—Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard

If you want a symbol of how technology is transforming the way we conduct business worldwide, look no further than e-commerce, which refers to buying and selling on the Internet. It’s easy to forget that as short as fifteen years ago, buying books or shoes online seemed novel. Not anymore. The new digital reality is upon us. Is there anything you can’t buy online almost anywhere? The driving force behind e-commerce growth is the proliferation of tablets and smart phones, technology improvements, greater convenience, competitive prices, global choices, and bountiful product information.

The Future of Selling: The E-Commerce Revolution

Welcome to the future of transcendent selling, where there will be an obliteration of lines between the traditional old-world way of commerce and e-commerce. Soon they will merge into one seamless function, be treated the same way, and simply be called digital business. In-store retail shopping will never fully go away, but in the future there will be less of it. How will you set up your business to react? Will you be prepared? More people are spending an inordinate amount of their time surfing the Internet—sometimes not even thinking about why. That’s why harnessing these people and their buying power worldwide is the key to success for small business owners.

The problem is that many small business owners don’t have the technical know-how or capital to set up their own e-commerce platform. This chapter prepares you for the e-commerce revolution and how—astonishingly—you don’t have to go broke or be a technical wizard to become part of it! The end result is that you will easily and affordably export by selling online. In the 1990s, Dell became the e-commerce leader by hitting a milestone of $1 million in Web site sales per day. What the company didn’t anticipate was that its e-commerce business would grow to be one of its largest revenue-producing sources. That could be you. All the more reason to get e-commerce right from the start.

In this chapter, I will look at the growing scope of e-commerce, discuss why it is important to your business (think of the power of China’s Tmall and Taobao discussed in Chapter 7), and help you target your market.¹ In addition, I’ll give some pointers on finding a manufacturer for a product you may want to export and a primer on the ten thousand-pound gorilla: your international supply chain and how best to manage it.

Then we’ll review an array of e-commerce platforms for your business from which to choose, while assessing what makes e-commerce sites reliable and secure for business transactions. Last, we’ll look at how to measure e-commerce success. Depending on the stage of your business’s growth, some of these topics may not apply, so feel free to jump in anywhere that applies to what you are looking for. The intent here is to keep you focused on learning, growing, and pushing boundaries with your business.

The Growing Scope of E-Commerce

There are more than 7 billion potential customers in the world, and 2.4 billion of them are online. How many of those customers is your company reaching outside your own borders? Let’s say your international sales last month included three products sold through Zazzle, one through Amazon, five through eBay, five at CafePress, and four on your own Web site by way of a shopping cart adapted for Facebook. Do you think you’ve captured enough sales? Hardly. Sure, you generated more sales and profits than you would have had you not created these accounts, but could you sell more?

Nearly 87 percent of world economic growth during the next five years will take place outside of the United States, according to the International Monetary Fund. Are you prepared to tap into it?

According to ComSCORE, “E-commerce in the U.S. reached $289 billion in 2012, up13 percent from the previous year. While e-commerce continues to gain share from traditional retail, the first signs of mobile commerce affecting the digital commerce landscape are starting to emerge.”²

“E-commerce . . . already accounts for nearly 8% of total retail sales in the U.S.,” according to Lauren Indvik of Mashable, referring to a report by Forrester Research Online Retail Sales Forecast. And it’s only going to grow. “It is expected to outpace sales growth at bricks-and-mortar stores over the next five years, reaching $370 billion in 2017. By that time, ecommerce is expected to account for a full tenth of all retail sales in the U.S.”³

Business-to-consumer (B-to-C) e-commerce sales grew 21 percent worldwide in 2012, to crest the $1 trillion mark for the first time, according to eMarketer. Those sales are expected to grow in 2013 to 18 percent—or $1.3 trillion in worldwide sales. In addition, Asia-Pacific is forecasted to surpass North America to become the world’s number 1 market for B-to-C e-commerce sales.⁴

It is also projected by eMarketer that three Asia-Pacific markets—China, India, and Indonesia—will see “faster business to consumer e-commerce sales growth than all other markets worldwide this year, while Japan will continue to take a large share of global sales.”⁵

What’s in store for future digital buying from country to country? The following chart (Figure 8-1) shows the growth in the number of people buying goods over the Internet:⁶

Why Do I Need a Stand-Alone E-Commerce Site?

