e-Commerce

The Advantages of Selling Online

With an online store, you can sell successfully to a larger customer base than your immediate area. Your online customers may come from anywhere in the country; or even abroad. At the same time you are without the expense of a high street presence and so keep costs down (see left side panel).

Hibernate or Rejuvenate?

Retail Shop When the economy emerges from the current recession, it will be a very different economic and business environment. The businesses which do survive will be those which re-invent themselves, reduce costs and maintain or expand their customer base.

Getting Started with Online Selling

Open for Business There are several options for selling online. They start from the very cheap and basic for those with just a few product lines, or who merely wish to put their toe in the water. If this is where you want to begin Córas IT offer a consutancy and advice service to explain the options and help you to get started.

Alternatively if you have over 100 product lines, we can build a a fully featured online store. Córas IT will use Actinic Designr Software Actinic Designer software to design the shop, and give it the appearance which you want. Actinic is the leading software for online sales. The store will reflect both your corporate identity and work seamlessly with the brochure web site. We will then install the Actinic Clients software on your PC so that you can manage the store updating prices, adding new products and downloading orders.

Córas IT can advise you on what is most suited to your situation, and then get you started with running the store.

Finds out more! Phone Coras IT or send us an email.

Selling over the web.

For many traders, online retailing is now the way forward, in the present economic downturn. Think of the savings which an online shop can bring you.

No Monthly Rent
No Business Rates
No Utility Bills

Once the online store is up and running, the majority of costs will be variable costs rather than overheads like those above. These are mainly shipping and credit card fees.

Web Design Tariffs

What you can sell online!

Almost any product could be sold through your online, whether retail or business to business. Those which work best are those where the customer knows exactly what they are buying - such as books, CDs, videos (think of Amazon). For the same reason, established brands are also a good choice.

For some products, an accurate description may convey more information that the brand name - "ream of A4 80gsm copy paper" or "60W low energy light bulb, bayonet fitting".

Small high value objects which are easy to ship are always a good choice. Likewise digital products which can be downloaded over the web (music, software, e—books) are ideal for online stores. They are weightless and incur no shipping costs.

However, you may want to think carefully about selling some product types: such as perishable goods, clothing and footwear which people may wish to try on first, or hand crafted items where the customer needs to feel / observe the quality.