The internet is well on its way to becoming an important sales and marketing channel for a wide range of businesses, both B2C and B2B.
Find out how to take advantage of it.Attention Sales, Marketing and CRM Professionals: If you are involved in sales, marketing or customer service, the Online Selling & eCRM report contains information that can help you use the internet sales and communications channel more effectively.
Gathering the latest findings from hundreds of leading industry analysts and market researchers, the report is a compilation of the latest survey and forecast data examining the current trends facing companies operating commercial websites.
More People Online = More Shoppers Online eMarketer estimates that the number of internet users will reach 565 million people worldwide by the end of 2002, increasing by 13.6% over the 498 million people who regularly used the internet in 2001.
The United States will account for 27.0% of the worldwide total by the end of this year, reaching 152.8 million people, or 53.2% of all Americans.
The impact of this increased traffic is going directly to the bottom line.
In a recent DMA survey, nearly 70% of the companies reported that they expect to have profitable online operations by the end of 2002, up from just 14% of respondents in 2001.
"The sheer volume of the traffic is changing attitudes," says Steve Butler, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the report.
"Despite the slowdown in IT spending, businesses are building on their websites’ early success by continuing to invest in their online operations.
After seeing how the internet adds efficiencies to the overall sales cycle – from marketing to post-sales – they are strengthening online customer service capabilities." eCustomers Come First As internet users gain greater online experience, they also become more demanding in their expectations of website capabilities.
In several of the surveys followed by eMarketer, website visitors consistently indicated their preference for websites that are easy to navigate, with a minimum of distracting or self-serving contentAccording to a study conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, trust was a major concern among website users, which in turn explains the relative success of those established offline brands that have been able to successfully migrate their business models online.
Key Findings Online Selling and eCRM reveals: - How B2C and B2B companies are using their websites for greatest value.
- How much companies are budgeting and how they are measuring ROI for their commercial websites.
- Aggregated survey data of internet users’ preferences for various website features.
- How businesses are evolving their websites into next-generation versions.
- Examples of benchmark online retailers, by sales and customer service standards.
- Comparative estimates of the size of the market for eCRM applications.
- And much, much more...Improve Your Online Selling and CRM Programs Today "The internet is becoming a buying medium," says Mr.
Butler.
"It is well on its way to being an important sales and marketing channel for a wide range of businesses, both B2C and B2B." Find out how to use the medium to its full potential with eMarketer’s Online Selling & eCRM.