Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Is there still a place for small e-commerce startups?


Mashable produced a short article last week with their top 10 basic tips to help entrepreneurs boost online sales.  In short, if I could distil the ten tips down to two themes it would be as follows – make your site SIMPLE and make it AWESOME.

The top 10 tips were as follows
  1.      Keep Easy Navigation (simple)
  2.      Get a Great Search Bar (simple)
  3.      Keep it Simple (simple)
  4.      Extra Features (awesome)
  5.      Looks are Everything (awesome)
  6.      Give Details (awesome)
  7.      Shipping (awesome)
  8.      Be Honest (simple?)
  9.      Be Human (errr…this is trickier)
  10.      Be Browser Friendly (simple) 


Does anyone else feel like these two themes may be a little at odds with each other?

In the new brave new world of e-commerce where large sites are investing more and more money into beautiful websites, online and offline media and marketing campaigns and integrated logistics, is this article over simplifying things a bit?  That is to ask, does e-commerce still present a real opportunity for mom & pop businesses, or, are they be marginalized as the local shopkeeper has been by the Walmarts of this world.
    

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