facts and stats

Online buyers are now growing ever more confident, more and more people are choosing to buy online, consumers are starting to grow aware that it’s safe to buy online even safer and more secure than buying over the phone or within a shop.

Recent forecasts have found that 20 million UK shoppers will spend a total of £17bn online this year. Looking further ahead, the IMRG estimates that by 2009 a quarter of all UK shopping will be carried out online or via mobile devices, boosting annual online sales to £80 billion. A further 20% of purchases will be influenced by online research.

Shoppers in the UK are almost doubling their online spending year-on-year. Online UK sales for the final quarter of 2003 were 91 percent higher than sales in the same period in 2002. During the period, Visa cardholders in the UK spent over £1.8bn via the internet.

Online shops need to react quickly to individual sales. Research found that unless online shoppers receive a response within one business day, two-thirds look elsewhere.

A recen survey shows that Britons are the second most Web-savvy people in the world, with only the Danes more clued up,

Online shop and E-commerce guide

The purpose of this section is to provide you with information.

Benefits of an online shop to a business
What makes a successful online shop?
What we offer

Benefits of an online shop to a business

With the ever increasing number of consumers turning to online shopping from the comfort of their own homes/offices: there are some very powerful benefits to a business running an online shop:

Reach a large audience – an online shop has the potential to reach a much larger audience than any high street shop if a successful website promotion strategy is adopted. The Internet makes the world smaller – instead of targeting people in your area through conventional advertising means - the Internet allows you to target people who are interested in your products/services worldwide or geographically.

Reach a targeted audience – an online shop will reach consumers who wish to purchase your products if the website is promoted correctly.

Shop is open 24/7 – an online shop has a huge advantage of being open to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 356 days a year.

Very low overheads – an online shop on the scale of things has very low overheads. The only money you have to pay is the initial website payment (buy the shop), money to place new products on the website (update the display), money for maintenance (keep the shop looking tidy), and money for your hosting and domain name (your rent). All of these prices are hundreds of times cheaper than a real shop.

Business expansion – If your business is looking of ways to expand, what better way to expand than to have an online shop.

Advertises business – an online shop if promoted correctly will in turn promote your physical business.

Gets you ahead of your competitors – an online shop if designed well and marketed correctly will give you a very good edge over your competitors. If there is a business which is ahead of you from high street sales, why don't you take the initiative and get ahead of them from online sales.

Home shopping – An online shop allows people to shop from the comfort of their own homes. In the present climate, time is becoming very precious, so for a large number of people the trend is setting to shop online. Shopping online is becoming more and more popular because of ease of use, speedy, virtually stress free shopping, and because of the greater range of products to choose from. More people are shopping online because they no longer have to walk around the shops all day just to find four or five shops they want to browse. Now they can find 20 shops all at once and browse the shops to find the product that best suits them. The consumer can now compare a range of shop items in a matter of minutes instead of hours or even days to decide which product they prefer. Online shopping also allows people to shop for specialist items that may be rare or unique

What makes a successful online shop?

Webbed Designs recognise there are a number of factors involved in creating a successful online shop.

Good Presentation – an online shop needs to be presented in a way that is attractive to the user but at the same time makes it easy for the customer to find the information they are searching for.

Easy browsing – an online shop must make it very easy for the customer to find what they are looking for.

Security and Privacy – an online shop must have stringent security and privacy measures in place to gain the customers trust.

Well marketed – once the above three factors have been created you have yourself a perfect online shop apart from you have no customers. The next step is to market and promote your website in order to attract as many customers as possible.

We can provide the core structure of your online presence by following our above guidelines - it is then down to your business to do what you are best at - providing your service and making money.

What we Offer:

We create premium designed, secure online shops that accept worldwide card payments, this is done by using secure 128 bit SSL encryption to hide customers personal and card details when a transaction is taking place, this is the level of security that most shops small and large would use to take orders.

We can help you set up an online shop that supports shopping carts and that is able to accept worldwide payments, along with currency conversions in most worldwide languages. Larger shops we would advise to use a database that will give you easy control over your online products, prices and even online stock control.