E-commerce: Success Factors

Karvika Thapa

by Karvika Thapa

E-commerce has broader definition than just buying and selling through Internet technologies. It has become a platform for selling, buying, trading, advertising and marketing. Items like books, computer software, tickets for cinema, concerts and airline, apparels and recorded music are hot online. Other items like flowers, chocolates and cosmetics are also bought through Internet.

People and company started to involve themselves in e-transaction because of convenience and quick services. Convenience is the foremost motivational factor that affects one’s decision to shop online. “Ninety seven percent of online shoppers are motivated primarily by saving their time and simplifying their lives.” (‘People shop online for convenience, not for price’, Tracy, 8/00). Purchasing online saves time and hassle to run over to choose the best. Some groups of people are more concerned with the particular product or services that companies offer than the price of it.  So, they tend to shop after they decide on a particular product or service. Other groups of people are concerned about price. They tend to shop from sites that offer products in competitive rates.

The thing that I find most fascinating is the amount of products, number of sellers of each products and information on that product you can find. This enables for a few things that make the web a unique and attractive medium. With the web you have access to a greater amount of dynamic information to support queries that help you in your decision making. The variety of products and price tags you can find is truly surprising. The Web certainly is more consumers driven than any traditional medium. With ever increasing number of sellers who go online, the competition on this medium is tremendous. Disintermediation provided by the web results in lower prices than any other traditional medium.

Another motivational factor to buy online is its easy availability. One can shop whatever or whenever one wants. All possible options can be viewed and bought. For instance, one of my friend bought shoes through e-bay. She said it’s very simple and easy process. She made her selection within few minutes and she received her stuffs within a week. She was satisfied and happy with the whole process.

4-Click Rule

Launching e-commerce site does not guarantee successful business. There are various issues that need to be considered. The site must be professional in look, attractive and easy to shop. Visitors of your e-commerce site need easy-to-follow pathways to access your products easily like they have in retail stores. “If you have many products or lines, group them according to the way customers might shop and follow the “four click rule”: it should take no more than four clicks to get from your main page to any product page on your site." (Kim T. Gordon, 2004). They need to be able to examine products in detail and compare them with other products. For instance, if one sells shoes, s/he has to provide size and color charts. An e-commerce site that has dead links, broken links, pages that take time to load and outdated content will drive online shoppers away. Maintaining your e-commerce web site regularly and often is a must.

Most of all successful e-commerce sites accept credit cards and through it all online transactions are performed. There are two basic things a merchant (someone who owns a company that sells products or services) needs for an e-commerce venture. The first one is Internet Merchant Account: a special account with a bank that allows the merchant to accept credit cards over the Internet. The merchant typically pays a processing fee for each transaction processed, also known as the discount rate. A merchant applies for an Internet Merchant Account in a process similar to applying for a commercial loan. The fees charged by the bank will vary. The second one is Payment Processing Service (payment gateway): a service that provides connectivity among merchants, customers, and financial networks to process authorizations and payments. The service is usually operated by a third-party provider such as VeriSign or Paypal. Until a customer feels secure, one does not shop through that site.

Nepal doesn’t have a payment gateway. The primary consumers of the online products are people who reside in developed nations. So, business structure of the online Nepali companies is setup considering this factor. Global payment gateway takes in business from all over the world and has gained the trust of many online consumers. So, it is beneficial for a Nepali business to use a global payment gateway that is recognized and trusted by the world. As these solutions are mass produced, they are more likely to be cheaper to a Nepali business than one setup in Nepal itself. Moreover, buying a global product, one can expect better security. A merchant is responsible for any credit card fraud through his web system. So increased security is very important.

The problems with having an international payment gateway are that they require you to have an Internet merchant account. This is a special account any merchant needs so that the money from the transactions can be put into the account of the seller. These accounts are quite hard to get for a business setup in Nepal, as none of the banks in Nepal provide this facility. So, dealing with an international institution places the Nepali business in an unfavorable position. As accounts need to be maintained in leading currencies, that also creates problems. But for a big business house this would not be a problem. One way out of this circle is to get help from some intermediaries that have come up in Nepal offering the small businesses a way out. Yomari is one of them, they are the ones that actually handle the merchant account so that the businesses don’t need such an account on their own. The financial dealings can be done between the intermediary and the merchant.

One important feature to keep in mind is that customers abandon shopping carts before checkout also in case of online shopping. The reasons behind it may be: the process may be too lengthy or the customer lacks confidence in the e-tailer. Customers expect acceptable rate of response while performing transaction online. So, to have successful e-commerce sites, it is required to have simplified checkout, less response time and clear information about pricing and shipping information.

