Is Your Business Innovating With The Times?

I’m sure all of you had a great Christmas celebrating with family and friends. It’s been quite a holiday season. My inbox was literally flooded with so many emails from retailers! Am sure the coming year 2014 will be fantastic. That is provided that companies continue to innovate and improve on their services and products.

With tonnes of businesses all selling online, what will make these small businesses stand out among their competitors? Pricing alone may be a major draw but consumers these days are looking for something better other than excellent customer service. Are the products and services that you’re offering  still meeting their needs? It’s one thing to assume but another thing to actually get into your customer’s head to figure out what they exactly want.

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Add Value To Your Customers’ Online Shopping Experience

Selling at times is quite an art. You need a combination of getting the ‘desire effect’ right. Look at how Apple did it. Their products are more expensive but whenever there’s any product launch (or even a hint of it), everyone goes a bit nuts. Then comes the sales.

But let’s get down to reality here. Not all businesses are like Apple. Normal folks who are just setting up a small online store to sell products need to offer something more to their customers.

Other than the usual buy 2 and get 1 free or free shipping thrown in, one of the best ways would be to add some value to your customers. Depending on what type of product that you are selling, your online store should not only be about your products. It should have a mixture of tips, advice and relevant information to help your customers. Or it could even be a good place for people to visit to get relevant, useful and informative tips and advice. This will help your store’s SEO if you get a lot of natural traffic coming in.

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Is Your Business Targeting Emerging Markets Or Over-Saturated Ones?

Spotted Eagle Ray formation, Keauhou Bay, Big Island, Hawaii.Happy New Year everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. We’re still hearing constant news of economic slowdown and the never-ending budget woes coupled with stock markets bouncing around. But one thing has certainly remained constant. Consumers are spending more and more on online shopping year on year. Last year had some pretty impressive figures to show when it came to all the Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping season.

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Pictures And Images Make a BIG Difference For Your Online Store

Pumpkin carvingOctober is here! Halloween is just round the corner and so is Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Yes, time to gear up your online store for the upcoming holiday season. Past month has been exciting with Apple launching their iPhone 5 which got everyone excited. Then there’s the never-ending saga on who’s suing who for patent infringements! Anyway, back to the main thing – Your STORE.

Other than getting your social sites all set up (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, Pinterest, etc) along with your SEO, have you ensured that your product images are of the best quality? Because you could have a terrific site with tonnes of traffic coming but if the fish ain’t biting, maybe it’s time to consider the look of your online store and product images.

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What Can We Learn From Apple?

The recent hoo-haa about Apple’s latest iPad launch was massive. Everyone wanted a piece of it! Now let’s think for a moment. If someone had never heard of Apple or ever seen an iPad or ANY Apple products and you ask them whether they want it or not, chances are they would be clueless and would check it out online. Now the moment they WANT IT is when they SEE the images of the product along with the really AWESOME video of what that product can do for them. You probably had the same feeling the moment you saw the new iPad video when you checked out the fuss. Now level with me here. Is that the cheapest tablet? Not really. But what Apple did (other than create really awesome products!) is to appeal to WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT by marketing it in a way to capture their attention and make them want it. They made it look relevant to people’s lifestyle.

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