Ecommerce and the Altered Main Street
When you get right down to it the fusion of the Internet and business is a bold lesson in abstract thought.
Consider your grandparents and the work they did. Their employment could have been on the farm, in the factory, in a store or in the work of their hands.
If your grandparents were business owners most of their customers were face-to-face. They may have gone to church with your grandparents or attended school games and concerts. They knew each other and that made marketing much less taxing.
Advertising was often in the form of an ad in a school program or a booster club for the airing of the local football games. The advertising wasn't always essential to the success they had in business, it was often used as a way to support the local feel associated with their business.
They knew the other business owners in town and often worked together to keep the local spirit of a town alive.
As large retail businesses began to dot the landscape these small businesses often died when no one was really paying any attention. The empty storefronts in rural America pay tribute to the radical change in 21st century retail.
Why has online business created the need for abstract thinking?
Internet shops are composed of graphics and text. These shops are developed with software and not brick, mortar, glass and wood. These businesses can operate 24 hours a day including holidays and the owner does not have to be present for a customer to complete an order.
The business owner cannot see the site visitor or customer, they can simply track the number of visitors and information about the area they may be from.
There is a sense of intangibility that may make online business seem like some elaborate computer game and less like traditional business.
In order for some businesses to move into a cyber environment there was a need to hire younger employees who had an insatiable appetite to learn and utilize the skills associated with online business.
Early on the business owner may not have believed it was even worth their while to delve into this brave new world of ecommerce. Yet as time went by the online sales improved, equaled and then surpassed what the business had been able to do with a local shop.
Many of these early pioneers in ecommerce may not have understood everything there was to know, but the results were clear - ecommerce was a force much more powerful than they would have ever thought.
As time passes more and more online business owners have accepted their role as marketer, dream maker and web design pro. They have grown accustom to this brave new environment where faces are not associated with the sale, where customers aren't your neighbor down the street and where the cyber doors are always open.
Online business defies the notion of a simple local marketplace by tapping into something more global. Many small shops around the world have become staging areas for a worldwide customer base. Niche products can now be the primary thrust of a successful online company instead of just one of many diversified products one might have found in an old general store.
Online business has challenged our thinking and changed the way the world does business.
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects.
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