UK Businesses: 1 in 5 pounds from online sales!

Almost one in five pounds pulled in by UK business came through an online sale, the Office of National Statistics has found. Despite the fact 1 in 5 firms still don't have a website!

Nineteen per cent of UK sales revenues came through ecommerce, states the ONS's report on E-commerce and ICT activity in 2011. That means that e-sales pulled in £483 billion to the British economy in 2011. Ecommerce as a percentage of total UK sales revenue has crept up from 18 per cent in 2010.

Website sales to consumers were 5 per cent of total turnover in 2011, with the rest attributable to sales to business. The sector making most use of e-sales was Wholesale, which netted 31 per cent of online sales pounds from consumers, and 40 per cent of the UK's online sales revenue from business.
The manufacturing sector was making strong use of e-commerce too - taking 40 per cent of e-sales to business.

When it came to online consumer pounds, Britain's information and communication industry performed well, pulling in 16 per cent of the total pie. Retail took 14 per cent, Transport and storage took 10 per cent.

The construction, food and accommodation sectors saw the lowest percentage of their sales come through the internet.

The UK keeps its position as one of the most ecommerce-centric countries in Europe. In 2010 data the UK is joint fifth with Norway for penetration of ecommerce. Behind Finland, Sweden, Hungary and the Czech Republic at the top of the list, where 25 per cent of sales are conducted through the internet.

The ONS also found that 93 per cent of businesses had broadband internet and 81 per cent had a website.

 For more information on the benifits of a website to your business call and speak to our experts now on: 0141 530 9116 or email us at info@clicknetworks.co.uk  You can also visit our webiste to read more about our IT services and what we can do for your business, visit: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk/ 

For the full story please continue reading here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/

The Death Of Daily Deal Sites!

The end of coupon bazaar's deal-fetishing gravy train!

Open ... and Shut The biggest problem with Groupon isn't its accounting. It's also not Groupon's shrinking margins on new products, concerning as they are. No, Groupon's biggest problem is that it fetishes bargains in lieu of building real customer value.

Groupon's business model is simply not sustainable, which is why its stock is now on sale.

Not that Groupon is alone in this. Ron Johnson, chief executive of American retailer JC Penney, was the mastermind behind Apple's retail strategy, and thought he could bring a similar magic to the venerable department store. He was wrong.

The big problem with JC Penney, and one that Johnson has thus far been powerless to stop, is that over the years it had fostered consumer dependence on deals. The company offered 20 to 30 different prices for the same product in the course of a year, but always a deal. Always on sale. In fact, Johnson told investors that most of JC Penney's merchandise was being sold at discounts of 50 per cent or more.

Johnson removed the myriad of prices, pushing for a three-price strategy: everyday low prices (à la Wal-Mart), month-long values (sales on popular seasonal items that run for a month or longer), and clearance items on hefty discounts. So far, it has failed, as customers have balked at paying the "everyday low prices", not unsurprisingly preferring the former: all discounts, all the time. Same-store sales dropped 26 per cent last quarter as a result.

Sales, in the words of Johnson, are "just like heroin". They bring customers in but require constant feeding of the addiction with more and more sales. In the process, the retailers who depend upon them to attract customers end up killing their profit margins.

Or, in the case of Groupon, they end up killing both Groupon and their merchant customers. Groupon is the worst of all discount worlds: its daily deal coupons are bad for Groupon because they're terrible for the merchants who sign up for them. It's expensive for Groupon to market and sell to merchants to source new products to discount, but then the deals are also punitive to the merchants, who quickly discover that new customers enticed by the discount coupon tend not to become repeat customers. And who would want them? Such customers depend upon a constant stream of discounts, hardly the loyal customer base any vendor wants.

Red the full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/open_and_shut/  For more information on IT Support in Glasgow or accross scotland please visit our website today: http://www.clicknetworks.co.uk for more expert opinon on all things IT Support News.