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e- Visibility is the ways by which the customer can enter the website. This makes the presence of the website in the minds of the customer. Different ways of advertising a web presence and getting customers in through the door includes: * Site Name * Conventional Advertising * Portals * Malls * Search Engines * Links * Personal Recommendations <big>Site Name</big> The surest way of finding an e-commerce site is the url. If the url is simple and the punters can remember it, then the site is made. A sensible simple site name can be guessed by users and might be easily remembered. One such example is britishairways.com. Here the name of website can be guessed easily so that it makes the visitors of website to access the site easily. <big>Conventional Advertising</big> An irony of e-Commerce is the apparent urge to advertise them through conventional media: in the newspaper, on the television and even on the carrier bags used in real shops. Conventional advertising of internet addresses has a threshold effect: * It boosts the image of the organisation and any conventional facilities it might have- it gives an air on modernity and high-tech. * It lets the customer know that the organisation has internet facilities * It can give users access via the url. A little difficult if it is a complex url that is flashed on a TV screen or is printed on a bag that has been thrown away. <big>Portals</big> On loading the browser and connecting to the web the user is presented with a first page. This page is the portal, the place from which to access the facilities of the internet. The portal is a valuable piece of property. It is the one place through which all users are likely to pass. An advert on a popular portal is the web equivalent of a TV advert at half time in the cup final - it is seen by millions. An advert on a popular web search engine is a similar piece of property. Adverts on the portal can be banners, little boxes or background. Portals provide a menu of services and inclusion in that list is another way of picking up business. <big>Malls</big> An internet shopping mall models itself on the conventional shopping mall, a lot of shops, under one roof with a pleasant shopping atmosphere. To own a shop in a conventional mall is usually a good way of getting noticed by customers. The intention of an internet mall is the same, hopefully the customers who have been there before come back again, look around, see new shops and the interest in the location increases to the benefit of all the shops in the mall. An Internet mall can, like its conventional counterpart, provide common services. Possibilities includes the following * Shared advertising - Publicising the mall and hence attracting customers to all the shops. * Common facilities - the mall will very probably provide the software to link the shop to the back office and facilities like security and credit card processing can be common. * e-cash - the mall can provide or join an e-cash service that is useable in all the stores. * Common customer files so that publicity can be sent out to a wide range of users. <big>Search Engines</big> A search engine is a standard way to find any internet site and that includes e-shops. A successful e-shop could do with appearing in that top ten list of hits whichever search engine the user uses and whatever relevant term the user might choose to search on. A site owner, who knows the trick of business, can submit information to a search engine that ensures they get listed - some sites submit multitude of entries to ensure their prominence and to ensure that they would be found using a variety of keys. The search engines list only a small number of the sites that are out there on the internet. About 15% of the web sites is all that the best of the search engines manage and as the internet expands, the task does not get any easier. <big>Links</big> Online adverts on the web are also links to the site - hypertext links. Links are included on a variety of other sites with a variety of deals being done. Some links are paid for, some are mutual arrangements and there are those odd individuals who just have to share their shopping experience with all. Links can be a good way of getting customers better than rare hit and miss nature of searching. <big>Personal Recommendations</big> The final way of getting customers onto the site is the personnel recommendation. The satisfied customer will bookmark the site, come back to the site again and recommend it to their friends.
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