Archive for the ‘ecommerce consultant’ Category
Friday, April 1st, 2011
Viral marketing has definitely gained its popularity over the global network. More and more businesses are adopting this marketing strategy to gain their fair share in the market. The approach developed by Hotmail in increasing its number of subscribers is one classic example of viral marketing.
How Hotmail Did It
Hotmail is one of the first web-based email provider that gives away email addresses for free. Their marketing approach starts by giving free web based email addresses and additional services. Each of the messages sent with a Hotmail address has an advertisement at the bottom that goes Get your private, free email at Hotmail.
Then, of course, Hotmail subscribers will use the service to send messages to their friends and colleagues. These friends and colleagues will get the message and read it, and then clicks on the link at the bottom. They will also sign up and be a subscriber like what the sender did. Then these new subscribers will also email their own set of friends. The cycle goes on and on.
This is why viral marketing has the power of reaching thousands, even millions, of people in such a short time and with little effort from the one who initiates it.
Elements of Viral Marketing
Dr. Ralph Wilson, an ecommerce consultant, named six elements or basic principles of viral marketing. A viral marketing technique need not have all of these, but the more principles it follows, the more powerful the strategy will be.
1. Give away products or services. This is the first and most basic principle of viral marketing. When a person hears the word free, it elicits the interest in him and will avail of that free product or service, for sure. Having cheap or inexpensive products may also do the trick, but free will give much faster results.
Patience is important in viral marketing. Giving away products for free may not earn profit today but if the business gets to develop customer base by giving something for free, it will soon generate income for them.
If you find yourself confused by what you have read to this point, do not despair. Everything should be crystal clear by the time you finish.
2. Easy transfer to others. The medium used to carry the marketing message to other people should relatively be easy. Viral marketing has been powerful over the internet because of the ease of communication the technology offers. Email, web sites, software downloads are just some examples that can be used in viral marketing.
Also, it is better that the message be short for easy copying and transmission. Simple and short but straight to the point is best, just like Hotmails advertisement at the bottom of each email sent out.
3. Scalability from small to very large. When viral marketing is used as a marketing style, it is best that the business is prepared for rapid growth. In cases of increasing web traffic thru viral advertising, the web owner should make sure that the host server is prepared enough to handle the expected increase in traffic within a short period of time.
This should not be taken for granted; else, it will defeat the purpose of doing viral marketing. Once people notice that the site takes a long time to load, they will just leave and forget about it. That means an automatic loss of potential customers.
4. Exploit motivation and behaviors. A marketing strategy that builds on motivation and behaviors of people for its transmission is a definite plus. People love to be popular. This motivation will drive them to communicate to more and more people to be known.
5. Utilize existing networks. According to social scientists, an average person has about 8 to 12 members in their close network of family, friends and colleagues. Moreover, internet gives way to creating a bigger network circle. Learning to use these existing networks in viral marketing will yield better results.
6. Take advantage of other resources. Viral marketing need not consume all your resources away. Using other web sites in posting your articles, for example, will get them read by a large number of people without the need of creating your own web page.
It is best to learn these basic elements or principles of viral marketing first before actually doing it. Being to aggressive without doing your homework may just lead to damage instead of success. Try to adopt those that may be applicable to your product. Use all of the principles, if possible, for a more successful output.
The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you will be glad you took the time to learn more about viral.
Gary Shaw
http://www.articlesbase.com/viral-marketing-articles/principles-of-viral-marketing-55147.html
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Friday, March 25th, 2011
Developing E-Business For Small Businesses In Africa
By: Godwin C. Nwaogwugwu
(E-Business Consultant)
(http://www.imoonline.org/gcforum.htm)
Published March 7, 2007
In simple terms, E-business (doing business on the Internet) can enable small scale businesses in emerging markets gain greater bargaining power in the global economic exchange despite their limited capital, and mobility. The world economy is moving online. Today people are meeting online and eventually getting married, people who do not have the capital to establish physical stores are getting rich maintaining only online shops, small musicians who find it difficult getting producers are uploading their tracks on ‘Napster’ (http://www.napster.com/choose/index.html) to be downloaded by millions of people around the world, even politicians are using video-sharing tools like ‘Youtube’ (http://www.youtube.com/) to reach potential voters, etc. Therefore, the action or inaction of African businesses to take advantage of e-business will determine how much they grow in the coming years.
E-readiness Ranking
Every year Economist come up with a table of e-readiness ranking from a selected number of countries. It is not surprising that African countries often rank lowest in most e-readiness reports. That is not very promising considering that most investors today will be interested not only on the investment climate and infrastructure in a country but also on e-readiness indices such as national connectivity, e-leadership, information security, human capital, and e-business climate.
Interpreting E-readiness Indices
There are many indices used to measure e-readiness. The most common ones are:
• Connectivity: Addresses the ability to exchange information, goods and services with the rest of the world.
• E-leadership: Addresses the commitment of a national government to partner with industry leaders to create conditions favorable to electronic transactions.
• Information security: Addresses issues concerning the protection of personal data, intellectual property, and effective privacy laws.
