Selling online

Trawl the Web for information on eCommerce and you will frequently see the word 'agility'

Agility is key to any online venture because the online marketplace - similar to the conventional marketplace - frequently changes. Put simply, what customers want this week might not be the same as they want next.  It is a constant state of change.  Agility therefore denotes a comapny's capacity to respond to that change.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself, should you want to determine how agile your online venture is:

• How visible is your site to those looking to purchase similar products to your own? 
• How meaningful is the information you are getting from your site analytics package? (you are using an analytics package ... right?)
• If your site analytics are telling you that visitors are dropping out on a particular part of your site, how easy is it to make the necessary changes to ensure they no longer do so?
• How well can you determine the effectiveness of any changes you make?

We can break the overall process of selling online down to three essential components:

• Promotion
• Analysis
• Modification based on your analysis

Everyone should appreciate, however, that if you're unable to do any one of these effectively, you'll ultimately fail within the whole process.