Are Australian Retailers too late for Online?

Recent reports have indicated that online shopping and e-commerce are growth areas for companies and that Australian retailers need to start investing in their online strategies before they miss the boat.

Some experts would even say they are too late to enter the market with most consumer areas being dominated by smaller, even single operator online stores. Simple Net's founder and director Kevin Paterson disagrees;

"You can buy just about anything on the web, music, fruit, cosmetics, lingerie, flowers, a boat, you name it you can buy it and you can usually get a great deal. Also the choices are endless, a quick browse of the web and I was presented with 15 online stores that sell and deliver flowers around Melbourne."

"However I still believe that Australian retailers have an enormous opportunity to not only enter the market but to dominate the market. Australian retailers have a great opportunity to review the online shopping space and perfect it, but most of all they have a Brand and this is a very powerful commodity"

Recently The Body Shop Australia launched their new online store without any additional marketing; it has been performing very well. The Body Shop IT Manager Fernante De Rango says "Our online presence is provided to give our loyal customers the opportunity to purchase from the comfort of their own homes and also give our customers in remote locations the opportunity to purchase our goods and have it delivered to their doorstep. Our website is also a great tool to attract new customers and increase brand exposure, sales have been very strong since launching the new website."

The Body Shop Australia's online store is a great example of how powerful a brand can be, the website is ranked 4th in the Health & Beauty category according to webranking.com.au and there has been no online marketing to date (apart for the website being Search Engine Optimised), no Google Adword campaign, no listing on shopping portals etc. which is unusual as this is generally the most important post development task we do with our clients. Mr Paterson added.

"Analysis of visitors to the website and keywords used show that our brand name or specific product names are entered into Google and this is how we are generating most of our traffic and sales"

"We are in discussions with Simple Net and are reviewing our online marketing options; we see this as the next stage and believe this will take us to a whole new level of online sales" Mr De Rango said.

All Australian retailers have this opportunity, using the power of their brands to dominate the online shopping space. The next couple of years are crucial for retailers especially as big name Brands from the US & UK already have their eye on the Australian online market.

Links: http://www.simplenet.com.au/ & http://www.thebodyshop.com.au/