• Human Capital: Emphasis on developing competent manpower including IT managers who can manage complex technology tasks, policy analysts who can make informed inputs on government policies and regulations that are capable of stifling technology growth; local content creators who can either customize or adapt global technologies to the specific business needs in the country, software and hardware engineers.
Beyond the indices, e-business also requires a larger population of end-users or consumers who don’t have to understand how the technology works, but can use the technology.
How Small Businesses In Africa Can Benefit From E-business:
Individual Action:
Even in challenging environments such as Africa, small businesses can still benefit from e-business. Simple information websites with product and contact information, as a first step can open new doors for small businesses locally and internationally. Hospitality industries stand to gain more exposure and market through e-business. Tourists and people in the Diaspora are excellent target customers for hotel and tourism information for online reservations.
Group Action:
Business associations, Chambers Of Commerce, Cooperative societies, and NGOs in Africa can bridge the economy of scale on the technology required for e-business by setting up online malls showcasing a pool of their members’ sites, products and services. Through the online mall people in the Diaspora may order local goods for friends or family. These associations can also help to guarantee the quality of products advertised on the site, as well as the credibility of its members to ensure fraudulent people do not seize the opportunity. Only certified members and certified products will make it on the site. ‘Ghana Mall’, for instance, sells goods made by Ghanaian artisans internationally. It also rakes in some $500 million a year in goods and cash that are sent to the country from abroad. Funds to develop such malls can be sort as grants from multilateral agencies as the World Bank Group’s Small and Medium Enterprise Department (http://www.ifc.org/sme)
Payment:
No doubt, credit card acceptance is the heart of e-commerce, but technological hindrances and doing business in local currency can drive up transaction costs. There are rules and protocols to gain access to international card association systems, which currently do not favor African countries. The amounts of online transactions originating from most African countries hardly meet the rules required by the international card associations. So there must be a way around it. Therefore, banks in Africa need to establish special ‘Merchant Accounts’ for small businesses to enable them accept secured payments in foreign currencies processed in the same way as credit cards. Online payments will still have to go through SWIFT, encryptions, or other secured sites, as PayPal to ensure adequate security.
Shipping:
Most national and international courier services are currently equipped to handle shipping to any location in the world. Business organizations can enter into partnership agreements with these postal and shipping agencies to either enjoy special shipping rates or develop more efficient shipping methods that can guarantee delivery. In addition, the Customs department should make available list of prohibited items, duties and fees to the business organizations. One workable model is to post their personnel at the post offices to facilitate the inspection of goods.
Government’s Role
As a private-sector crusader, I dislike prescribing any solution that will depend on governments. But E-commerce requires vendor credibility. Apart from technology, the greatest impediment African businesses face in embracing e-business is fraud. This is where the governments should play important role. Law-makers should strengthen existing laws to stem out corruption in their countries. People who thrive on advance fee fraud should be put out of business. It is possible! Anything that works through technology can be stopped through technology. It’s simply a digital war amongst programmers (it’s like the virus and anti-virus battle among programmers). Moreover, the world wants to see trials, prosecutions and convictions to believe that African countries are serious in their war against corruption.
How This Will Work
For this to work it must exist as one bundle. A customer does not want to be bothered by the backend technology and how it works. They want an easy-to-use, time-saving, front-end screen. As for now, cross-continental partnerships will play a major role in helping businesses in Africa cross the e-commerce threshold, as African businesses will still need international partnerships to help complete orders. PeopLink (http://www.peoplink.org/EN/) offers such a partnership. They have developed free, downloadable tools to help small businesses build virtual product catalogs, which they then upload to a searchable catalog on their database, thereby offering small businesses the opportunity to benefit from collective marketing power.
One Stop Tech Support Centers:
Technology investors should also consider going into one-stop tech support centers. For instance, in Ghana BusyInternet (http://www.busyinternet.com/) is such a one-stop IT center with a cyber café, call booths, video conferencing services, document services, web hosting, space rental and other tech support for e-businesses.
Exploring E-business will help small businesses in Africa increase their market share in the global marketplace? There should be a concerted effort to make this happen. The World Bank developed a collection of free tools called ‘SMEToolkit’ to help small business develop such potentials. This can be found at: http://www.smetoolkit.org/
You can read more articles by this writer at:
http://www.imoonline.org
http://www.exposureworld.net
Godwin C. Nwaogwugwu
http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/developing-ebusiness-foor-small-businesses-in-africa-113986.html
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Friday, March 18th, 2011
Knowing how to market on the Internet in this day and age can prove to be vital to both an online or brick and mortar business. Effective Internet marketing requires an all-inclusive plan that synergizes your company’s business model and sales goals with both its website function and appearance, while focusing on its target market through a proper choice of media and design. Some of the pertinent components of Internet marketing typically include having a website that consists of text, images, and possibly even an audio/video element that is used to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company’s products and/or services. And as a side note, remember that once you’ve attained a good quality plan, having a successful Internet campaign can definitely improve your website search engine ranking, which is seemingly the one thing that nearly all online businesses strive for in today’s e-commerce world. So, if you are considering diving into the sea of Internet marketing but do not have specific experience in this type of marketing, it may definitely be worthwhile to consider hiring a consultant to assist you in your advertising undertaking.
