Aug
2007
4 things to look before buying online
August 14th, 2007 at 11:10 am by ashok in Internet MarketingIn internet marketing the ultimate thing is to generate sale. If you have traffic and you are not generating sales then you are wasting your traffic, unless you are earning through adsense or advertisements. Generally e-commerce sites which sell some product or services do not display ads. In a shop in our town we buy from a shop because we know their physical location, we saw them everyday we met them personally, but in internet this is not the case, here we do not know the owner, never met them personally.
Although I am online since last 8 years, I started purchasing things frequently online since last 2-3 years only. Here are I am writing 4 things which I saw before buying anything from a site.
1) Outlook of the site: Site should not give the impression that it is running by a 16 year old kid, and must have a professional look.
2) Branding: whether I have heard of seen the site earlier or not, generally if the site is old or I am aware of the site since last few months or years, then chances are I will buy from it. Reaching first time a site and buying from it, the chances are remote.
3) Review of Site: Another thing which I do before buying is find its review. TYpe these 3-4 phrases in google and you may find some really intersting information about the site. Sitenmae review, sitename fraud, sitename scam, sitename sucks .
4) Response time: I do check the sites response time before buying. Generally I write a letter with few simple queries to check whether some live person is there to answer the queries. This just give the idea is how active the site is. However this is not guarantee of post sales support, as pre sales support is alway more active than post sale.
Feel free to give your opinion, what steps you take before buying online from a site.
Technorati Tags: Online sales, ecommerce, marketing
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Comments
heh.. I won’t take so many pains in buying anything online. If I can get it offline then I’ll go and purchase it offline. when it comes to buying something online, then I’ll only trust credible sources and not any other site.
@ TipsoSaurus, it is always recommended to buy from credible sources, but how to judge the source is credible or not.
@ Ashok : It depends on what exactly you are trying to buy. If its electronics or some gadget then I’ll only go for Ebay. We all know that ebay is way secure and can be trusted.
Yes there are some sites, where we feel confidant to buy because of their branding. eBay is big brand and this give a sense of confidence while buying from there.
Nice article here.
@Mayank,
Its not like if you buy anything from eBay its safe, in order to buy fom eBay also you need to do proper study.
Even if the item is available off line, I still believe that it would be cheaper online.
Agreed with Nirmal, in eBay website is just providing platform to buyer and seller. Website is not actual seller, and there are lots of horror stories you can find about ebay.
well guys the best way is to see the SSL or turbo SSL certificate, or a 128 bit encryption Certificate, Its just that you shuld know how to read it, and making sure its the original copy….
@Vaibhav Yes SSL is another good way to determine the authenticity of site.
The only thing I have ever bought online is web-hosting :p But still, this is a useful article.
Thanks for sharing the tips.
A nice explanation and we must fiollow these guidelines to be a successful online Buyer without ever being cheated.
Can i disagree with the first point? Well not totally disagree but add an exception probably. There are young bloggers like carlocab.com who have branded themselves as very young and is getting the mileage out of it. So it’s probably not about being old but how you brand and market yourself.
Cheers!
Mani
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