Week 4: The Future of E-Commerce

So every mother, son, father, daughter is already on the Internet. Time to get your business a slice of the e-commerce pie, right?

Before you dive head-first into e-commerce, make sure you understand the dynamics of the online culture first.

Let's cover the most basic form of e-marketing: Emails, Facebook and Twitter.

The big trio that every single company wants a part of certainly can't go wrong, right? Wrong. From personal experience, how many of you constantly delete junk emails and unsubscribe from mailing lists? "Unlike" a business because they were too annoying? Now think about why you did that. Mashable has a good idea how misusing these platforms turn people off.

Personally, these are my 4 most important criteria to decide if a company stays on my list or not:

1. Don't be annoying. Stop spamming our inboxes / walls too frequently
2. Make sure you have something of value to offer the customer
3. Don't be pushy and too promotional
4. Try to build brand loyalty, stop gunning for one-off sales

But understanding how it works now isn't enough. You don't want to be a laggard, do you? It is also important to monitor marketing trends and where businesses are heading to. And that future is in m-commerce: Mobile-commerce, that is. 

Here's are reasons why businesses need m-commerce and even more fascinatingly, how m-commerce will transform the traditional commerce experience. Read it and be enlightened. 

If all else fails, there's nothing like the old school method of using a novel way to catch the attention of potential customers and making them smile while offering them something extra in return. Here's how car rental company SIXT did it: