When you are deciding whether you want to take your “expensive” products from your brick-and-mortar to online, think twice. E-commerce products that perform well are products that do not require a second guess. Especially in today’s economy, consumers are holding on to their extra cash tightly and often times won’t make large or expensive purchases online.

What else am I supposed to do then? Simple, you can still have a website and display your products, but offer for customers to come into your store to purchase. This way, customers can do online research and make up their mind and have a better idea of what they want before they get into your store. If you still want to sell $100,000 necklaces online, at least offer customers as much information as possible:

• Photographs
• 360° views
• Online chat feature to discuss the products with a sales associate
• Money back guarantees

Fast Pitch! is a business networking website that has been in existence since 2006. The corporate offices are located in Sarasota, Florida. Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Fast Pitch! is geared toward business owners and professionals, encouraging the networking and marketing of businesses. Business owners and professionals setup profiles in order to expand their network of contacts. You can list everything about your company including what you do, what you sell, photos, videos, location, education and professional affiliations. It’s a great place to highlight your company and sell yourself! It should be noted, however, that some of the services offered are fee-based.

Features include:

• Newsfeed
• Classifieds
• Blog
• Video Uploads
• Live Chat
• Podcasts
• Ability to link to Facebook, Blogger and Twitter

When choosing an affiliate program to take part in there are 5 things you need to look for:

• Is this a company that you truly believe in? You’re essentially suggesting your customers purchase this item mostly based on the fact that it’s “you” who’s suggesting. Make sure that the company is up to par with your quality and ethics, you don’t want to push low quality products sold by a shady company.
• Is the product relevant to your customer demographic? Don’t offer products on your website that have nothing to do with your customers or your main products or services. If you are an interior decorator, don’t post links for companies that sell cookie baskets. You can however post links for companies that sell unique table lamps, maid service and even lawn service.
• How good is the company’s landing page? After a website visitor clicks on a link from your website and is directed over to the affiliate website, they are taken to a landing page. When they hit this landing page it is then up to the affiliate company to make the sale. They need to have a high converting landing page that gives the visitor all the information they need to make that sale. If the page is too busy, doesn’t have the right information, doesn’t have enough information or doesn’t have a strong call to action, the visitor may not make a purchase, which is not only bad for the affiliate but bad for you as well.
• What is the payout percentage? I would suggest a proper payout percentage to be 25% and up, anything lower than 25% may not be worth it.
• How long is the customer cookie kept? When you setup an affiliate account with a company they provide you with an HTML or javascript code that should be placed on your website creating a link that your site visitors will click to get referred to the affiliate site. Inside of that code is a special number that lets the system know when that link is clicked, that it was your website who sent the visitor. Often times a visitor can click a link but not make the purchase until a few days later, you want to make sure that if this happens, the cookie (which is attached to that special code I just discussed) is still active. If it is not, you may not get credit for sending that visitor if they convert — so you don’t get paid!

“By 2011, we believe the Internet will play a role in more than 45 percent of US retail sales, as either a research tool or a sales channel. What’s more, consumers who shop across a number of channels — physical stores, the Internet, and catalogs — spend about four times more annually than those who shop in just one. Companies that get multichannel retailing right can enjoy larger profit margins and yearly revenue growth more than 100 basis points higher than companies that don’t.”

With this said, McKinsey has outlined 5 crucial steps that contribute to the success of using multiple channel retailing; these include:

• Understand how consumer, technology, and competitive trends are evolving.
• Develop a clear sense of the growth pockets being targeted.
• Sell the right products through the right channels by tailoring each category’s product assortment to the economics of different channels and making it easy for customers to buy what they want, when they want, where they want.
• Understand the value of growth options and rank them by their potential returns and relative difficulty.
• Define success, measure performance, and reward it.

Interested in learning more about this article? Visit the McKinsey Website

Want to know more about multi-channel retail?

View more documents from Rizwan Tayabali.

There are a number of ways you can go about this:

• Free – free is always good but sometimes can backfire; some customers may think that because it is free it is old, last season, or of lesser quality; give away items that are of a higher quality or something that visitors would not normally think of as an average “freebie”; this gives your customers the opportunity to try something they may have not been able to (or wanted to) afford in the past and could win you a new customer; at the very least you can get some word of mouth advertising, which we all know is the best kind!
• Buy One, Get One – this is a huge promotional tactic right now in retail, offering to give a customer something for free if they purchase something of equal or lesser value; I would suggest a twist on this tactic however, try a buy one, and your friend gets one free event, give customers the ability to send friends, family and colleagues a coupon code that will offer them a free item; this is a fabulous way to get new customers and increase sales; this tactic can also be used as a “buy one, get one 25% off” or “buy 5 get your 6th free”
• Free External Items – partner with another company to offer free or discounted items from that company and vice vesa; this is great for both companies because you both are broadening your customer base and getting great publicity; also, don’t forget to let the press know about this partnership!