It's a wired, wired, wired world
How independent retailers can use the Internet more effectively to reach their customers
By Robert Price
Making the Case for a Web site
Scan the Yellow Pages and you'll find most retail shops listed. Search the Internet and you'll only find retailers who use the Web to reach customers.
The holdouts, those retailers who haven't gone online, usually say that taking their stores online is too complicated, an unaffordable investment, or unsuited for their kind of store.
This may be true, but the increasing popularity of peer-to-peer social networking and file-transfer services, collectively nicknamed "Web 2.0," ought to prompt offline retailers to reconsider the Web.
"Web 2.0 is essentially a catchphrase that refers to next generation Web tools and Web sites that promote social networks and relationships and transform end users into publishers," says Toby Ward, President of Prescient Digital Media.
Strong personal relationships are the hallmark of Web 2.0.
For retailers who specialize in building lasting relationships with customers, going online shouldn't be a stretch, as it's all about building and maintaining relationships.
"[Web 2.0] is especially advantageous for an independent retailer because it's so cheap, so accessible and widely public. This is not the case in the offline world," says Ward.
And there are other reasons to go online:
- First, the way we use the Internet is changing. Once, we used it primarily to communicate; think e-mail and chatrooms. Now, we search the Net to find content and conduct research about everything, including information about the things we want to buy. The sentiment is developing that if it's not on the Net, it doesn't exist.
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