International Sales

Web sites can be accessed from any place around the globe! Consequently, if you offer sales on the Internet, you'll need to determine how you will (or won't!) handle international sales. Shipping costs, customs forms, and monetary exchange rates are just a few issues to consider.

Third Party Service Providers

You might consider employing a third party that specializes in collecting, processing and shipping Internet orders for your product. This will allow you to focus on other key business issues while still taking advantage of additional sales generated by the Internet. Evaluate the costs and benefits of such a service.

Building Internet Sales Takes Time

Remember that it may take time to build Internet sales. To organize sales on the Internet requires good planning, a well-designed web site, careful evaluation of your target market, and constant promotion of your web site. Some services and products may be more suitable for web sales than others. Customers will often visit your site several times before they make a purchase, so make your site interesting to visit and the one where it's easy to place orders!

Vocabulary:

stay abreast	не отставать, идти в ногу
to keep up with news	быть в курсе новостей
time-consuming	отнимающий много времени
off-line	автономно, без подключения
fill-in forms	бланки для заполнения
CGI (computer graphics interface)	интерфейс компьютерной графики
order form	бланк заказа
online	(работающий) в режиме онлайн
to place an order	подавать заказ
to complete a transaction	осуществить сделку
check box	окошко для отметки; флажок (для указания включения/выключения требуемых опций, напр. «галочкой»)
to check out	заканчивать работу
secure financial transaction	безопасная финансовая операция
encrypted	зашифрованный
scrambled	скремблированный, засекреченный
validity	действительность
shipping costs	затраты на транспортировку
customs forms	таможенные декларации
exchange rates	курсы обмена валют
online order	заказ по Интернету

Comprehension questions:

1. What are the methods of selling on the Internet? Describe them.

2. What do secure electronic transactions allow to the user?

3. What is necessary to organize sales on the Internet?

Task 13: Complete the following using the verbs and verb phrases in the box.

ensures	A good e-business Website: 1. .........with the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and HotBot. 2. ..........to other sites of interest. 3. ...........on a 24-hour basis. 4. ............orders and payments online. 5. ............digital security for payments. 6. .............the number of hits the Web site receives. 7. .............registered visitors who return to the site. 8. .............stock control electronically.
is linked
monitors
is able to receive
recognises and welcomes
is registered
manages
is managed

Task 14:

Complete these guidelines on designing a website with the correct form of the words in brackets

A website designer Jakob Nielsen says that effective websites must be designed according to the three Fs.

Functional

First of all, a website must be as ______________ (easy) to use as anyone else’s. Badly-designed sites don’t function as ____________ (good) as their competitors’ and so they lose a lot more business.

Fast

The second F is to be _____________ (fast) than the rest. Customers won’t want to use the website if downloading the site is ______________ (slow) than with other sites.

Familiar

The final F is familiarity. A site will be _____________ (popular) if it is similar to other websites and users know how it works and what it does.

Task 15:

A. Read the magazine article and choose the best title.

a) Advertising on the net

b) Getting rich on the net

c) Surfing the net

B. Read the article again and tick (٧) the information that you can find in the text.

a) Amazon has customers all over the world.

b) Jeff Bezos is visiting his companies in Europe.

c) His family were the company's first customers.

d) He started the company with his family's money.

e) Customers liked the Amazon website.

f) The company began with only ten staff.

g) Amazon now sells many different things.

h) Amazon closed one of its offices in 2008.

i) Jeff Bezos wants to travel into space.

Have you ever bought a book or a CD on the Internet?

If the answer is 'yes', you probably bought it from amazon.com. Amazon has more than 25 million customers in 150 countries around the world. The company employs 8,000 people.

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, set up the company with $300,000 that he borrowed from his parents. Five years later, the company sold $1.6 billion of books, and Тiте magazine chose Bezos as its Person of the Year. But this was only the start.

Online selling is a difficult business and most companies do not succeed. For Amazon, too, the first years were difficult, but Bezos did not give up. Why has Amazon been so successful? At the beginning, Amazon had no advertising. New customers heard of the website through word of mouth. They returned again and again because their experience was so positive. It's a friendly site, payment is easy and the books arrive fast.

Amazon continues to grow. You can now buy DVDs and videos, mobile phones and computers, clothes, toys and wine. Bezos and the company are worth billions of dollars. Bezos is only forty years old. What does he want to do next? 'I would love to go into space', he says. The last thing that he bought from Amazon was a book about rocket design.

TEXT 6: CREATING A WEB-BASED BUSINESS

Since 1996 or so, everyone with access to the Internet has had the opportunity to create an additional revenue source with an online business. A web-based business can be very successful if you do it right. It's a way of making money without worrying about changing the economy, a boss or employees. All you need is a website, a merchant account, a bank account and your brain.

