Why Is Your Business Ailing?

You have a swanky new address. Your physical storefront is extremely appealing and well stocked. You have the latest in inventory. You have the necessary number of employees required to run daily operations smoothly. Your competition is from the small store next door which has a modest stock of inventory and has no store appeal to speak of. You sit back, relax and wait for your profits to soar.

But wait! You just about seem to be breaking even, while the store next door has posted huge profits! That seems impossible, considering all the right things you have done - A large store, an in-depth inventory, promotions and discounts to new customers, an affable staff; the list seems endless. It is no mistake, the small corner store is way ahead of you and continues to reap in gigantic profits. Why? Just one word – “Online”.

The world has gone digital. In this fast paced, almost restless way of living, quicker is better. The new mantra of this gen X environment is “choice, convenience and comparison” and transitioning your business to the digital world seems to be the best portal to meet this requirement. So what makes an online store so profitable and lucrative?

Reach : There are no geographical limitations. Even if your physical storefront is in a single location, in the online world, you can ship your products to a large and ever expanding global audience.

Overhead costs: With an online store, you drastically cut costs required to maintain multiple physical storefronts. With a lesser requirement of manpower, you save big on employee salaries.

Paperless environment: Do away with bulky catalogs. Now with colorful, interactive website technology at your disposal, it is easier to make a sale online, than it is offline.

Marketing: there are several online marketing techniques which are both free and paid. Paid techniques such as Pay-per-click and Paid Inclusion are inexpensive, but extremely effective.

Always-on: An e-store never closes. Be there for your customers in a 24*7 shift and drastically multiply your sales.

Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the brands who recognized these key benefits, made the transition early on and are now the vanguards of their online industries.

Any business that relies heavily on the phone is a great candidate to transition to the online world such as Flowers or Pizza delivery. Dell Computers, Cisco and Charles Schwab also rely heavily on the phone. They have all moved online. Currently, more than 50% of Dell’s business comes from the online world. It has also helped the company cut sales from 15 percent of annual revenue to 9 percent. Cisco Systems gets more than 75% of its business online. What’s more, the move to the cyber world has drastically reduced lead time needed to fill orders from three weeks to a staggering three days! Charles Schwab is currently the leading online broker. It handles more than 236,000 trades a day, almost 80% of which are placed online. (Source: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding)

Hoovers Inc, set shop as a bookstore and later as a publishing house. Today, Hoovers Inc is primarily an internet business selling its reference materials to a wide range of companies. Over 84% of its revenue comes from the online world.

All these companies were tuned in to consumer behavior, understood the latest trends and respected change. This is precisely the reason why they are such huge success stories.

But before you make the final transition, ask yourself this – What works on the Internet and what doesn’t?  If you feel your products and services will reach a much larger audience online, then don’t wait another moment. It is time to set shop online.