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Wait a Minute
Make it two minutes. Pause for a little while. Relax, until the stress leaves you.
In between spurts of hard work or long periods of concentration, take time off to do just nothing.
When you have a challenge and the answer is not coming easily, beat a retreat to a quiet place and rest.
And when those stress induced headaches come, avoid aspirin and take a nap instead.
Your body gets tired; give it a break. Tiredness is not laziness.
You should come back relaxed and refreshed, energized to be more creative.
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THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
There are a few things Nigerians agree about.
We all agree this country can be better.
We agree that we need reliable power supply and better roads.
We deserve a secure environment to live and do business.
Our country is too rich for so many to be poor.
We usually agree we have a problem with leadership.
We may not agree how to get things done.
But luckily, we live in a part of the world where we say we practice some form of democracy.
We may not be able to affect the past but we can do something about the future.
That is why we urge the 50,000 plus people who receive this email to do a simple patriotic act.
You have the power to make a difference. Use it.
Get registered. Then vote.
You can make a difference.
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The Courage to Begin
Many atimes, we criticize others for failing.
The ball always look easy to guide into the goalpost when viewing the football match from the comfort of our living rooms.
You don’t have to jog for an hour a day to prepare for that. You don’t have to comply with the camp’s diet. You don’t have to forgo time with loved ones.You don’t have to prepare for ninety minutes of intense action with every twenty four hours of your day.
Maybe, that is why it is easy to judge a team’s performance by the result of one penalty shot.That is life but life is not fair.
Next time you feel like condemning a team’s performance, why don’t you start a five aside game instead.
Let us preach with our actions, not mere words. You have the courage to start something.
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Bootstrapping Your Online Business
When starting a new business venture, having too much money is usually worse than having too little. Excess capital always finds expenses to incur; it makes you spend money like the Nigerian government. For instance, when the government decides to promote agriculture, the first item on the agenda is to get a public relations firm to develop a policy paper on how to publicize that intention; little wonder there may be nothing left to guarantee credit for struggling farmers’ cooperatives to acquire tractors or to fund modern farming advisory practices. Similarly, being flush with cash tends to make one focus on image rather than substance.
It is therefore important right from the onset to plan your priorities and to discern what matters and what does not. For instance, one could easily spend too much adding bells and whistles to the design of your web address when all you really need is a simple to use, easy to navigate online store that will not discourage customers from place orders. You will need to have a budget for online advertising but keep in mind that a low cost campaign over an extended period, allowing your potential customers to see your adverts several times in other to make your message sink may be better than full page print and huge online banner adverts that hit your bottom line with a thud and then, are gone with the wind.
I will dwell more on promoting your website. Because your business is online does not mean that the marketing campaign will always be online too. And rather than focus only on advertising, it is import ant that a start-up make full use of other marketing approaches especially public relations, participation in trade fairs, giving out branded promotional items like tee shirts as free gifts and finding ways to get your online venture mentioned in the regular press. The latter will involve developing newsworthy activities for your business. There is no one size fits all strategy; the channels to be used to publicize your website will depend on the personal characteristics of your targeted customers. You must seek them out and only spend on activities that should get their attention.
Finally, beware of losing focus. Have you visited a well located boutique with nicely designed interior layout and smartly dressed sales assistants only to be disappointed to discover that they scarcely stock up to fifty items? The layout of an online store is often designed to facilitate the display of large quantities of items at a glance. If you want to excite your customers to keep coming back, you need to stock up with variety so they always have a choice. Spend only on what really matters.
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What It Really Takes To Run an Ecommerce Store
In 1994, legend has it, a young man wrote the business plan for an online book store while his wife drove on a journey from New York to Seattle, USA. Today, that man is worth 12 billion dollars and the company he founded is called Amazon. I am not about to promise you that starting an online store will make you a zillionaire. But if you have the entrepreneurial itch and the determination to succeed, you too can start an institution that will endure. Especially in Nigeria where we have the buying population and ecommerce is still at its infancy, there is a world of opportunity waiting to be tapped.
Starting an ecommerce store requires having an online presence with a website that has a product catalogue, a shopping cart facility, a database for collecting and maintaining customer information as well as access to payment gateways. A typical ecommerce application is made up of millions of lines of programming code. Luckily for us now (unlike in 1994 when Steve Jobs started), there are applications that can be customised to meet the specific needs of your store. There are also multiple options of payment gateways to choose from in Nigeria, from the expensive (Interswitch, MasterCard or Visa) to the affordable (Virtual Terminal Network). With regards to the technical skills required to manage a ecommerce website, I assure that if you can surf the web and navigate to this blog with a mouse, that will do. Most modern ecommerce setups are user friendly, made for the business man that is not necessarily a geek.