Marketing the site effectively is another important factor for successful e-commerce. Any medium can be used to market one's site but it should be a continuous process. The most successful online businesses are those that market themselves effectively.

Successful e-commerce web sites also provide information about customer service and contact information that is clear and accessible. Customers don’t like to drill down long to find their information. Most of them don’t even bother to search. Put links as “Contact Us” or “Customer Service” link on your e-commerce web site’s navigation menu and make sure it’s on every page. Simple questions can be kept as FAQs which provide answers to common questions like: how to order, shipping charges and time and return policies.

People need to be assured over the quality of the product that they see only on computer screen to buy. People would be more confident to buy products from companies that have good reputation in it. Timely delivery is another important factor. This is another reason which affects individual decision to buy online.  

After all the transactions with the customers are complete, a follow-up thank-you email or a thank-you card would let the e-commerce customer know that his/her participation is appreciated. Screens that automatically return to the home page or screens that just repeat the order form after the transaction do nothing to give online shopper that warm, fuzzy feeling.

(Thapa is doing Masters Degree in United States majoring in Communication and Multimedia)

Himalayan Frogs

by Rajib Satyal

I heard from a friend that frogs from Nepal are especially popular in the western world due to their one inherent unique nature. They are exported to the western countries putting them in containers.  One amazing fact that I discovered was that while frogs from other countries are transported in covered containers (so they do not jump off) the Nepali frogs are sent in uncovered containers. I wondered whether there would be any frog left when the container reaches the destination. My friend laughed and said, “Well, amazingly the number of Nepali frogs always tallied perfectly with the manifest when the container reached the destination.” I was even more amazed and asked “Why? Are the Nepali frogs so gentle and disciplined?”  Then my friend said, “No silly! They are not gentle at all. And that’s exactly why they cannot jump off the container. When one frog tries to jump off, another immediately pulls the fellow frog's legs. As they pull each other’s legs, none of the frogs can actually escape the container’s confines. They are also brave, fierce and wild like wild boars, although small in size.  These are the inherent characteristics that make the Himalayan breed especially delicious for foreign consumers. Not only this, these frogs do not need to be slaughtered by others. All that have to be done to kill them is to make them confront each other. They will fight to death themselves.”

That account made me very much interested in the frog’s world and I started to closely observe their behavior. My friend was right. It is not only in the container that they were pulling each other’s legs. They are doing that at their swampy home, office and within their own families and society. That was the reason why they live in such a narrow confinement of their thoughts and could never come out of poverty and hunger. If a frog wants to go ahead to look for food and shelter, another frog simply pulls his friend’s legs. Once I saw a frog, which looked so happy, and asked why he was so happy. He said he was successful in pulling the leg of another fellow frog, which was trying hard to get food and shelter for his family.

Himalayan frogs thrive on envy and are interested to pull their own fellow frogs’ legs than to work to get the food and shelter for their family.  In the frog’s world of politics, none of the frogs’ parties allow any other party to form a government. The only mission that the opposition will have is to overthrow the government of the other party, for whatever reason. That is not all. They do not let even their own partymen to stay long in power. The word ‘unity’ has a different meaning in their dictionary. They get united immediately to pull a fellow legs. Not surprisingly, they pull legs of the prime minister nominated by their own party. Whoever becomes the prime minister, party president or attains similar positions of power, he is the number one enemy of everyone else in the party.

Few of supposedly  “brilliant frogs”, frustrated from anarchy, nepotism, corruption, and the resultant poverty in their swamp thought of rebelling against capitalism, like children angry of their parents not letting them to have junk food. So they ran into the jungle to fight an underground war with a vow to bring about pro-poor changes. But after all they were frogs with the same leg pulling attitude inherent in them. So they could not think of any strategies other than to pull legs and attack their own fellow frogs, destroy the very infrastructure that had pulled their community from more to less poverty. They show that their sense of equality is to kill prosperity and equalize poverty. In other words, instead of making the poor rich, they are thinking of making everybody poor through economic sabotage so that there emerges only one class, which is a “poor class” over whom they can rule. Seeing this as an opportunity, also the head frog started to get an idea; “why not use this situation to my own benefit?”

In the frogs’ media world, they run their business in a mafia style. One does not allow the others to do better. It is another story that what they are doing is nothing more than imitating each other. They see their own bad reflection in the other media, and that sight makes them ever angrier, and even violent.

The frogs in the office cannot tolerate seeing the fellow frogs being promoted or getting additional facilities even though they have been friends for long. They have very short memories. Sometimes they are so overwhelmed by their own king size ego that they do not even feel the pain when they pull their own legs.