Comparing Online stores with Bricks and mortar stores

Online shopping is fast becoming the norm with people buying everything on internet from books to DVDs, and cosmetics to heavy machinery. You can purchase just about anything, anytime on internet. There is a tremendous growth in the numbers of dollars spent every year on online shopping, which is fast, far more convenient and economical, all at the same time. However, shopping from an online store is an entirely different experience and not everyone is at ease while buying from a website, especially those who are not on the ball and well-informed about new technologies.
Let’s compare online stores with conventional stores and look at its advantages or disadvantages.

Advantages:
Online shopping is all about expediency, ease for both buyers and sellers is the biggest plus point of online shopping. To start with the buyer, first of all you don’t need to store products in large quantities, instead you can place images of products at your website and purchase from manufacturer only when someone place an order (especially when you are acting as a dropshipper). The real advantage that online shopping brings to the customers is the option of carrying out research and price comparisons on internet. It’s a matter of minutes to get hold of the information about different products, including their features, reviews, customer experiences and price comparisons for any given requirement. Even those who don’t buy online, likes to surf around for some information regarding a particular product. Such extensive information and research is almost impossible in a traditional store where you are stuck with limited options. Also, online stores are open 24 hours, whole product selection and payment takes little time and the product is delivered to your doorstep.


Disadvantages:
Biggest disadvantage at the moment is probably the access factor, not everybody has the access or the knowledge required to use internet for shopping purpose. One needs to be adept in searching and surfing internet, because the nature of online shopping makes internet an ideal place for scammers. In case you’re caught in the trap of some scammer, it’s really hard to recover your money, once you’ve made the payment. Therefore, some people are always reluctant to buy online; there are very few laws and regulations to keep online businesses under check. Even if the supplier is not fraud, the actual product can turn out to be completely opposite to what you had conceived after looking at the image. If you are running an online store, you must consider these reservations.

Source:
Wholesale Suppliers

Causes of Economic Recession and Our Attitude

Business Cycle refers to the relatively long term fluctuations in economic activities or production side and contraction in Business Cycle or slowing down of economic activities is called Economic (Financial) Recession. A lot of theories can be provided to present the macro causes of Economic Recession. Few of which are collapsing down of property business, hiking up of energy prices, fading of business profits, high interest rates, weakening of job market, drop down in tax revenue and drop-off in business investments by foreign and local investors in many countries. These are all indicators that give bearish trend to the stock market. But many experts around the globe believe that a rigorous economic recession is a result of negative GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth in many successive periods.

The economic recession cycle is based on several continuous phases of positive and negative GDP growth. Often, it is observed that before a true recession starts a mild cycle of negative growth is followed by a slight positive growth in GDP and then again the same cycle of negative growth starts and so the recession trend elaborates. A lot of people are affected by economic recession and it becomes harder for almost everyone to survive in this tough span. Generally, government or administration is blamed for this state during this time. According to experts, recession is unavoidable to some extent and its causes are not well understood but the administration has some influence in the degree of recession. The government must take some beneficial steps to soften the impacts of recession on common people. Most of the time the steps taken appear to be unsuccessful but still the government should put some effort to make the recession less severe.

We hardly get to know officially that we are into some kind of financial crisis and we seriously need to do something to get out of it. As one expert said, that "Part of the problem is just not knowing, the longer the process of not knowing what the losses are takes, the longer the resolution takes." Working well and working together in one direction can be like a light at the end of a tunnel and all must march towards that end.

Source:
UK Wholesalers

Business Presentation: The Basics

Business presentations not only speak for the person presenting them but also reflect the image of the organization for which they are presented. An effective presentation can result into creating success stories for an organization. A bad presentation on other hand will let down the business. There are some basics, though important to presentations that help us make better presentations. First thing to be concerned about is the time and interest of the audience. The most precious your audience’s time is, more important it will become to stick to the basics.

Presentations can become very challenging at times. Choosy audience and competitive environment in business puts much more responsibility on presenter to have a more focused approach. Presentation should contain only necessary information in a compact manner. Lengthy sentences should be avoided and one word substitution with one line phrases should be more appropriate. Professional approach should also be used in selecting the slide template and layout. Unnecessary or irritating colors can obstruct the ability to read and understand the words and resulting in uninterested audience. Don’t use capital letters unnecessarily, as that would distort the real message and confuse the audience as to what is important and what is not. Punctuation marks should also be used carefully and only when needed. Some of our business professionals are over obsessed with aesthetics of the presentation. They start finding new and unique styles of fonts (e.g., cowboy fonts or etc). They should understand that audience is only interested in the real message and aesthetics are only there to support the message. Unnecessary focus on aesthetics can stress the audience.

