As more distributors and resellers join the e-commerce market the question of sustainability becomes imperative. Will the overflow of new e-commerce businesses kill your e-commerce business? Quite the opposite is true, according to Henno Marais, director of improWEB.
According to World Wide Worx, online retail sales in SA for 2005 totalled R514 million - a mere 0.16% of the overall retail market in SA. However, SA follows the global trend of increasing e-commerce penetration and according to the ACNielsen Global Online Consumer Confidence Study, computer hardware and software fall in the top 10 most frequently purchased items online.
As Internet access becomes cheaper and more accessible, and consumer confidence and satisfaction in online purchasing increase, the online sales in SA may soon equal the USA figure of 6% of total retail sales. Already, "customer satisfaction with online retail is nearly 12% higher than it is in the overall retail industry." (American Customer Satisfaction Index Report.) Furthermore, technologies like 4G, with speeds up to 2 500 times faster than Telkom ADSL, will change the face of Internet usage, making it more accessible to resellers and consumers.
"The biggest challenges facing IT resellers in SA who want to sell online include maintaining an e-commerce Web site, keeping track of fast changing prices and products, getting stock of items ordered online, ensuring safe, non-fraudulent transactions and delivering products to clients," explains Marais.
The improWEB system, together with fully integrated distributors, an integrated courier company and the new Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode standards now in place with all the South African banks, address these challenges and much more.
With improWEB out of stock items from fully integrated distributors are not shown on the Web site, therefore one will never sell something that is not in stock. "When the customer does order from your Web site and pays by credit card, the improWEB solution will automatically place the order at your distributor, reserve the stock for that order and create the waybill at the courier to collect from the distributor and deliver at your client," says Marais. "The reseller only has to focus on his customers while the technology is doing the work. The improWEB partnership with couriers means that the online shop owner takes no risks with delivery of products because we calculate the actual cost real-time."
Therefore, if e-commerce Web sites are integrated with high levels of customer satisfaction, in such a way that the consumers start to look for IT products and services online first, online trading in the IT industry will increase drastically. This means that the more retailers trade online using integrated solutions, the bigger the market will become. This also means that partners will not be competing to get part of R514 million pie but rather helping to increase the size of the pie!
For those who still think integrated e-commerce solutions will not bring in enough money, here is a piece of history from the Dell Web site: In the year 2000, "Company sales via Internet reach $50 million per day".
In the year 2006, "Dell ships more than 10 million systems in a single quarter (Q4, FY06) for the first time in its history".
As the Dell history shows, e-commerce does work. And remember resellers can offer support and assistance at a personal level.
improWEB: Henno Marais, henno@improweb.com, http://www.improweb.com
Share
Editorial contacts