I was reading about Sun Tze Art of War and learn about the importance of military intelligence in the traditional battlefield. In today’s competitive business landscape, market intelligence is indispensable. We need to develop a keen understanding of our customers taste and preferences to develop products more suited for the market.

In the virtual world, market intelligence is measured through web statistics tracking & analysis.

199Web provides integration to a comprehensive tracking and analysis tool which will provide you with the necessary market intelligence to drive your business to the next level.
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It is generally not my style to do a cut and paste of an entire article that does not belong to me. It is downright plagiarism. However, once in a while, you come across something really good that you want to share. To make it worse, the article is login protected… so here comes some tips about starting an online business.

For those established retailers out there… maybe it is about time to look into ecommerce strategies to bring your sales to the next level.

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Once every several months, there comes an article that really puts the internet landscape into perspective. Recently, wired came up with just that article on Long Tail Economics. Read about it to understand the importance of variety in Long Tail Economics.

The Long Tail

What better way to learn how to be successful then to read and learn from other people’s experience? Well lately, one of my friends emailed me an interesting article about how an online shoe seller, zappos.com, brought in the millions.

Here lies their success story…..

Lacing up a few million

I was reading “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. For all those intent on starting an internet business, I strongly recommend it as a worthwhile read. In a particular portion of the book, the author expounded on the importance of recommendations:

We are leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age….. Recommendations serve as shortcuts through the thicket of information, just as my wine shop owner shorcuts me to obscure French wines to enjoy with pasta.

Chris Anderson

I reflected on my own shopping experience and was overwhelmed by the truth of the system. Indeed, my book purchase is strongly modelled after Amazon’s review ratings. Generally, I will not consider any books by Amazon.

However, one of the biggest problems about is in getting the relevant reviews. On our side, I suggest the using incentives to quickly build up your reviews. It is really logical. Going back to your website to do a review after they have bought the product takes time. It is only right that we as store owners actually “pay back” with a small token of appreciation.

For it to be convenient, the incentive should be able to fit nicely into an envelope. Possible incentives are:

• book vouchers
• cinema tickets
• dining vouchers
• key chains (with logo)
• .. you get the idea…

Increasingly, more of our clients are looking towards collecting payment online. To facilitate such payments, we need to integrate your website to a payment gateway.
It all depends on 2 important questions:

• What is your targetted market?
• What is your budget?

This article seeks to explore the difference between 3 of the most common payment gateways used in Singapore, namely eNets, PayPal, WorldPay.

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