Having a stand-alone e-commerce site—on which you can sell your products beyond eBay, Amazon, or Etsy—offers greater control over the sales process, larger revenue and profits for your business, more focused global brand development, new interactions with people across the world, and a 24/7 open-for-business model. A hosted stand-alone e-commerce solution will provide everything from a domain name registration to the tools and resources you need to build an e-commerce Web site with minimal technical and Web site design knowledge.

Selling in a Digital World: Business-to-Business, Business-to-Consumer, Consumer-to-Consumer, or Business-to-Government Experience?

When you set up an e-commerce shop, you must decide who your primary customers are going to be: other businesses, consumers, or the government. Let’s go over what each means. Please note, it is possible to focus on two at once, provided you make it clear on your Internet platform.

Business-to-business (B-to-B) describes commerce-based transactions between two businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a retailer.

Business-to-consumer (B-to-C) describes commerce-based transactions between a business and a consumer, such as a retailer selling directly to you. Target, for example, sells directly to you, the consumer. (Target’s supply chain, on the other hand, would be B-to-B.)

Some companies are both B-to-B and B-to-C. Think along the lines of my business, GlobeTrade.com. My customers are primarily other businesses, so it’s B-to-B, but I also have consumers who come to me directly asking for help before they start a global business. That’s B-to-C. Another example of B-to-B that moves into B-to-C is Procter & Gamble, which manufactures Tide laundry detergent. The company’s production supply chain involves B-to-B transactions, but once Tide is in finished form, P&G shifts its selling to B-to-C where you, as a consumer, buy Tide.⁷

Consumer-to-consumer (C-to-C) describes commerce transactions between consumers. Think of eBay and Alibaba’s Taobao. You, as an individual, as opposed to a legal business entity, would sell directly to other consumers.

Business-to-government (B-to-G) describes commerce transactions between a business and the government, including ones that are local, federal, and state-based. Think along the lines of a business bidding on governmental opportunities in the form of a request for proposal (RFP) and offering those bids through an online marketplace.

An easy way to figure out which type of customer is best for your business is to ask yourself: where will I get the biggest bang for my buck? If you sell hammers, will you sell more hammers directly to consumers (B-to-C) or through a business that buys twenty-four hammers in a box at once and resells them individually to consumers (B-to-B)? Either way, you must fulfill the orders or have the vendor do it.

In the case of selling directly to consumers, can you handle shipping individually to every consumer who buys your product? That’s where most business owners stop dead in their tracks. They either don’t want to do it or aren’t set up to do it at the outset. It’s too labor intensive. If that is the case with you, go with B-to-B to minimize additional handling and labor costs. You can always change course or do two different selling avenues at once, provided you make it clear on each of your sites who your target audience is.

Now let’s really change courses. A challenge you could be faced with involves the sourcing of a product domestically or overseas. You may want to familiarize yourself with these pointers on how to go about it.

Finding a Manufacturer for the Product You May Want to Export

To find manufacturers—which can be located in different countries in different continents—for the product you may want to export, you’ll need to consult some specialized sources. Sourcing a product globally for a particular brand offers many benefits for the exporter, including lower costs, faster go-to market time, and a broader resource pool. You can identify an existing product you think might sell in other countries and make a deal with the producer (more on this in Chapter 11). But you can also contract manufacture (also known as outsourcing), where your company arranges with a manufacturer to make a product to your specification (or those of the manufacturer you represent). Here are a few places to get started (some are more United States centric):

