The best way to show how this is possible is to give you a example of one of my clients
One of our clients runs a online only business and so their website is a essential part of their business. They do not have a physical store and so they communicate with clients via the website, email and phone plus they attend some trade shows each year. All products are shipped via post or courier. They have deliberatley chosen this strategy as it suits their lifestyle and as the business has grown they realised that they didnt require a physical store plus they didnt want to run a store.
They are located about 1 hour from Sydney but this doesnt effect their business at all as its online only.
In each capital city they have at least one large competitor who has a large retail store and have been in the industry for many years and also has a ecommerce website.
Expertise – they are experts in their industry and know the market and products very well – they know the right products to stock and constantly review their product offering to make sure that they are stocking the correct products and to include any new products.
Pre sales and after sales service – they use their expertise to make sure that clients are buying the correct products for their needs and contact most clients about their order to ensure great customer service. They keep close attention to their client contacts and keep in touch using regular communication.
Relationship with suppliers – they have developed beneficial relationships with suppliers to make sure that they offer a extensive range of quality products. Some suppliers allow them to ship their products from the suppliers warehouse and this simplifies the shipping process.
Effective website – the website has all of the required features to sell online. Its big advantage is that our client ranks number one in the major search engines for most product keywords. They have constantly worked on their search engine optimization to ensure that their natural or organic keyword rankings are high. This has brought increased traffic to their website and increased sales.
So by doing all of the above things well has enabled them to build a successful online business and to be very profitable.
Their competitors to date have not executed a very good ecommerce strategy and so this has allowed our client to be the dominant player on the internet. This may change in the future but there are additional strategies that are being implemented now to ensure that they remain number one and to gain more web traffic plus some others that can be implemented in the future if required.
By running your business well and by having a good ecommerce website strategy in place can allow your business to gain significant market share even if you are not one of the largest players in your market.
