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button – will take
them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an e-commerce site.

If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using your website, potential clients have to
be able to trust you. Their confidence in you and your
products has to be boosted. Endorsements on your website
from a valued friend or colleague, or a referral from a
strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your
credibility. You and your service must be perceived as
being trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident
enough to contact you or even buy your product.

Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart
and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet
their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that
steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view
that you are an “authority” in your field.

Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers
is to keep abreast of recent developments in your field.
Check on what your competitors are writing about, and watch
for new trends. This will keep your website current,
razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your eyes open, you will
be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been well
covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche
on your website.

Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too
much. Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted
niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners.
Remember; focus on your selling your service. That’s where
the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from.

Why should potential customers hire your service company?

Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain
what your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to
your customers? What pain does it cure, what solution does
it provide? Compare your service with that of your
competitors and highlight what makes you stand out from the
competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly
separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there
must be a convincing reason for doing business with you,
instead of your competitor.

Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating
phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with
you and to trade their money for the benefits delivered by
your service.

As you start to work through the above four steps, you may
find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it
off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy,
everyone would have a great USP! Come up with a tight, sharp
USP that sells your service to your customer.

Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word
when a one or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action
language and be interesting. The page should be so clearly
organized that, in seconds, visitors can understand and get
convinced to buy your product and be able to anticipate
where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button – will take
them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an e-commerce site.

If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using your website, potential clients have to
be able to trust you. Their confidence in you and your
products has to be boosted. Endorsements on your website
from a valued friend or colleague, or a referral from a
strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your
credibility. You and your service must be perceived as
being trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident
enough to contact you or even buy your product.

Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart
and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet
their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that
steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view
that you are an “authority” in your field.

Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers
is to keep abreast of recent developments in your field.
Check on what your competitors are writing about, and watch
for new trends. This will keep your website current,
razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your eyes open, you will
be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been well
covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche
on your website.

Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too
much. Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted
niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners.
Remember; focus on your selling your service. That’s where
the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from.

Web Copy

We have all heard that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you
say it”. Well, the same applies to website content. In
this article we will discuss the importance of web copy and
how to turn your visitors into customers.

Your website content should convince visitors that your
service is either unique or superior to that of your
competitors in terms of quality or is competitively priced.
It should show your potential clients that you can provide
the solution that they are seeking. Your product or service
will solve their problems, answer a dream, enrich their
lives, and/or improve their businesses. You are the
dependable expert that they want and need!

Your website copy plays a major role in establishing and
growing your customer base. Web site copy creates the
“voice” of a company, just as the look and feel of a site
put a “face” on the company and on otherwise intangible
products and services. On an e-commerce site, the copy plays
a key role in closing sales as well as in up-selling and
cross-selling products and services. Good copy delights
first-time visitors, encourages return visits and propels
both customer acquisition and retention.

People read a Web page differently than they do a brochure
or a newspaper. They scan, scroll, click, hit the back
button, and hit the forward button. “Reading” is about
moving around and being in control. You have one chance to
make a first impression – to quickly convey the benefit of
staying on your Web site. I can’t overstate the importance
of first impressions, which in Web-time are measured in
milliseconds. The layout, functionality, message and overall
look and feel of your web page determine who stays – and who
clicks away.

Your story should be clear and to the point. The goal of any
web page should be to get the visitor to DO something: to
move on to the next step in a purchase sequence or to click
for more information about a product or service. Without
readable, compelling copy and clearly organized hypertext
links, visitors are much less likely to complete a
transaction – and return to your site again.

Writing for your Web page should always start from your
visitor’s perspective. What is your Web site visitor looking
for? Why is he/she here? How can you make his/her visit as
quick and efficient and positive as possible? You should
take the time to clarify the goal of each page before
starting to write. If the page is part of a transaction
sequence, identify what may be hindering the buying process.
Be sure instructions are clear and easy to read.

If you are selling a service on your website, your Unique
Selling Proposition (USP) is your service’s most powerful
benefit, in combination with a strong, unique feature of
your business. It answers that most difficult question:

AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web
search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending
relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture
Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of
nearly three years


Take some time to register with these search engines as soon
as possible and watch the traffic grow.

Excite

Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more
of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to
be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as
Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As
of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL's,
and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite
search results, you need to be either listed with Overture
or Inktomi.

Looksmart

Getting a listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good
amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart's results appear
in many search engines, including AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and
many others.

Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If your site
is generally non-business related, you can submit your site
to Zeal (Looksmart's sister site ), or if you are a
business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either
method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner
sites if you are approved.

Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for
listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be
listed on Looksmart and its partner sites.