The key success factor however is what you do before and after you get you ecommerce website. One word captures that activity: marketing. It will help a lot if the product or service you are offering online is targeted at a customer focused need, that adds convenience to your value proposition and still maintain a cost advantage. In simple English, you must sell better products at a cheaper price because there is no option for bargaining online, unlike what you would have in the local market. And you should also target a niche that has less competition to have the first mover advantage.
After you website is on and running, you need a low cost effective strategy that will enable you grow your clientele while operating within the rules of online marketing. Selling online gives thinking outside the box a whole new meaning. If you don’t have a bottomless war chest of cash to throw at the wind, you need to have the knowhow to develop strategies that will win customers one person at a time. Some of you were born with it; some of us had to go to school.
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Online Opportunities for Existing Businesses
Nowadays, many established businesses want to have a static website that will provide basic information about their business operations to the general public and potential customers. Information such as, services rendered, opening hours and contact information are included in what is essentially an online brochure. That level of internet presence maybe okay for some companies in the past but currently one will find that without additional cost, smart businesses can exploit the level ground presented by the internet to engage customers directly, to communicate and take orders, receive payments and raise invoices. As would be explained later, it is even possible to fulfil some orders online. These activities require an interactive web presence with appropriate level of security to protect customers and subscribers’ personal information and ensure confidentiality of transactions.
With an interactive website, the business is able to communicate with customers who are far removed from its locality. We already have bookstores that develop interactive websites to attract customers who will order and pay for books online. Beyond that, transaction and delivery information are also received and stored so that the marketing communication can be customized and targeted towards the customer’s needs. Even when the store does not have a requested item in stock, the information of customer requests are automatically logged so that there can be follow up later when stocks are replenished.
There are many businesses that can benefit from this kind of interactive website. Supermarkets and boutiques can allow high invoice customers to place orders online and get free delivery. Many service based businesses (e.g. hair and beauty Salons) in cities with professionals and high brow clients as customers will profit from having websites that allow customers to book appointments . No longer will such customers have to wait for hours to be attended to as service to pre-booked customers are fast tracked. Many hotels will be able manage capacity levels better if customers can book accommodation and prepay online before arrival. Cinemas, theater performances and entry tickets to tourist attractions can also be sold online now because cheap technology is available to issue secure tickets.
Even after discount incentives and promotions costs are factored in, the incremental sales from such internet technology assisted initiatives will pay for their investment over a short period of time. it will win profitable and endearing customers who value the convenience it affords them. What is more, developing an interactive website is now so cheaply affordable, it really does not make economic sense to have a static one anymore.
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A World of Opportunity
According to the internet penetration survey for June 2010 by internetworldstats.com, 28.9% of Nigerians use the internet. That indicates that about 44 million of us, about the total population of Spain or South Africa, access the internet on a regular basis via our phones, PDAs, laptops, net books or computers, at our homes, offices, schools or cybercafes. We chat and email on Google, yahoo, and hotmail, make new friends and reconnect with old ones on Facebook, and network on LinkedIn and share ideas on Twitter.
We read our news from the online edition of Next, Punch, Vanguard, ThisDay , The Sun and Sahara Reporters, then discuss them at Nigerian Village Square or (Nairaland for the younger crew). A growing number maintain blogs in WordPress or Blogger, and take pride in competing for annual laurels in Nigerian Blogosphere. Nigerian love sports, football to be precise, and our male office bound professionals keep tabs on happenings in the major leagues from websites like Goal.com and Fifa.com .
If you are job hunting, it is assumed that you are computer literate nowadays because most companies expect you to send your CV by email. Websites like Careers Nigeria, Naija Hot Jobs and Ngcareers give you the current updates of where to send your job applications. And don’t be surprised if you are asked to do proficiency or aptitude tests online.
Our banks all have online services that allow us to view our cash balances and transfer funds within the same account. We all have electronic cards which we call ATM cards because we only use them to withdraw from automated teller machines although they are enabled to make payments via Interswitch, MasterCard or Visa, in Naira. These cards are secure, encrypted to world standards by the organizations introducing them, to ensure electronic payment in Nigeria is fraud proof.
Recently, another innovative Nigerian bank partnered with a US based company to introduce a secure email based payment system called Virtual Terminal Network (VTM), which is very similar to PayPal. For years, students have been making payments to universities using Etransact. Many of these students were unaware that Etransact can be used for making payment via mobile phones or on websites.
If Nigeria, must play catch up in the development game, we would do well to focus on our strengths, using our abundant and relatively cheaper human capital to provide internet enabled service to our people. Internet technologies give us a level playing ground to compete.
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