Everyone is turning to the internet to make their money, give it a few years and there won’t be many high streets being populated.

For many years it has been coming, building and strengthening its numbers, whilst very few took notice, all it took was a simple glitch in the economy to tumble the first domino, beginning the cascade of large, established high street shops into an almost un-recoverable mess.

A high street commercial building costs perhaps £15,000 per annum for an average space and average town, in an average location, with commercial council tax and utilities of around an equal price, so that’s £30k in outlay you have to consider just to have a place on the high street for footfall of that town’s population (assuming they still bother to venture into town).

Now compare that to your average website shop, your web address, probably not much more than £10 a year or so, and your monthly is £17.99 for hosting (based on a Tiger Commerce hosted solution), that’s £226 a year.

£30,000 – £226 = £29774.

So you’re already in excess of twenty nine grand better off by just being an online merchant, give yourself a pat on the back.

How about the traffic? Let’s guess that the town has a population of 55,000, they’re not all going to be in town at the same time, don’t worry (it could get a little cramped, health and safety issues, etc) You’re footfall is going to be a small percentage of that.

Now then, the online traffic numbers? Remember that the internet is pretty much worldwide at 1,596,270,108 internet users, the potential visitors to your website are substantial with the right marketing. So again a small percentage of that excessively large number might come to your website if it meets the cut, but even a small percentage would be a far greater number than the footfall you would acquire from a high street shop.

You can manage your appearance online much easier than in a face to face retail shop on a high street, managing your image, and focusing on customers to give them a better experience. Even clothes shops are becoming popular online, people aren’t afraid anymore of not being able to try on the clothes before they buy them.

With things like newsletters, and send to friend promotions which you just don’t get in stores, your customers have much more choice over following your brand and trusting it, but you also have the choice of targeting them more directly than hoping they catch a glimpse of your discount poster in the window.

When you think about all of this, is it really any wonder why town centres are quickly becoming such vacant ghost towns?

Web Stats Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

e-Trade Pro have launched a video to promote their eCommerce software. Pretty good huh?

What do you think? Promoting eCommerce Software by a video that showcases a dedicated team and the software, good idea?

Netdirector e-Trade Pro also have their own eCommerce blog to further inform about their services and updates. I say it’s good to see a company in this sector embracing the tools available in social media to open themselves up to the market, what do you think? Does such an approach make you more likely to use a company if you can communicate with them in such a way?

Online marketing for SEO is a competitive game and there’s plenty of ways to cheat the system and use some “black hat” techniques. It’s the easiest way to get rankings fast but it’s also the easiest way to get punished fast.

I’m happy that I work for an agency and we pride ourselves on acheiving results without cheating, everything is above board, our hat is white and there’s nothing dodgy. There are often times when it could be tempting to market products in a way that while above-board in terms of technicality, are a bit questionable in the ethics department.

For example..

We also have a pretty strong product, it’s infallible infact. But, when a competitors ecommerce software fails, or you here chatter and there’s forum buzz about how let down its customers are. How do you use that to your advantage without being unethical.

For example, back in the 1970s when Pintos had a nasty habit of bursting into flames in rear-end collisions, did GM start pushing adverts saying “Explosion-free cars” ?

Now, is it because it’s unethical or is it because it would make them look unethical. In a cynical world it’s easy to think that they wanted to. That up in the boardrooms the CEO’s were sitting down with their ad agencies looking at mock-ups of inflammable cars but realised how this would make them look in the eyes of the public.

There’s ways of doing both though. Take the recent collapse of Courts. Wasn’t it nice of all their competitors to offer discounts to those customers that had lost money in Courts orders? It certainly made them look good and there’s no doubt it helped shift a few sofas and beds.

In the same way that car buyers want a car that’s not going to combust on impact and sofa customers want a sofa, an online business will want an ecommerce software that doesn’t crash at that most vital of points, the checkout.

Well, as with all things in advertising and marketing, it comes down to the copy. There’s no way to name your competitors failings directly and remain ethical or appear so. That would be like a competitor announcing “Courts are so terrible and useless they can’t get your bed so we will.” It’s like the marketing equivalent of a House of Commons debate where nothing gets resolved – the Tories stand and point fingers, the Lib Dems bemoan and quibble but nobody has an answer. Accordingly nobody really attracts the vote. Or the custom.

So if your competitor has a none weak point, no matter how famously weak, you can’t point it out. What you can do, though, is point out that you have a strong point there instead and you aim the pitch to the argument. If you know that customers are going to be searching for a product and are aware of your competitors failings you build your products strength into the PPC ad.

This is what we did, along with a good PR campaign simply emphasising our strengths in key areas that we knew competitores were failing without nameing or even suggesting that others had issues.

I don’t think I could resort to outright finger-pointing in marketing anymore than I could use “black hat” techniques. It’s like using the cheat codes on your computer games – you finish quick but there’s no real sense of award or achievement. People in online marketing and SEO will know that joy from seeing your hard work pay off with first page ranking. That and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Then the safest bet is to head for the ski slopes for a winter break.

It’s Monday morning and while the snow’s all gone now there’s plenty to be seen with the launch of a site I’ve been working on that’s perfect for ski and winter sports enthusiasts. White Rock Direct offers functional and stylish ski wear and winter wear.

It’s so cold here even without the snow lately that I may just start getting some of those base layers to cope with the winter weather on the commute let alone the slopes.

White Rock Direct is built on the e-Trade Pro ecommerce software.