Colors play a vital role in presentations making. Intelligent use of colors not only increases the readability of the presentation but also gives it a professional look. Length of the presentation also counts. First of all the audience should be given a rough view of the outline of the presentation. And lengthy presentations should only be made once required. The length count will help audience realize the time it would take them to get through all presentation proceedings. Using large number of slides is not a very suitable option and their use should also be limited to need. Picture is worth a thousand words. Graphs, pictures and charts not only help reduce the amount of words and slides used, but also grace the presentation with colors. Their use helps the audience correlate a lot of information simultaneously. Animation effects should also be used sparsely, as their overload will result in distortion. Last but not the least is the portability of your presentation. It is important to make a presentation that runs on that computer on which you have to present. There have been format problems as well in word processors. For example it is better to save in old and new format of Microsoft Office Power Point, or else you can land yourself in trouble if the PC on which you are going to present has a different version of Microsoft Office Power Point then the one on which you are making the presentation. Caring these simple basics is sure to help you remain focused and make more effective presentations.

Business Conflict – A Myth or Reality?

Often business organizations are run by mere humans actually working robotically and not withstanding the requirement of real humans made up of flesh, blood, and thinking ability. That lack of contribution to the optimism and prosperity can be attributable to many things. One of the major factors responsible for this unattractive interaction is the conflict prevailing in business organizations. There are many who think of conflict as a source of negativity, and they don’t question the ways to do work? They keep on doing what they are suppose to do, without thinking that is it the way they want to do it? Well that might be taken easily by some, but mind you, serious entrepreneurs and senior management who think of their organizations as manifestations of creativity, do take it seriously. If you want to know why then read on, because it is important to know what fuels the passion and desire to work for an organization and the hardest challenge for the employers.

First and foremost thing is the fear of rejection and putting one’s job on line for being so open about how a work is performed. Open communication is a cultural thing, and starts from the top. If open communication is not encouraged in an organization, then people would never have their say through because of the fears being settled in. Now someone might ask, what difference will it make to communicate or not what one feels while working in an organization. That makes all the difference in the world, for a second, just think of working in a jail. Where you know that you are there for a time being, you don’t have any say, and your participation is highly discouraged. You will eventually start shutting your mind at work on regular basis and will eventually feel that you have to do with the things the way they are. That would result in negativity towards the organization, its culture and its working environment. Conflict then doesn’t only mean the major things, but it starts from minor issues.

Open communication discourages conflicts, though one has to have the heart to encourage as well as reward the ones who are right. This culture will eventually make people share their ideas, make organizations a better place to work in and also a better organization to share views with. Just think about an organization where the employee comes in the morning with a lot of ideas to share with and get praise on, with another organization where an employee comes with low self esteem, cluttered mind and unsatisfied job with no creativity at hand. Though this might look to some as encouraging conflicts unnecessarily, ideas should be discussed in open and voted for to get the real thought on top. As businesses are made by people, so they should be flexible enough to include what the people think of their work and how can they be facilitated to further improve the business working environment.

Source:
Wholesale
UK Wholesale

Budgeting Tips for small business start ups

In simple words budget is an estimation of all costs, expenditures and of course the profits you might incur in a specific time period, budgets are made normally on yearly or quarterly basis. Just like any other plan, it’s better to put your financial plans in writing. It’s easier to analyze and improve a documented plan which is in front of your eyes instead of analyzing bits and pieces in your mind. A budget can also help in pinpointing the culprits (biggest expenditures); you can make changes on sheet and see the impacts in overall profit/loss of your business. Big businesses have got their financial experts to do this planning, however not all small businesses need to hire such experts. You can do it yourself by keeping in mind the following guidelines.

First, no matter how tightfisted you are, do not play down the expenditures. In other words, employ as many of your cost saving skills in actual business dealings as you can, but don’t give too much weight to these skills while budgeting. For the reason that it will make your business look a lot more profitable then what it will turn out to be. Therefore, don’t be too positive when making estimates for expenditures and profits. The toughest part of budgeting is to make estimation for future sales, no matter how much research you’ve carried out, you can never predict sales with accuracy. If you’ve got some sales or marketing staff, you must discuss and ask them to make sales predictions based on their experience.

You can get lots of small business budgeting templates at internet for free, where you just need to put values and you’ll get the total amount for sales, revenues and profit/loss. These templates are designed by professionals, and they will prompt some expenditure that you’d have forgotten to include. Coming to the second part, which is review and correction. Don’t worry if you found the actual expenditures or profits are different from the budgeted amount (it was supposed to happen because a budget is after all an estimation). Another thing to remember is that your small business budget is not some commandment that must be followed and not be changed. You must keep an eye on the actual expenditures and keep reviewing your budget on regular basis, especially if the budget extends over one year period.

Source:
Wholesale

Brand Name and Celebrity Image to promote business

Modern Marketing needs more than just developing a product, pricing it attractively and making it accessible in splendor shopping malls. Now a day’s, marketing is one step ahead than it was earlier. It needs to communicate with common people, address their inner fantasy world and attempt to inform consumers that your product (brand) is their ultimate choice. Many companies use known or unknown people to convey their message but how a message is delivered has a greater impact on consumers than the Brand name itself. Messages delivered by media icons or popular sources mostly achieve higher attention and recall that is why advertisers often use celebrities as their brand representative or spokespeople.

