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The advantages of doing business on the internet

A Winters Instruments product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jan 19, 2001

The Internet provides many advantages over traditional selling, purchasing and marketing procedures, and Winters' "B2B" instrumentation web site uses all of these advantages

E-commerce is no longer just a way to order a book or a new music Cd.

It is not a fad that will fade away.

E-commerce has evolved from overnight success stories like ebooks.com to the largest companies in the world, such as Ford Motor Company, claiming their corner of the Net.

The Internet is not only a great place to make it rich with a good idea or service, but is also a great tool to aid in business transactions.

For example, the automobile industry is advocating the use of the Web as a tool to aid in business transactions with the emergence of online quotes and financing, for example www.carpoint.ca.

Winters' new Business 2 Business Web (www.winters.ca) site is a tool designed to aid in business transactions.

The Internet provides many advantages over traditional selling, purchasing and marketing procedures, and Winters' "B2B" Web site uses all of these advantages.

A major advantage is that information about products and the selling of products is interwoven like never before.

The Internet enables a company to showcase its products, provide up-to-date information, specifications and applications, as well as sell products all in one place.

The information provided on the Internet, as well as product offerings, can be changed or be updated instantly.

The Web is good for business on both ends of an exchange because of the convenience and speed.

Products can be sold or ordered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year without the need for support staff.

The Internet is faster than traditional selling methods, which take longer to complete than Web-based transactions.

Online ordering helps to eliminate errors and make order processing more efficient.

A customer can only order products with supplied codes, which eliminates the need to copy the code or double check to ensure accuracy.

E-commerce creates the atmosphere of a global selling place.

There is no limit to the amount of products offered by a company.

There are also, advantages that are unique to e-commerce customers.

A good e-commerce site empowers customers by allowing a customer to gain access to information by him/herself.

It is important to empower customers by providing the ability to compare products, and check inventory and shipping times independently.

The Web eliminates many of the extra costs that are associated with ordering.

Traveling to a location costs time and money.

Ordering by phone can cost long distance fees and errors can occur with product codes.

Faxing orders can also be costly when factoring paper, ink, and phone fees.

A major benefit of Web ordering is that it allows for efficient tracking of orders.

Once logged on, a customer is able to lookup their order history to quickly see what they have ordered in the past.

It is simple to quickly re-order the same products from a previous date with one click of the mouse.

In the near future, B2B will be experiencing large-scale growth.

"Business to business e-commerce should quadruple by 2004," according to a new report from the Boston Consulting Group.

The BCG Study predicted that B2B e-commerce, which totaled $1.2 trillion this year, would reach $4.8 trillion by 2004.

These figures include dollars generated from proprietary Electronic Data Interchange networks as well as Internet-related revenue.

(Margaret Kane, ZDII, Inter@ctive Investor 09/06/200) Every day the Internet becomes more and more integrated with business.

After all, a decade ago, e-mail was rare.

Today, it is an essential tool that a business cannot operate effectively without.

There is no doubt that someday soon B2B transactions will be as important, and as common, as email is today.

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