• ThomasNet :http://www.thomasnet.com/. The ThomasNet is a free platform designed for sourcing components, equipment, MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) products, raw materials, and custom manufacturing services.
• The Gale Book of Associations: http://www.gale.cengage.com/DirectoryLibrary/. Gale lists associations related to your product type; e.g., if you look under “Consumer Household Products” you will find “National Housewares Association.” If you contact the National Housewares Association, you may find that it offers a membership, manufacturer lists, exhibition dates, and industry mailing pieces. These references will be invaluable to your exporting efforts.
• Global Sources: http://www.globalsources.com. Global Sources is a B2B marketplace that connects global buyers and suppliers.
• Alibaba: http://www.alibaba. Find products, suppliers, manufacturers, and exporters by categories.
• United States Manufacturer Directory: http://www.manufacturerusa.com/. Find links to manufacturer websites, browse for wholesalers, business, and manufacturing services in the United States.
• National Association of Manufacturers (NAM): http://www.nam.org/. NAM is a top manufacturing association in the United States.
• Alliance for American Manufacturing: http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/. The Alliance for American Manufacturing explores common solutions to public policy topics such as job creation, infrastructure investment, international trade, and global competitiveness.

Once you find a contract manufacturer to your liking, here are your next steps. Let’s say you are looking for a manufacturer that can produce an all-around tote bag for cleaning products. Think of it as swag—a branded tote bag with your company information embroidered on—that provides value to your customers and enhances the brand for your family of products. You plan to offer this tote for free when consumers show proof of purchase on six or more of your products within ninety days. Historically, consumers buy one of your products within the same time period. Here’s how you get started with a potential manufacturer.

1. Send your idea sketches and screenshots to him for review. Indicate you are interested in importing a test production run of 1,000 all-around tote bags (or whatever number of totes you can afford to buy on the initial trial run) and state, according to your market analysis, that you need a price point of U.S. $5 a tote to go to market competitively.
2. See whether the supplier can produce what you need, manufacture a minimum production run quantity without a glitch, and maintain your price point.
3. Anticipating future success, ask for volume pricing, too. For example, let’s say your swag campaign works so well that you need to order 20,000 totes as opposed to 1,000 at a time! You might find that your pricing drops from $5 a tote on 1,000-tote orders to $1 a tote on 20,000-tote orders. Talk about a customer response and profit boost. You may end up selling six times more product within the ninety days!
4. Confirm that pricing is FOB (also known as Free on Board or Freight on Board) from the factory, meaning all charges (taxes, duties, transport and insurance) are your responsibility once the product leaves the door. You can always get a logistics expert to help you on the import.
5. How will you pay the manufacturer and will there be any chance to receive extended terms—thirty, sixty, or ninety days—as opposed to an immediate wire transfer?
6. Lastly, ask for three to five complimentary samples made to your specs and find out when they can be delivered. Then sit tight. While you wait, draw up a plan for your online swag campaign party.

As for suppliers, not all are equal. Some can be timely and send requested samples in a heartbeat. Others can take forever but can meet your pricing. The worst case is when a supplier provides poor-quality samples of products. Even asking at the very beginning for ISO 9000 certification proof from a supplier⁸ does not guarantee that product samples will meet your quality standards and be to your liking.

What if you receive shoddy product samples from a potential new supplier? Although the answer seems like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised at how many companies expend an inordinate amount of time trying to work things out. Let’s take a look at how the scenario plays out when the first round of product samples are not up to par.

Within forty-five days, suppliers send you samples made to your specification for review and within the price range you desire. Even the minimum order requirement meets your budget! But four out of the five all-around totes are crappy quality. What should you do?

Go with the supplier with the best quality and start thinking about how you will visit the supplier in person at some point to evaluate operations. For now, reject the other four and tell them why. No ifs, ands or buts. If you start out with poor product samples, do you really think product quality will improve over time? Don’t be fooled. First impressions count. Quality matters.

Now that you’ve covered selling in a digital world, who your customers are, and where your products are originating, it’s time to manage your global supply chain.

Managing a Global Supply Chain

After deciding who your customers are going to be and setting up an e-commerce site designed to attract them comes the responsibility of managing an effective and efficient supply chain. This process focuses on the flow of goods from the origin source; through the distribution channels; to the end consumer; and, finally, to disposal and recycling. Supply chains that were once purely local are now global in nature and more complex and interconnected as goods, services, and information flow across borders easily.

