RETAIL & CONSUMER

Offering on-line access to consumers involves several critical requirements, including:

• Easy to understand, intuitive operation. Consumers are often less likely to be familiar with either your products or the operation of your website than the typical business customer.
• Clear explanations written in a friendly, interesting tone without use of specialized jargon.
• Real pop. Consumers generally demand a more lively marketing presentation than businesses.
• Compelling reasons to buy from you, rather than a competitor.

We offer a choice of three website editions tailored to the specific needs of the retail community.

Retail Showcase website

In some situations, you may not want to display specific individual product offerings. For example, you may be in a business where each product is unique (antiques) or your available offerings change frequently (for example, produce or flowers).

In these cases, maintaining information on specific products might not make sense, and you might only want to display general information about groups of products (such as furniture or fresh fruit) rather than individual items.

The Product Catalog website

There are two features that separate a traditional e-commerce site from a static site: (1) A database containing information on available products and (2) the ability to complete a purchase on-line.

A retailer may not want to offer on-line purchasing either because it is impractical for the products they sell, or because they prefer to have the customer interact in-person with a member of their sales staff. The Product catalog feature allows you to enjoy the benefits of a product database without the added complexity of on-line ordering.

Even if you choose not to implement on-line ordering, there are still considerable benefits to be derived by including detailed product information on your website:

• You can generate store traffic by allowing consumers to find you when they are searching for a specific product. Today's consumer uses the web extensively to research potential purchases.
• Consumers who have researched your products on-line before coming in to your store will be further along in the buying process than those who have not. They will take less of your salespeople's time, and will be more likely to make a purchase on the spot.

Our 'Product catalog' feature allows you to add a product database, without introducing the additional cost and complexity of on-line purchasing. The product database offers several important benefits:

• Product information can be added, deleted or modified simply by updating records in the database. If you wish, you can do site maintenance yourself without relying on a web developer, reducing maintenance costs and improving turnaround.
• The time and cost for developing the site may be reduced, because pages that would normally be individually coded by hand are dynamically created from the database.
• It's easier to keep a consistent look and feel throughout your site.

E-Commerce website

Like the Product Catalog website, our e-commerce website includes a product database which allows you to conveniently store and maintain information on a large number of products. In addition, it supports on-line purchasing, allowing your customers to place their choice of products in a shopping cart, and securely enter credit card and other personal information in order to complete the purchase.

Your e-commerce website can allow returning customers to log in, so that they can make subsequent purchases without re-entering their account information, and update their on-line account themselves.

Add the power of outbound marketing

Both customer and product information are maintained in a database which can be shared with SalesPro, our on-line marketing and sales application. Because they share common data, information and purchases entered through your website are instantly available for use in your sales and marketing efforts, and marketing information can be used to control the customer experience. SalesPro includes powerful marketing tools supporting e-mail, postal mail, fax and web based marketing efforts.