c’mon Aussie firms: give us a reason to buy in Australia

Published on September 18, 2010 c’mon Aussie firms: give us a reason to buy in Australia

A recent report by eBay has observed that record numbers of Australian are buying goods online, but are doing so with overseas buyers.  While it doesn’t help that eBay’s new portal is encouraging customers to buy from foreign fashion stores, the real problem is that Australian businesses are not embracing the online market like they should.

Whereas the American online market is quite mature with a number of well thought out websites where they have integrated ecommerce into their overall business strategy, in our observation many businesses do not have the same mindset and treat their shopping cart website either as something they should tack-on to the rest of their business operations, or adopt the “little ma and pa” business philosophy and marginalise the value and importance of marketing to promote their online store.

No business will ever succeed unless the hard work is done up-front with your sales and marketing strategy, as well as constantly measuring how well you are doing and evaluating and improving what you do.

The best, well designed website in the world will fall over if it isn’t backed by great products, great product photos, useful information, good business policies, communication with customers and above all, marketing.  This is a very important point: if you build it they will not come, no matter how great it is. They will come if you promote your website – that includes a solid and well integrated strategy that is effective with respect to the level of competition in your industry and your own competitive position.

For example, if you’re in the jewellery industry, there are many competitors who have a lot more money to spend than you will have as a new ecommerce startup. They will probably spend more on their stock than you spend on your entire business in a year, and their budget will most likely extend to the tens or hundreds of thousands per year. Online you can compete with these companies but you have to be smart. Do the basics right. These include:

• Define yourself a real point of difference. Unless you have a huge marketing budget and can spend substantially more than your competitors combined on advertising and promotion, a niche approach is the way to go. What’s different about your products? What’s different about your service?
• Ask your potential customers.  If you get the opportunity to ask the types of people you are selling to about your store then do it. If you have a physical shop, take advantage of that. You may need to incentivise people to respond but it’s well worth it. The more information you have, the better you can compete.
• Do the content right. Don’t leave blank pages in your website, or pages that are still filled with the “Ipsum Lorem” filler text that your web developers put into the site when it was created. That shows poor attention to detail, and customers will punish you for it. Customers are tough these days, and that’s why they’re shopping overseas.
• Price right. Don’t be greedy. You generally have lower overheads online, and customers know it. They won’t pay the prices they can get on the high street as they are buying sight unseen and want a bargain. That’s not to say that your prices can’t be comparable, but online customers are much more likely to shop around if they don’t like your prices. That’s why price comparison engines like Shopping.com are so popular with consumers.
• Dont’ forget your international competitors. You are not only competing with local businesses – at any time, any one can buy online and some American websites even offer free shipping to Australia. Look at what your competitors overseas are selling and the prices they charge. The dollar is high which takes the exchange rate pretty much out of the equation for Australian shoppers online. This means the market is tough and you need to step up to capture some of the rich pickings that are to be had.
• Take advantage of the marketing features of your cart. If your Ozcart package includes cross sell, then use it. If your budget extends to price comparison engine add-ons then it’s well worth considering.  Then there’s newsletters, discount vouchers, gift certificates, affiliates, contests, advertising banners, wish lists and more.  If you don’t know how to get more from your cart, do some research and then ask us if you need help. We want you to succeed and will always do our best to answer your questions and point you in the right direction. We don’t do your search engine optimisation for you – that’s part of your marketing strategy – but there are a lot of useful tools to help you get it done.

Don’t let the profits go to overseas firms: tap into the growing online shopping market in Australia by starting your own online shop with Ozcart shopping cart software.