E commerce course_june_2010_dan_bond

eCommercePractical Internet Strategies to Sell Your

Products and Yourself

Presented by Dan Bond

Sponsored jointly by Downtown Delaware, the Delaware Emerging Technology Center,

Delaware Technical Community College (Terry Campus) and USDA Rural Development

June 2010

Terry Campus Map

Introductions

Introductions

Please give:

Your nameWhere you live or workYour current level of eCommerce activity

Your expected use of this training

Something about yourself of special interest

Introductions

Towers Bed & Breakfast

Hi, I'm Eebee! I will be joining you for this course.

Outline

Overview of eCommerce

Niche MarketingProduct SourcingEquipment, Software, CommunicationsDomain NameWebsiteShopping CartPhotography for Your Website

Outline

Information Management SystemsInventory ControlShipping

SEM & SEOShopping Sites & AffiliatesLegal & Tax Issues

Social Networking Sources of Information

Wow, we've got a lot to cover!

The Most Important Parts:

• Choosing your niche

• SEM & SEO

• Continually expanding your market with Social Networking and other tools

eCommerce

What is eCommerce?

The definition given in Wikipedia is:

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet.

What is eMarketing?

The definition given in Wikipedia is:Internet marketing, also referred to asi-marketing, web-marketing, online-marketing, or eMarketing is the marketingof products or services over the Internet.

Internet & the Web

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite.

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet.

Business to Business eCommerce

Business to Consumer eCommerce

Selling to Both Global & Local

Markets

"Click & Mortar" Business Model

"Click & Mortar" Business Model

Total Retail eCommerce Sales were $134 billion in 2008

Will eCommerce Continue to Grow So Rapidly?

Unique Benefits of eCommerce

Low startup cost

Unlimited market size

Much greater freedom of location

Portability of business

Anonimity

24-7 Sales

Many successful eCommerce businesses started here.

The eCommerce Market ... as soon as FedEx gets there.

As long as there is high-speed internet and package delivery service available...

Relocating - Take it with you.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night ... ...keeps the orders from coming in.

I want to get on the Internet!



• SEM & SEO

• Continually expanding your market with Social Media and other tools

Niche Marketing

Finding Your Niche

• Identify an interest -- ideally one related to yourself, your experiences, your talents, your location, etc.

• Identify a niche with sufficient market demand.

• Discard niches where there is already too much competition.

• Make sure that the niche can become a profitable business.

Profit Margins

• Wholesale price• Location of supplier• Price points• Price competition• Information value added• Weight to value ratio • Shelf life• Market trends• Supply constraints

I love lists, they are so much fun to tear up!

How narrow is your niche?

Tools for Researching Niches

Google Search Results

Google Product SearchGoogle Trends

Google Alerts

eBay Groups

Have you found your niche?

Website Shopping Cart

Equipment

Products

Payment System

Delivery Services

Photography

Information Management System

Accounting System

Product Sourcing

Drop Shipping

The Good:

• You don't invest in inventory.

The Bad:

• You have no buying power.• Competition will drive down your margins.• Drop ship wholesales do not provide products for

niche markets.

The Ugly:

• You can work a lot, sell a lot and make no money.

If you must try drop shipping take a look at:

Is everyone still awake!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New York International Gift Fair

Philadelphia Gift Show

Equipment, Software, Communications

Domain Names

www.ladybug-shop.comwww.turtle-treasures.comwww.mispillion.com

What's in a name?

Domain Name Selection

• Short• Memorable• Easy to spell• Discribes your business or product• Contains key words• Has best name extension possible

.com.net.org.edu.gov.mil

Top Level Domain Names

Domain Name Selection Aids

This could be yummy!

Domain Name Registration

Websites

Website Options

Rent it

Build it yourself

Have it built for you

Rent Your Website

Build Your Website Yourself

Website Development Companies

Choosing a Shopping Cart

• Product capacity• Photo capacity• Inventory tracking• Affiliate program links• Discounting & customer loyalty programs• Search-engine friendliness• Shipping Options• Payment Processing Options• Report Generation • Technical Considerations• Support• Cost

Website Hosting

Usually best to have your website built and hosted by the same company

Make sure that they have on-site supervision 24-7

Make sure they have good telephone technical support service

Explore their up-grade potential

Payment Options

Credit Card Processing

Is everyone still awake!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Essential Photo Euipment

Carriers



• SEM & SEO


"If you build it, they will come."

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

Comparison of SEM & SEO

Search Engine Marketing

Meet my best friend!

To learn more about how to use Google AdWords for Search Engine Marketing go to:

http://adwords.google.com/support

Paid & Organic Search Results

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

It points to a specific "page" on a website.

Examples:

http://www.ladybug-shop.com LadyBug Shop Home Page

http://store.ladybug-shop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.prodInfo&productID=1742&categoryID=28

Fuzzy Ladybug Slippers for Children page

Search Engine Optimization

SEO You Can Do Yourself

Use your keywords as much as possible.

Have good, well written content.

Establish back links from popular websites.

Maintain a blog.

Use Social Media to promote your site.