When entering new markets, as often is the case with exports done via e-commerce, the goal is to service the customers efficiently and in a fast manner, at the lowest possible cost, and with minimal inventories to keep your profits soaring.

A plan of action for a supply chain might look like this:

1. Source components or products (if required)
2. Produce products (at your own manufacturing facility)
3. Manage the handling and storage of raw materials and finished products (from your own manufacturing facility)
4. Combat cyber crime activities by developing a framework for evaluating and responding to risks
5. Develop transportation and logistics strategies, including customs processing and border crossing
6. Integrate transportation strategies with production and marketing plans
7. Analyze, plan, and monitor the global supply chain process
8. Check profits
9. Measure customer satisfaction
10. Develop a process to convert returns or defects into recyclable materials for subsequent use; and
11. Design a way to dispose and recycle products on an as-needed-basis

We’ll touch on some of these elements in subsequent chapters, but for now it is essential to be aware of them in the understanding of maximizing customer value and achieving sustainable profitable growth for your business.

Tips for Managing a Global Supply Chain

Your global supply chain should be short, simple, and manageable. Whether sourcing a component part used in the production of a product or finished goods, treat the chain as a strategic asset—one that, handled deftly, can provide a competitive advantage.

It is worth mentioning that many large companies use software programs for managing the export supply chain process, for purposes including item classification, order taking, compliance with export regulations, and generation of export documentation. The use of export software enables companies to manage the supply chain with greater ease and efficiency. Conducting an Internet search for third-party vendors using “export supply chain management software” or similar search terms will generate a number of specialized companies who offer sourcing, transportation, and fulfillment services. Due to the complexity in nature and the costs associated with export software management, most small businesses tend to manage their supply chain by working closely with logistics experts that offer you approved vendors who integrate their technology into your business applications and software solutions. These companies include UPS, FedEx, and DHL; UPS will custom fit a solution based on your supply chain needs.⁹

Here are a few tips to assist you in managing a global supply chain:

1. Source products from countries where regulations and restrictions are minimal. You want the ability to transport materials in and out of a country fast.
2. Focus on minimizing costs but not to the detriment of sacrificing quality.
3. Make sure that in performance-based contracts the supplier has a stake in where the product is sold. That way, you share risks and rewards.
4. Establish a secondary source of supply to ensure that your primary source can be replaced easily. The performance of a primary supplier can quickly go south. Perhaps the company runs into financial problems, produces shoddy products, or falls short on delivery times. Should this occur, you will need a backup supplier.
5. Tailor the locations of the supply chain directly to those of your customers, wherever they are.
6. Test the reliability of the supplier. When you order, how long does it take for the company to respond and deliver? Does it invoice you accurately?
7. Know where all your materials are coming in and out of and what the costs are to move them to any point.
8. Retain as much control as you can over the entire supply chain process.
9. Conduct regular assessments of every supplier contracted to manufacture your products in order to ensure they are meeting labor, health, safety, and environmental requirements.

Get to Know the Suppliers in Your Supply Chain

Today, most supply chains are built on a sourcing strategy that emphasizes value creation. What that means is that instead of looking for the lowest possible price of a product, you should first determine what value you are trying to achieve for your business. You could determine that what is most important to you is exercising control, minimizing risks, balancing costs, or gaining speed-to-market.

A working global supply chain must be responsive and flexible on a local level as well as overseas. It will morph several times during the course of a product’s lifetime. Whatever it takes to fulfill the needs of your customers worldwide, that should be your goal.

Finding the Best E-Commerce Store for Your Business

Before you do anything, draw up a list of what you need to do to establish the features you need for your e-shop based on what you are selling. Factor in the supply-chain process we just covered. For example, if you are selling knit caps for babies, your list might look like this:

1. Integrate e-shop that accommodates all major social media platforms;
2. Have a program with the ability to serve customers worldwide when collecting payments;
3. Calculate the cost of shipping on demand, where an all-inclusive shipping rate can be quoted to customers (including taxes, currency conversion, duties, insurance, and payment fee, if any) through UPS, FedEx, DHL, TNT, or USPS; and
4. Organize 24/7 customer support.