What you won't need

There are certain "no's" that you need to know to have a successful web-based business. To build the perfect online business you first need to think about the things you don't want or need before concerning yourself with what you need. Here are the things you won't need:

• NO Employees: Employees require you to pay them, manage them and they need a place to work. To make things easier, stay away from employees, at least in the beginning.

• NO Inventory: You should not have an inventory that you need to store it somewhere and storage space can be expensive. Also, you'll end up with tons of shipping and packing demands. If you sell products, make sure your supplier does drop-shipping to most places in the world. Another form of product is electronic products such as music, software and e-books.

• NO Time: After your business has started, it should not require more than a few hours of your time to manage and maintain each month. The more you can automate things the better.

• NO Location: Your business should not reside anywhere other than in cyberspace. A website will allow you to make business anywhere in the world. Your web-based business is making you money and you can maintain it as long as you can get Internet access a few hours a month.

What to sell?

Now that you know what not to have, you have to focus on what you need for your web-based business. First, you need to know what you are going to sell. You have three choices - physical products, services, and intellectual property.

Physical products are food, clothing, appliances, homes and nearly everything that can be touched. As inventory is not necessary there are a couple of ways to handle products without inventory - you can use companies that make drop shipments or you can manufacture on demand. You can print and bind books, copy videocassettes, or burn a CD or DVD as orders come in. There are some people that are successfully selling print-on-demand books.

You don't have as much gross profit per product, but you are saving money since you don't have to warehouse items, to maintain staff to package and ship products or fulfill any other demands. All you have to do is sell the product.

Service Businesses can also use Internet. There are some industries that have been gaining some success such as online tutoring, various types of consulting, language translation, computer programming including web design, and several others.

To have an online-only service business, you will need to be able to fulfill the service from your location. One cannot wash customer's windows in France if he or she is in New York.

Informational products are perfect for the Internet. This type of intellectual property can be writing, works of art, or software.

Creating the Perfect Web-based Business

Here are some quick steps for getting your online business up and running.

• Get your idea into an electronic format. ,

• Research your competition.

• Find a place to host your company web site. Look for an inexpensive hosting company that has great service.

• Build an inexpensive, yet professional web site that is easy for your customers to use with a simple, but reliable shopping cart.

• Determine your payment system. Most likely you will want a merchant account to handle credit card payments or you can try out PayPal or ClickBank.

• Optimize your site for the search engines and be sure you are listed in all the major search engines.

• Use pay per click (PPC) search engines such as Overture and Google Ad Words to build targeted traffic quickly.

• Watch your bank account fill up.

Vocabulary:

revenue source	источник дохода
drop shipment	прямая поставка
cyberspace	киберпространство
intellectual property	интеллектуальная собственность
on demand	по запросу
gross profit	валовая прибыль
to warehouse items	хранить товары на складе
service business	предприятие сферы обслуживания
online tutoring	онлайновое обучение
shopping cart	тележка для магазинов самообслуживания (здесь программа для покупок в Интернете)
search engine	поисковая система

Comprehension Questions:

1. What things are not necessary to run a successful web-based business?

2. What can be sold on the Internet? Describe the kinds of sales on the Internet.

3. What is drop shipping and why is it important for business?

Task 16:

1. You are going to read an interview with Richard Cable, a website designer. Before you read, match these words with their definitions.

1. rebuild . a) able to change in new situations

2. deadline b) time by which you must finish something

3. budget c) find the way around something

4. develop d) make something new

5. adaptable .e) make or do something again

6. create f) make or improve something

7. navigate g) amount of money available for something

2. Now read the interview and find answers to the questions:

1. What does Richard do?

2. What things does Richard like about his job?

3. What does Richard like best about his job?

4. What does Richard need to think when redesigning a website for a company?

(I=Interviewer, RC=Richard Cable)

I	Richard, what’s your job?
RC	Basically I’m a web producer. I go to companies and rebuild websites which are causing problems. I have tight deadlines and usually only have a small budget to develop a website.
I	What do you like most about your job?
RC	I like the atmosphere at work. It’s very informal and relaxed. People who work on website design are younger and more adaptable than people in other industries. I get a lot of experience in different areas of business, and I enjoy that. But the best thing about my job is relaunching a website and finding out that people like it.
I	What questions do you need to ask when you redesign a website for a company?
RC	First, why does the company need a website? What is its purpose? Who are its users? Is it for advertising selling products or for communication? Second, how will people use your site? Third, how much does the company want to spend on the website?
I	What sort of companies can do well on the Web?
RC	A lot of different types of companies do well on the Web. First, there are the news websites, such as CNN and the BBC. Then there are search engines like Yahoo! And Google. Next, information sites, for example, streetmap.com. And then there are e-commerce sites, selling things like books and CDs, for example, Amazon. Companies that do badly are usually offering goods and services that don’t work well on the Internet. For example, not many people buy shoes online because they want to try them on.