Alexa.com

Website Evaluation

The LadyBug Shop website (www.LadyBug-Shop.com)

was awarded a grade of 97 by Website Grader.

Use www.websitegrader.com to do an evaluation report on your website.



• SEM & SEO


Expanding Your Market Space

Geographic Marketing

In SEM specify the geographic areas that contain most of your potential customers or select only those areas to which you are willing to ship your products.

For example, with Google AdWords you can:• Search or browse for countries, territories, regions, and

cities.• Select a preset bundle of locations.• Choose a point on the map and specify a radius around

it where your ads will appear.• Target a custom shape on the map.• Exclude areas within your selected locations.

Google Maps - Local Business Listings

Other Market Expansion Tools

Post Card Marketing

Blogging

eMail

Podcasting

Videos

Social Networking

Social Media Starfishhttp://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2007/11/scobles-starfish.html

Social Media

Make it simpler with ShareThis

Boy, I have got to catch this one!

Avoid the Hard Sale

WARNING!

SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES TIME & CONSTANT ATTENTION.

Ooompa website

Oompa's NicheOompa is a click & mortar business that specializes in infant toys and furniture that:

Have no batteries, no blinking lights & no cartoon themes.

High quality and safety standards.

Primarily items made in the U.S. and Europe.

Made to last.

Oompalinks to social media

Oompa Blog

Oompa on facebook

Oompa on Twitter

Oompa Videos on Website & YouTube

Use Multiple Websites to Grow Your Market

It's a long road!

Find & development your niche

Build your Web presence

Build traffic flow

Monitize your web traffic

Revenue from the affiliate commissions

Monetizing Your Web TrafficRevenue from advertising on your website

Revenue from sales of goods & services

Website Advertising

AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and sales people.

Affiliate Marketing

Compensation Models

• Cost per sales (80%)

• Cost per action (19%)

• Cost per click & cost per "mile" (1%)

Affiliate Networks

Shopping Sites

Show me the money!

Social Shopping Sites

"Websites that combine social elements such as a social networking community or the ability to set social bookmarks with aspects of shopping such as product reviews and deal hunting"

"A site that only sells one item a day as a "daily woot" and provides community feedback on the item."

"Discover and share products in a social environment that allows you to recommend products to friends, organize shopping lists, find the best deals and get discounts."

Other Social Shopping Sites

Legal & Tax Issues

• Identity theft

• Protection of credit card information

• Copyright infringement

• Affiliate contact violations

• Tax collection

• Spam

PCI DSS Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Be informed. Got to:http://www.pcisecuritystandards.org

Failure to understand the PCI compliance standards could result in higher merchant account fees and fines from the credit card issuers.

WARNING!

Even if you are PCI compliant, if you experience a credit card security breach, you can be open to legal action from the affected customers.

Three types of ownership protection:

A copyright protects original works gives the owner exclusive rights to reproduce his or her work in any medium.

A trademark is used to protect a word, symbol, device, or name that is used for the purpose of trading goods. The trademark indicates the source of goods and distinguishes them from the goods of others.

A patent for an invention grants a property right to the inventor that will prevent anyone else from making, using, or selling an invention.

Potential Penalties for Copyright Infringement:

1.Actual damages (the amount you would have to pay to license the material from the copyright owner).

2.Statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work.

3.If the violation was willful—up to $150,000 per work.

4.At the court’s discretion, attorney fees.5.Embarrassment.

This is scary stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the 1990s, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It included a very powerful tool to quickly attack the theft of unregistered copyright-protected materials so victims of theft of creative works can reach out into cyberspace and aggressively pursue an infringer. This tool, known as the “takedown notice,” requires a website host to pull down an allegedly infringing website or page merely upon receipt of a specified notice from the owner or its lawyer. No lawsuit is necessary. The implications to the host are significant: the failure to pull it down exposes the hosting company to liability for copyright infringement under traditional doctrines of law, and it also loses immunity created by the DMCA. The law giveth, and the law taketh away.

WARNING!

Internet sales are not always tax free.

There are over 11,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the United States.

Ecommerce merchants located in a state without a sales tax do not have to collect sales tax unless they have taken some action to create a physical presence in another state.

Other states that do not have sales taxes are Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.

Sales tax vulnerability

In April 2008 the State of New York inserted an item in the state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on the existence of affiliate links from New York–based websites to Amazon. The state asserts that even one such affiliate constitutes Amazon having a business presence in the state, and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon sales to state residents. Amazon challenged the amendment and lost at the trial level in January, 2009. The case is currently in appeal process.

Sources of eCommerce Information

When you have questions, this is the first place to go!

http://www.business.gov/business-law/online-business/

Government Assistance, Regulations, Taxes

Small Business Issues & Assistance

http://www.delawaresbdc.org/

Business Information Security

www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/security.aspx

"NISTIR 7621 Small Business Information Security:The Fundamentals"

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/ir-7621/draft-nistir-7621.pdf

fitbase.fitforcommerce.com

ecommerceoptimization.com

growsmartbusiness.com

Dan Bond

302-228-6590 (cell)

[email protected]

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