Run the list by your potential e-commerce-platform vendor to make sure the company can accommodate your needs. The type of product you are selling affects the features you want for your e-shop.

Factors to Consider

What follows is a list of twelve factors to consider when researching your e-commerce storefront platform. This is the list I use in working with clients; however, there are likely more factors than what’s included here. Not all of them will apply to your current business needs, but it’s better to be aware of them in advance than be blindsided by a lack of needed support later on. Let’s take a look at the features a platform should offer:

1. It should be simple to set up, have the ability to use your own domain name, be affordable, and easy to run. Most e-commerce stores are free to set up, but they cost anywhere from $29 a month for 100 products or fewer to $179 a month for unlimited bandwidth. Some platforms allow you to use your own domain and others don’t, so if using your own domain name is important to you and a company can’t do it, go elsewhere with your business.

    Tip  Many popular web-hosting companies (e.g., Network Solutions, Go Daddy, and Verio) offer e-commerce solutions such as tools, resources, and storefronts. And some blogging platforms allow you to transform your Web site into an e-commerce store for free. (Check out WooCommerce [http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/] and Jigoshop [http://jigoshop.com/].) Before making a move, investigate your existing host’s complete e-shop capabilities, including order fulfillment.

2. It should have a good selection of design templates and excellent shopping-cart functionality. Look for an e-commerce platform that offers hundreds of beautiful design templates along with the ability to preview and customize the design with the help of your own technology designer. Make sure photos can be easily uploaded so that they will look fantastic on your site. Having a smooth shopping cart and checkout experience will create an exceptional buying event for your customers.

    Tip  A bad e-commerce design with ineffective functions can damage your whole online business before you know it. You can minimize shopping cart abandonment—whereby a customer gets almost to the finish line at checkout and leaves the site for whatever unknown reason—by making the checkout process one step. Some e-commerce platforms offer a special add-on feature at a minimal cost to treat shopping-cart abandonment issues.

3. It should have unlimited e-commerce hosting. Whether you are selling two products or two thousand, ask your vendor if there are any hosting restrictions. For example, you don’t want an additional charge for increased traffic to your site. Success shouldn’t bring you lower profits—it should bring you more! It’s always best to look through the lens of the best-case scenario and seek vendors that offer scalability and the opportunity to quickly add more capacity.
4. It should offer real-time carrier shipping that includes complete international coverage and calculates real-time rates. Real-time carrier shipping connects your storefront with a UPS, USPS, or FedEx account that your customers can use to calculate shipping costs. This means you don’t need to manage your shipping rates manually. Pushing that concept further, inquire as to whether the e-commerce platform provider can quote international shipping costs in real time, quote customers without including shipping costs, and build the shipping into the customer’s cost.
5. It should accept currency from all over the world. Be sure the e-commerce stores you set up will be able to accept payment from all around the world, whether dealing in your own currency or another country’s.
6. It should be able to serve as your host platform if you don’t already have a domain name. Shopify is a good example of a platform that provides this. You will then add content, design, products, payment methods, taxes, shipping, and a domain name. Then you are ready to sell to the world.
7. It should offer a web host if you don’t have one already. All Shopify plans, for example, include secure, unlimited e-commerce hosting for your online store. On the other hand, Network Solutions requires you to have a domain name registration and web-hosting package before you can use its e-commerce Web site.
8. It should have mobile-friendly add-ons. Shoot for responsive web design (RWD), which allows web visitors to access the same site and content no matter what kind of device they are using—whether it is a PC, tablet, or mobile device. Snowboard-retailer Burton (http://www.burton.com/) is a good example of a company that has designed its Web site for its customers to use from their phones and tablets.
9. It should not require you to have IT experience to build and maintain your site. Choose a platform that offers a plug, play, and sell e-shop. You should be able to plug in all the information about your company and products, play with it to get it looking good and working right, and then start selling. It should take only a couple of hours to get things up and running.
10. It should offer 24/7 service and tech support. Inquire as to how the vendor would handle a situation where your e-commerce platform crashes. It should have a cloud backup, offer support after hours and on weekends, and operate in several different time zones. For every minute you are down online, you lose existing and potential business.
11. It should have social media support. Ensure that it has buttons to connect to Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and so forth. Strategic use of social media will increase your customer base and your bottom line.
12. It should have app support. Some e-commerce sites, like Magento, offer what are called white-label e-commerce apps. These apps essentially translate an existing e-commerce site into a mobile app that fits each device, complete with a full catalog, a product-search mechanism, a shopping cart, and the ability to offer ratings and reviews. A few sites now also offer an app for order fulfillment. Inquire.
13. It should offer strong protection against potential fraud, viruses, and scams while not getting in the way of e-commerce. Security—or the lack of it—is at the top of the list concerning e-commerce, so cover this issue extensively with your vendor until you are convinced that the company can protect your business interests and your customer’s business interests. Some e-commerce platforms provide a badge that you can install on your design to show your customers that your checkout is safe and secure. Despite the absolute importance of security, the bottom line is that security measures must be implemented so that they do not inhibit or dissuade the use of e-commerce.