Marketing on the Web links together the creative and methodological aspects of the Internet, including site design, development, promotion, and sales. The Internet has brought many exclusive benefits to marketing, one of which is lower costs for the dissemination of information and media to a worldwide audience. An added plus is that the targeted consumer is typically browsing the Internet alone, so the marketing messages can reach him or her personally. Therefore, it is highly recommended that Internet marketing be made a part of your business plan and marketing strategy.
Please keep in mind while utilizing some of the steps in this quick guide to learning how to market on the Internet, that Internet marketing requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media. Some of your potential customers, depending on their computer capabilities, may or may not be ready for your stellar website that’s chock full of short videos and great graphics; while others may be chomping at the bit for something exactly like what you have to offer. Internet marketing is now giving standard radio marketing a run for its money in terms of market share. Web marketing experts agree that anyone who is interested in doing business on the Internet should definitely take time to learn about what it is they are getting into. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company’s overall marketing approach is wholly up to the company of course, but as a general rule, marketing via the web is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company’s marketing scheme. techniques.
elisee
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Saturday, March 12th, 2011
Knowing how to market on the Internet in this day and age can prove to be vital to both an online or brick and mortar business. Effective Internet marketing requires an all-inclusive plan that synergizes your company’s business model and sales goals with both its website function and appearance, while focusing on its target market through a proper choice of media and design. Some of the pertinent components of Internet marketing typically include having a website that consists of text, images, and possibly even an audio/video element that is used to inform existing and potential customers of the features and benefits of the company’s products and/or services. And as a side note, remember that once you’ve attained a good quality plan, having a successful Internet campaign can definitely improve your website search engine ranking, which is seemingly the one thing that nearly all online businesses strive for in today’s e-commerce world. So, if you are considering diving into the sea of Internet marketing but do not have specific experience in this type of marketing, it may definitely be worthwhile to consider hiring a consultant to assist you in your advertising undertaking.
Marketing on the Web links together the creative and methodological aspects of the Internet, including site design, development, promotion, and sales. The Internet has brought many exclusive benefits to marketing, one of which is lower costs for the dissemination of information and media to a worldwide audience. An added plus is that the targeted consumer is typically browsing the Internet alone, so the marketing messages can reach him or her personally. Therefore, it is highly recommended that Internet marketing be made a part of your business plan and marketing strategy.
Please keep in mind while utilizing some of the steps in this quick guide to learning how to market on the Internet, that Internet marketing requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media. Some of your potential customers, depending on their computer capabilities, may or may not be ready for your stellar website that’s chock full of short videos and great graphics; while others may be chomping at the bit for something exactly like what you have to offer. Internet marketing is now giving standard radio marketing a run for its money in terms of market share. Web marketing experts agree that anyone who is interested in doing business on the Internet should definitely take time to learn about what it is they are getting into. The decision to use Internet marketing as part of a company’s overall marketing approach is wholly up to the company of course, but as a general rule, marketing via the web is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company’s marketing scheme. techniques.
elisee
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Friday, March 4th, 2011
Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP and MRP application is successor of former Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise. Great Plains Software Dynamics accounting application was introduced in earlier 1990th as the future replacement for Great Plains Accounting for DOS and Windows. GPA as well as earlier Dynamics was available on competitive OS platforms: Windows and Mac. At this time, fall of 2008, it is probably impractical to talk about Great Plains Accounting customizations, as if you are still on GPA, you are probably not looking for business expansion, or if you have such plans, then you should consider migration to Great Plains Dynamics GP. In this small publication we will concentrate on Great Plains programming and modification options, especially on large and midsize software development projects:
1. GP technical consultants and Dex programmers consolidation and specialization. If all you need is field consultant, then you should expect broader expertise from this folk, however it is probably not realistic to expect him to play all the instruments and do deep Great Plains integrations and add-ons. All you expect from this guy is to help you with data fixing and add-on specking out to be transferred to Great Plains Software Development Factory
2. Great Plains Customization options. Traditionally most if not all of the add-ons were programmed in Great Plains Dexterity, however since the introduction of GP version 9.0 and especially 10.0 some of the programming project, especially in eCommerce scenarios could be written in eConnect. eConnect is tightly related to Great Plains architecture and it doesn’t post Great Plains batches for example as the architecture restriction. To understand GP Dex architecture principles you should read fundamental Dexterity and GPS Dynamics whitepapers. As a work around to enable posting Sales Order Processing and virtually all the batches in Dynamics GP – you should deploy Alba Spectrum Posting Server
3. Great Plains Customization lifecycle. Each ERP application should accommodate itself to Operating System and computer hardware renovations. In modern time, it is probably fare to way that every two years your Accounting application should be upgraded to the new version, where in our opinion you should skip every second new version, where new versions are coming typically every calendar year. Please, understand here, that Great Plains Dexterity customization was written uniquely and specially for your business and its upgrade should be considered seriously
4. Direct SQL scripting. We discourage you from taking this route, as you will begin inevitable experiments with business compliance and likely its violations
Andrew Karasev
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