VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have pointed out that more and more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) utilize e-commerce in doing business. They have also noted the increasingly high popularity of the e-marketplace.

KOS, the briefcase shop on Huynh Van Banh Street in Phu Nhuan district of HCM City launched the website valikep.vn in early August 2012.

At first, the website had a simple interface where the images of products, telephone numbers and the address of the shop were shown. Meanwhile, customers still could not place orders or make payment online.

After two months since the website was launched, KOS reportedly obtained the turnover of VND40 million, which meant that it could sell products to 20 customers and it nearly could not make profit.

Nguyen Khanh Duy, the owner of the shop, said at that time, he did not really pay attention to the sale via Internet. This was why valikeo.vn did not receive the appropriate attention. Duy, for example, did not spend money on optimizing the SEO – search engine optimization, a technique that allows putting the website on the top position in the Google’s list of search insults.

In October 2012, KOS decided to spend six million dong a month to apply SEO. And Duy has been very satisfactory about the business result. Since more customers know about KOS, the shop receives some 150 orders a month, while the turnover has jumped to VND200 million.

Banh My Viet (Viet bread) at banhmiviet.net, at first, did not spend much money on online marketing, because it thought it could take full advantage of the ad pieces it could post free of charge on some forums like Dia Diem An Uong, Otosaigon.com or hoclamgiau.vn.

However, the managers of the chain later realized that the marketing on the forums did not bring high efficiency. The free ad pieces on the forums just brought 10 percent of the total customers of the chain.

Le Van Cuong, the manager of Banh My Viet chain on Phan Xich Long Street in Phu Nhuan district, said that only one year after the chain’s debut, in October 2012, did the company have its own website and begin spending money on online marketing.

“Banh My Viet now cooperates with some websites which allow to place orders online such as Foodpanda.com, Vietnammm.com, Eat.vn, Chonmon.vn… The cooperation has brought big benefits to the shop chain,” he said.

The above said websites follow the policies which assume responsibility for the quality of the services of the providers they suggest to customers.

Cuong went on to say that nowadays, the shop can sell 1,000 loafs of bread, and most of the customers, the expats, place orders online.

Nguyen Kim Loan, Director of Festival center belonging to Festival travel firm, said the firm began selling tours via Internet in 2007.

Loan said the firm has been satisfactory about the business result, with the number of customers from online channel at relatively high level, accounting for 30 percent of the total clients and bring ¼ of the total turnover of Festival.

Having realized the important role of online marketing, Festival has decided to allocate a bigger budget for the work. Not only trying to do marketing via emails, Facebook and social networks, the firm has also spent money on Google Adword to make its website more easily found on Google’s search engine.

Experts said that if websites are considered the “head offices” of enterprises, hosting should be seen as the land plot for the head offices to be built on. Therefore, they said it would be better to use the hosting provided by international providers, for which they have to pay $100 a year. Meanwhile, in order to possess a Vietnamese domain name, one would have to pay VND830,000 a year.

TBKTSG