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Specialty Retailing Online: Finding Your Niche on the Internet
The difficulty with traditional specialty retailing has always been the challenge of attracting a large base of customers looking for very specific products. For example, a store specializing in pink frog figurines might have difficulty maintaining a steady stream of business. For specialty retail, success often hinges on reaching the widest customer base possible.The Internet offers the largest customer base of all: a specialty retail store online has a worldwide customer base, greatly increasing its chance of success. Although no one in town may have a thing for pink frog figurines, there could be a whole community of pink frog enthusiasts desperate for your services in the worldwide zone. No matter how specialized a retail product is, there's probably an online market for it. A specialty retail website can take advantage of that market. Niche marketing has become so successful online that most marketing advice sites advocate niche retail websites instead of more general markets. Niche marketing has become a successful business strategy partly due to the nature of Internet search engines. Search engines love websites that focus on specific topics. In fact, the more specific the topic, the better the website performs in keyword searches. General retail stores online are often buried in a long search engine list because they are competing against too many other sites in a category that is too large. To succeed in specialty retail, you need a website to do two things. First, the site needs to be specialized enough to score highly in search engines when site-specific keywords are used. Equally important, enough people need to use the site's keywords to ensure a steady stream of visitors to the site. Designing a specialty retail website is a balancing act between these two factors. Keywords, like Goldilocks' porridge, need to be just right. Here's an example based on our hypothetical pink frog figurine store. Simply use "frog" as a keyword and the website won't just be competing with rival frog emporiums for search engine rankings: it will also be up against scientific amphibian sites, pet frog pages, frog folktale sites, plush frog stores, and any other website that uses frog as a keyword. On the other hand "pink frog figurines" may be too specific a search term. A happy balance might be to use "pink frog" and "frog figurines" as the main key phrases. That way the site attracts users looking for pink frogs and frog figurines, increasing the potential for site traffic. While arriving at the correct balance of keywords for a specialty store is tricky, the potential rewards are well worth the effort. Search for Your Retail Domains » $100 Billion Dollars in Online Sales Projected for 2006
Retailers large and small seeing increased demand; sites become more interactive with spread of broadband accessIf you had doubts about the viability of the online business model, it is time to lay them aside. Analysts predict a solid 16% growth in online sales revenues — from $85 billion in 2005 to $100 billion in 2006. Surveys showed that apparel and accessories ranked among the top categories in sales growth (at 36% year-over-year growth from 2004 to 2005), and gross sales of $12.2 billion. This revenue is coming from all sectors: young and old alike, as consumers embrace the convenience of online shopping with increased confidence levels around security and privacy. The increasing numbers of households with broadband Internet access is driving trends with shopping sites: more rich media or dynamic elements are being incorporated on a regular basis. While many of these bandwidth intensive elements — streaming video, for example — are beyond the reach of smaller retailers, there are interactive elements which require limited investment and boost the bottom line. Color-changing capacity (where you can click to see an item on a model change color) and zoom are especially effective at driving sales. Vendors like Scene7 service vendors large and small, with "on demand" and "per license" fees. Search for Your Retail Domains » |
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