Online selling – a great success story

The online fashion retailer ASOS recently posted a 35% increase in sales for the financial year ending March 2010. This at a time when the UK and most of the rest of the world has struggled through the recession and when the UK economy is still somewhat reluctant to show any real appetite for growth.

What’s more, ASOS’s success comes at a time when many of its competitors including household brands such as Next, French Connection and M&S are still facing difficult trading conditions.

So what’s the secret of success for ASOS?

Well, it has a great product offering at exceptional prices. Critically, it has a ‘store on every town / city’. That is to say, it is a pure online retailer with a global presence. In fact, ASOS has achieved a market cap of over £450m since its launch in 2000.

A lot of this success has been apportioned to the company’s pure online status. As well as a lower barrier to entry, the internet allows companies to be a lot cleverer and effective with their marketing.

Selling online

Now, while we don’t suggest that getting your business online will turn you into an instant multi-million pound business, what we are saying is that achieving online success is not the preserve of corporates with large budgets.

In fact, with easy access to web hosting services in the UK, selling your products / services online is far easier and quicker than you might think.

Keep it simple – use ecommerce templates

Rather than investing significant amounts in bespoke web development, you can start selling online using a simple ecommerce template costing around £100 per year, available from most UK web hosting companies. What’s more, most web hosts will throw in a free domain name too.

Most ecommerce templates also come with free web hosting – at least that’s the case with most UK web hosting companies. Importantly, as the name suggests, ecommerce templates are designed for people with little or no knowledge of actually building websites allowing you to start selling online while keeping costs of creating an ecommerce website to a minimum.

So start selling online the easy way with ecommerce templates. And remember to ask your web host for free web hosting and free domain name. Good luck!

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