The Big Bang Theory of Ecommerce

On March 16, 2009, The Big Bang Theory television show offered up the Big Bang Theory of Internet Marketing.

Penny, like many start-up business owners, had found something she enjoyed doing and decided to turn it into a business. She enlisted the aid of Sheldon to help her with several aspects of getting the business up and producing her merchandise. A bit later the other guys came in and volunteered to help.

Leonard decided he would develop the Web site.

The episode was great and delivered several messages about starting a business and using the Internet as a marketing channel. You need a…

1. Business plan
2. Marketing plan
3. Product development processes
4. Employees
5. Storefront
6. Order fulfillment processes

Remembering the show is a comedy it addressed all the points from a comedic view. Penny’s business failed because she didn’t have all the right pieces.

The episode addressed the “build it and they will come” belief. People that have online stores can honestly say that it’s impossible to have sales within minutes of launching one’s Web site without using a service like Google Adwords.

Google Adwords can help get visitors to a Web site, but it can be costly if not used properly. If you do decide to use Google Adwords or any other pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service, you should consider using a PPC management service.

Shopping cart software can be developed to work well with the search engines, but search engines must first find the Web site before it can index the site’s pages. Submitting a Web site to Google can be quick, but even Google says it may take weeks before it visits and indexes the Web site.

To more easily appear in the free, organic search results, one should use a search engine friendly shopping cart.