In the beginning it was difficult and expensive to sell anything on the Web at all. One reason it was difficult was that the few people were online were nervous about buying on the Web. So getting them to buy was difficult. That's mostly gone away.
Another reason that it was difficult to sell anything on the Web was that you had to create a shopping cart from scratch. That turned out to be expensive because it was difficult and required programmers and was a nasty, error-strewn process to boot. That began to change fairly early.
The original online malls, like I-Mall were set up with the idea that you’d buy space there like you would in a physical mall. The mall would draw lots of traffic, you’d get some of the traffic, and the mall would help you handle the transaction, taking a cut for itself.
If you wanted to go it alone, you could always buy a shopping cart package. Most of the ads for these darlings claimed that you’d be up and running in minutes. Months was more like it. They also claimed that the process was easy. Sure it was, if you had a degree in computer science, a few years programming experience and the good fortune to actually reach anyone on the help line.
The next step was that shopping carts could be had off the shelf and they worked most of the time, but they were developed by computer folks and not by anyone who wanted to sell anything except shopping carts. All of this has changed, for the better, within the last two years.
We’ve also learned a bit about what a musical instrument retail store should be selling online.
There have been important changes in online shopping systems that may make you want to re-think your overall strategy, but there have also been changes in the way search engines work that should have you racing to update the online promotion strategy for any sites you already have
