Tech Notes

Tech news outside the mainstream

Uncommon news and information with a technical twist and some topics that are a bit out there. Enjoy...

Retail Sides & Online Thrives

Retail Slides & Online ThrivesThere's a insightful article on The Wall Street Journal about the continued closings of retail stores.   The Business Insider had an article earlier about the same topic.  It's all the more reason to get your business online or tune it up and expand your marketplaces, no matter what type of products you sell.

The article focuses on retail outlets declining and how more people are finding the convenience of online shopping.  What the article doesn't say is that the shopping habits of retail are being carried over into all business classes.  B2B (business to business) decisions are being made the same manor.  If your business isn't found or engaging enough, customers are going elsewhere at light speed.   To further that statement, the experience they find while using your site, is exactly how they perceive working with your organization to be.  It's your corporate image.  It's your credibility and it tells how well run your organization is, be it corporate, a government agency or a charitable organization.

Not many people will ever see your place of work, but chances are they will visit your website at all hours of the day.  Just ask your analytics guy.  People follow up in the evening, weekends and at all hours of the day outside of normal business hours.  It's how research is done.  The more advanced will employ secondary research groups to dig deeper, but generally what they see in the search results or after trying a few URL's (domain names) is it.

Two key points for making more money.  Get a great domain name for your business and keeping acquiring them while they are inexpensive.  Some businesses own hundreds of thousands of names.  Disney has about 20k names, some pharmaceutical companies own even more.  The internet isn't going anywhere and isn't going to be replaced anytime in the next 30 years.  Names you could have bought 10 years ago for a few thousand will never be available for sale again for less.  Buy words in English and .com extensions.  These will always be the best most memorable search friendly names that bring affluent customers to your door.

Build a scalable and dynamic website.  Keep adding relevant content and you'll keep driving targeted traffic.  If you sell widgets, you want to attract people buying widgets.  Your website needs to the best you can present for your market and dynamic.  Dynamic is fresh, evolving content and interactive.  Interactivity is how you listen to your customer's needs.  This is how to communicate, make it easy and make it fun, gamify it.

Read more on web development and building your user engagement here.