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HOW CAN ECOMMERCE BE USED
EFFECTIVELY BY SME’S?
With the rapid growth of
ecommerce in China, several foreign
ecommerce websites have arisen. The best
example of such a site is Easy Trade.
The small and medium enterprises
encounter several problems, even today,
when they use ecommerce solutions. You
should understand the problems to
navigate your company around them,
successfully. Given below are numerous
areas for ecommerce SMEs to know:
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Electronic commerce of SMEs and an
implementation plan – Before
purchasing any ecommerce solution
the companies need to find out which
ecommerce solution will best suit
their requirements. That is, the
ecommerce solution has to suit the
business model.
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Choosing the markets and holding the
right opportunities – Target market
is the group of customers you would
like to do business with. You have
to determine your target market
first, what products and services
you will sell and how you would want
to sell them before deciding which
ecommerce solution you want to buy.
You also need to consider the
promotional plan as well. Unlike the
traditional marketing, ecommerce is
a two way marketing model, therefore
you need to find out if your
products and services will suit the
conditions of internet consumers.
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Building a good quality corporate
image and making the promotion of
your web site stronger – Any
corporate web site is seen as a city
and its visitors are the it
population. Just like how the city’s
population is determined by its
environment and its quality of
service, the web site’s population
is also dependent on its
construction and services.
Therefore, you have to design your
website well and promote the
ecommerce systems used in it. There
are several methods to promote a
website, which can be divided in to
2 broad categories. First, you can
use the traditional media like
promotional sites, product
packaging, promotional t-shirts,
business cards, television and
newspapers. Or you can use the
resources of the internet to promote
your site, by placing links to your
site on popular websites, email and
discussion groups.
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Select the best ways of payment and
distribution so that risks and costs
are cut down – The way of payment
and distribution are the 2 primary
problems the ecommerce face and the
firm is not able take the right
decisions about these issues by
themselves. You need to adopt a
flexible way to solve these. The
payment mode that is commonly used
is “Cash on Delivery”. You have to
give three options for the delivery:
self delivery, UPS or EMS.
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Establishing an efficient and
reliable system for information
gathering – Now is the information
age, where the first to get right
information will always win. The
SMEs need to implement an
information gathering system, if
they have to successfully implement
an ecommerce system. It involves
many activities such as establishing
a good quality database, collecting
information, analyzing it and
understanding the trends in the
market.
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Establish a good customer base and
provide good quality service –
Provide your customers with
personalised services and do all
that you can to make them be
satisfied with your products or
services.
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