Brands are considered to have personalities and identified the characteristics like sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness and zealous and consumers are likely to choose brands whose personalities match their own. So the choice of celebrity is critical that who is going to represent which specific brand. The celebrity must have high recognition, extremely positive high profile, immense likeability and high appropriateness to the product. For example, any sports personality has high recognition but due to involvement in drugs and rude behavior they have negative affect among youth and other groups. Similarly, many media images like Brad Pitt, Sindey Crafford, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Amir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Brett Lee and Ronaldino are successfully endorsing a large number of products because they have extremely high positive rankings in recognition and likeability.

Athletes and Sports Personalities usually endorse sporty apparels, shoes, blazers, sport products and sports companies, health and energy drinks. Media icons represent brands that are sophisticated, mild, and create fantasy like designer dresses, watches, cosmetics and fragrances. The known personalities (Celebrities) do not always cast a successful promotion of a specific brand to position in public mind. For example, if someone has a high liking towards a personality but not towards that brand to which he is endorsing, a two way effect can occur, either, the consumer will end up liking that celebrity a bit less or start liking that brand a bit more. But if that person will see his favorite celebrity continuously attached in praising other dislike brands, he or she will eventually develop a negative image of the celebrity and maintains the negative attitudes towards the brand.

According to an expert, a number of companies also use a specific personality to overcome the crisis if their brand faces at some point in time. Because, celebrities have an assuring personalities and they can give a positive reputation to that tangible product.

Source:
UK Wholesale Suppliers

Why do you need to have a merchant account for your online business?

A question that haunts anyone who is planning to sell his/her products or services on internet is the mode of receiving payments from buyers sitting in another city, state or country. The best and the quickest option is to accept payment through credit or debit cards. There are other alternatives but none as quick and as convenient as this one. Online shopping is all about convenience and speediness, if the buyer has to wait for days before the payment arrives into seller’s account so that he might be able to dispatch the products. Such a lengthy turnaround time destroys the whole advantage of online shopping. In view of that, when you are setting up an online business, you must arrange for a merchant account to be able to accept payments through credit/debit cards. Asking your customers to send checks or money orders just doesn’t fits in.

Merchant Account is a type of bank account that makes it possible for account holder to accept credit card payments from his/her clients. In other words merchant account provider is a service that allows business owners to accept payment via credit/debit card. Though in most cases, you’ll not be dealing directly with merchant account providers, especially if you are a small or medium-sized business. However, the idea is to be able to accept credit card payments, be it through Merchant account providers, Independent Sales Organizations, Payment Processing Companies or Payment Gateways. Let’s take a look at how payment gateways or third party merchant accounts can help you in this regard.

Payment Gateway:

If you are an online business, you must sign up with a payment gateway service. Payment gateway allows you to offer an easy solution to your customers to make on the spot payments. The process starts from customers clicking on the “pay now” button and the whole transaction takes not more than 4 – 5 seconds (even though there’s a lot of data transfer taking place at the backend that includes various parties validating the process).

Third Party Merchant Account:

Third party merchant account is the most convenient and also the most commonly used medium by small businesses. Third party merchant account services serves the same as the traditional merchant account, however the prices differ. Third party merchant account typically cost less than the original merchant account when it comes to setting up an account; however the transaction fee is significantly higher. Some examples of third party payment processors are PayPal or 2co.

Source:
UK Wholesale

What’s an Exit Strategy and why you need to have one in place

Exit Strategy is one of the most important element of your preliminary business plans (even though you wish that the need of executing these plans will not arise anytime soon). Exit Strategy (also known as an Exit Plan) is the line of action that you may choose in case the going gets too tough to continue. In simple words, it’s the easiest way out of a ruinous situation while incurring the least possible loss. You’ve got to have an exit strategy as a backup plan right from the start instead of waiting for some unfortunate situation to surface, since in most cases the upheaval will be too sudden to tackle on the spot.

Even if there’s no catastrophic situation, you can possibly have other reasons for disengaging from the business that you’ve started (when wrapping off everything is not an option). These reasons can be, you looking to go for another more lucrative venture, or you may be thinking of giving up work for some time, you may also need an exit strategy when planning to sell a running business and sellers are interested in knowing if there’s any exit strategy in place, in case the profits start to go down, putting up an exit strategy will cast positive impression on prospective buyers or investors.

People often make this mistake of ignoring the exit strategy and starting without having any backup plans. Some entrepreneurs are too optimistic to think that anything can go wrong with their business; others are confident that they’ll handle the situation, then and there. Nothing’s wrong with the optimism or confidence but it’s always harder to evaluate and tackle the situation once you are “in” it, the haste or pressure situation can get on your mind, resulting in an erroneous decision. Besides, having an exit strategy will only boost your confidence.

Put these two kinds of entrepreneurs side by side, one starts off without an exit strategy while the other one is having a solid exit plan. Who do you think will crumble more easily and more quickly as soon as the proceeding goes wrong? Quite obviously, the one who’s having an exit plan will immediately get to the task, while the other one will have to do the thinking from the scratch. More often than not, this thinking will eat into the grace period and result in a much bigger loss as compared to the loss incurred by the other fellow.

Source:
Sports Wholesale Suppliers & Distributors