Do You Buy Online?

The Internet has come along way, especially in Singapore.  From an online population of 700,000 in 1994 to our Government stressing their adoption of web 2.0, it seems that the Internet landscape in Singapore has reached a stage of maturity.  The only area that seems to be straggling behind is online shopping.

Can you think of a local site with shopping cart facilities from which you have purchased something from, within the last 6 months?  I can only recall buying air & movie tickets, and I wouldn’t categorize these as shopping items.  I’m sure you’ve come across a site that deals in hardware or sticky tapes or other industrial stuff.  Ever wondered who places orders?

One thing isn’t going to change.  And that is Singapore is a small island.  Most of the time its faster to buy an item from a store than to have to wait for it to be shipped to you.  You also get to inspect it, look it around all angles and decide that it’s heavy enough to be worthy of your consideration.

The point is, if you deal with products and want to set up an ecommerce platform to automate sales through the Internet, it might not be all smooth sailing.  Very often, new sites do not have the traffic or enough repeat visitors to generate sufficient sales.  Also, like what was just mentioned, we generally do not have the habit of buying online.  We’ll do all the research online and spend hours looking at your site (and your competitors) and compare reviews.  When we’ve finally decided, we’ll go to your site, look past for the “contact us” link, find your number and ask if it is in stock and what time your store closes. Huh? What shopping cart.

Don’t feel dismayed if you are not receiving orders through your online shopping site, however start thinking of how to reach out to more potential buyers and how you can convince them to make that phone call.  In other words, direct your efforts at marketing instead of pushing for sales online.  It’ll pay off big time in Singapore

(If you know of a successful e-store based in Singapore, do share it with us in a comment, it will make a good case study)