eCommerce, Your Client's Edge Against Recession!
Feb 1, 2008
2007 marked yet another banner year for e-retailing. Online sales have consistently grown at or near the annual rate of 25% for the last five years and will continue to grow at a healthy pace. Even though 2007 online sales were a little less than some prognosticators predicted, they still outpaced traditional retail sales by a huge margin.
So, what does this mean for us as web developers? We possess the skills to help our clients overcome the problem of slowing sales should the economy continue to move into a recession. Or, if we don't we should! If you haven't added the ability to develop ecommerce web sites to your skill set, do it, and do it now! Your clients and your bank account will thank you. In a recession, certain areas are hit more severely than others. If you and your clients are in one of the harder hit areas your business may suffer. As client budgets begin to shrink they look for places to cut. Clients with static non-revenue generating web sites may look at the web as one of the things they should cut or put on hold. That's you my friend, fellow web developer. How many clients can you afford to put your projects on hold before... Well, you get the point.
eCommerce saves the day!
eCommerce can help your clients recession proof their business by expanding their revenue source from their sales floor to the web. By offering their products and in many cases their services to a much broader audience and area, possibly even nationally or world wide, the effects of a recession in the local economy can be greatly diminished.
For you, having the ability to help your clients take advantage of the strong growth of internet commerce moves you and the web sites you develop from the expense column to the income column. It's simple business... in down times money makers stay, expenses get cut. Which group do you want to be in? The old, "I'm more of a designer, I don't want to have to mess with code" attitude will put a lot of "web designers" out of business. Decide here and now to bite the bullet, go through the learning curve and do what it takes to move yourself into the asset column by being able to help your clients take advantage of the growth market eCommerce creates.
Help yourself by helping your clients.
As the news media continues to negatively drone on about a deepening recession, you can be out there calling on your clients with a positive message... "Let's get you selling online and add an additional revenue source for your business!"
You'll be helping your clients in a real positive way, and immersing yourself in a growth industry, rather than duking it out with the other "Web Designers" trying to keep their share of what could be a slowing or shrinking market.
Fortunately the move to developing eCommerce sites is not that big of a hurdle. Yes there is a learning curve, you will have to become familiar with setting up a local development environment, you'll have to learn about at least the basics of databases, and you'll have to chose and gain some experience with a server language. But fear not, there is a lot of readily available training and learning resources to help you get up to speed pretty quickly. Additionally, there are shopping cart software applications like Cartweaver that allow you to implement ecommerce functionality with a minimum of coding knowledge. So, with a little determination and a willingness to dive in and learn some new things you can quickly become a valuable asset to your clients by helping them not only maintain their bottom line, but grow their businesses in a new and exiting direction.
One thing is for certain, eRetail sales will continue to grow and significantly outpace traditional retail sales for the foreseeable future. By positioning yourself as a resource your clients can call on to move into this growth market you will be recession proofing both your business and theirs.
In today's economy, eCommerce presents one heck of an opportunity for web developers and the clients they serve!
For more information read more of this blog. You may also want to check out this series of articles I did for the Adobe Developer's Network
Posted bySite Admin at 4:32 PM