Creating Your Own E-Commerce Platform

As discussed, setting up an e-commerce platform is a fast way to expand your market base, exercise greater control, and increase sales and profitability. Starting an e-commerce platform on your own rather than contracting with a hosting vendor comes with additional legal and financial considerations. The most significant of these are in the areas of online business protection, including security (making it payment card security compliant, known as payment card industry [PCI] compliant—both keep your customers’ credit card data safe); reliability; and intellectual property issues. Here are a select few stand-alone e-commerce platforms to get started with that can be integrated into your existing Web site (they all offer robust e-commerce solutions with greatly varying monthly price points):

• Bigcommerce: (http://www.bigcommerce.com). This site gives you everything you need to sell online. It currently services more than thirty thousand stores in more than sixty-five countries.
• Intuit: (http://www.intuit.com/websites/ecommerce-how-to/). This site gives you a free thirty-day trial period. You can build a store with up to a hundred products, integrate it into your Web site design, and give customers an easy-to-use checkout experience.
• Magento (owned by eBay): (http://www.magentocommerce.com). The Magento platform is robust and used by more than 150,000 businesses. Magento is built on open-source technology—enabling businesses of all sizes to control and customize the look and feel, content, and functionality of their online stores.
• NetSuite: (http://www.netsuite.com/portal/industries/retail/webstore.shtml). NetSuite offers a great shopping experience on any device, in any language, and through any business model.
• Pitney Bowes: (http://www.pb.com/ecommerce/).

  Pitney Bowes provides an interesting feature—fully guaranteed landed (door-to-door) cost quotes along with everything else you need to facilitate the global e-commerce experience.

• Shopify: (http://www.shopify.com). Shopify does a good job with plug-ins (special functions) and also offers you pay-as-you-grow usage. When you add features or services to your e-shop, you will be charged extra.
• Volusion: (http://www.volusion.com). Volusion is worth a look purely from the standpoint that the company currently has more than forty thousand online stores, fostering more than $10 billion online merchant sales.

Here’s a sampling of a few foreign-based e-commerce platforms:

• base.com (Japan): http://www.base.com
• Rakuten (Japan): http://global.rakuten.com/en/
• Ozon.ru (Russia): http://www.ozon.ru/
• E-bit (Brazil): http://www.ebit.com.br/

The Ultimate E-Commerce Must-Have: Trustworthiness

You can have all the bells and whistles operating perfectly on your new e-commerce site, but the key ingredient to customers enjoying their visit and actually buying products or services online is trustworthiness. If you lack trustworthiness, customers won’t stick around, and those who give your shop a chance better be treated right or else they will never return. Convince your customers that you can be trusted. How can that be done? Here are some tips based on what has worked for many of my clients on their Web sites:

1. Showcase a reputable security badge such as Verisign, TRUSTe, PayPal, or McAfee. Feature more than one to make customers feel secure and confident with their purchase. Other things that reinforce trust are large corporations that praise you (but get permission from individuals at the companies to use testimonials), awards you received, a mention in the press—all these should be promoted on your e-commerce site with links to the source if still active.
2. Show a phone number, e-mail address, and a real physical address—not a P.O. Box. Or have a live chat button that is easy to find. If people plan to purchase a product from your e-commerce site, they want to know how to get a hold of you to ask questions. Or let them know how they will get help if a purchased product arrives damaged.
3. Respond to every customer’s question. The question can be about the size of a product, the material used in the making of it—“Do your earrings contain lead? Because I am allergic to lead”—or if its color is sky blue or turquoise blue. The more you offer candid and direct communications with customers and address their needs, the more likely you are to produce sales and repeat customers. From their perspective, you showed you are responsive and care.
4. Use psychology to your advantage with your customers. There are a variety of meanings, interpretations, and perceptions between cultures and contexts. Use color wisely. If trust is critical to your brand, think along the lines of using lots of blue on your site, because it reflects honesty, trust, and reliability. Red, on the other hand, emits excitement, attention, and love. Certain colors appeal to certain cultures and markets.
5. Test it in a real-world scenario. Monitor the system to see what can go wrong—especially from the customer’s perspective. Test it yourself, have an employee do a dry run, ask a family member to go through it step by step, or select someone from your Facebook fan base to give it a try (then offer him something in return for his effort, such as a free sample product, a helpful how-to book, or a gift card). One bad impression from a customer not only costs you that customer but also hundreds and thousands, if not millions, more customers largely due to the power of social media where people can say what they want when they don’t like an experience.

Measuring E-Commerce Success

Now that we’ve looked at everything involved in setting up an e-commerce shop, how can we measure results? That’s a challenge, because you cannot predict customer behavior nor can you forecast sales and profits accurately at the start but you will be able to after a couple of months. However, if you address these five questions concerning your site, you are more than likely to discover quickly if your e-commerce program is working or not:

1. What is the dollar value (revenue) of the activities completed through e-commerce?
2. What is the number of visits—site traffic?
3. What is the number of new customers gained through e-commerce?
4. What is the site’s profitability?
5. What is the cost factor involved in running the e-commerce platform?

The goal of an e-commerce initiative is to increase the revenue and growth of profit for your business while decreasing costs, thus contributing to the long-term success of the corporation.

Summary

Building a powerful, cost-effective, and complete e-commerce site prepares you for takeoff in the export world. As more and more consumers adapt to Internet technologies in the coming years, there will be a huge demand for mobile functionality and apps that power user engagement. After all, the world works better when it’s connected in every way imaginable, including making an export sale.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at mobile commerce and computing, apps, and cloud computing. All of these enable you to continue to build your brand, find and service new customers, engage and deepen your user base relationships, and grow revenues and profitability through exports.

¹ The markets include business to business (B-to-B), business to consumer (B-to-C), consumer to consumer (C-to-C), and business to government (B-to-G).

² “2013 Digital Future in Focus 2013 Series,” ComScore, last modified August 22, 2013, http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/2/comScore_Releases_the_2013_U.S._Digital_Future_in_Focus_Report.

³ “Forrester: U.S. Online Retail Sales to Hit $370 Billion by 2017,” Lauryn Indvik, Mashable, last modified March 12, 2013, http://mashable.com/2013/03/12/forrester-u-s-ecommerce-forecast-2017/.

⁴ “Ecommerce Sales Topped $1 Trillion for First Time in 2012,” Clark Fredricksen, eMarketer, last modified February 5, 2013, http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Ecommerce-Sales-Topped-1-Trillion-First-Time-2012/1009649.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ For Tide’s B-to-C Web site, see “All Products,” accessed October 18, 2013, http://www.tide.com/en-US/productLanding.jspx.

⁸ ISO 9000 is a certification of the production process only and does not guarantee a manufacturer produces a quality product.

⁹ “Logistics Looks Good on Everybody,” UPS: UPS Solutions, accessed October 18, 2013, http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/bussol/browse/industries/retail.html.