E-books are surging in popularity. As this important phenomenon continues, it will only serve to have a detrimental effect upon the High St chains that are left..Waterstones in the UK or Barnes & Noble in the US.

Perhaps the only way forward is to take the competition on at its own game. And this is what Barnes & Noble are doing with the introduction of their own tablet, the Nook.

Without High St book chains, the publishers’ marketing proposition crumbles. The idea that publishers can spot, mold and publicize new talent, then get someone to buy books at prices that actually makes economic sense, suddenly seems out of reach. They stand as gatekeepers to quality if you like, as there is the subconscious acceptance in most of us that because it has made it on to the shelf in Waterstones, then it must be good. The internet allows us all to be self-published with no-one stopping to see if our work is of any real value.

What publishers count on from bookstores is the browsing effect. Surveys indicate that only a third of the people who step into a book shop and walk out with a book actually arrived with the specific desire to buy one.

But the problem is not so much now. People are warming to e-books, iPads and the like, but for the next but one generation of book lovers, they may have never read a book in paperback form! A scary thought!

Online retail landscape looks bright:

And this trend is set not just to continue but to grow. Bain & Co. forecast that by 2020, 95% of music and 75% of books will be sold online. And even luxury goods, reticient at first to embrace the internet given the lack of advice from trained sales staff they could give to customers, are now enjoying significant sales growth derived from online transactions. A greater proportion of luxury fashion is sold over the internet than mass-market clothing, which is testament to just how much mindsets in the luxury goods industry have shifted.

Multichannel results in greater value transactions:

This is all achieved without mentioning m-commerce. Mobile phones are increasingly being used to research purchases before consumers hand over cash in stores or online. About 20% of sales in 2010 were classed as multichannel, meaning that orders were picked up in store or goods were ordered online after research in a traditional shop or showroom. Deloitte recently published research showing that multichannel customers spent an average £143 per transaction compared with £57 for traditional store customers.

So for those retailers vulnerable to online competition, the future does not look particularly bright. Moreover, research has shown that the more consumers shop online, the harder it is to sell at a healthy premium. This explains much of the trouble for the likes of HMV, and retailers of electrical goods such as Comet and BestBuy.

Key is to create balance:

This throws up a problem that any company operating in the social media space can potentially come across; the issue of creating a balance between not biting the hand that feeds you on two fronts! On the one hand, you need users to get advertisers interested, and on the other, the more you can offer advertisers in terms of presence, the more appealing your space will become. But potentially at the cost of your users..the loyal folk that got you to this charmed position in the first instance!

Treading on the toes of Google+ and Facebook

Twitter intend to offer “brand pages”. Users will still have the option to decide whether they want to visit a brand page or not. So it should not be too intrusive. Furthermore, an enhancement of the “hashtag” system will result in users being able to view content based on their interests and location.

The redesign of the company pages will essentially allow for more customisation from the brands. It will give brands more control over the look and feel of their page, and give them the ability to show embedded multimedia.

Brands signed up already:

Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Disney are just some of the companies that are already signed up. However, it will not be available to companies in the UK until some time in 2012. The objective in social media is to engage in innovative ways with in the desired audience. All you tweeters out there, be sure to let us know if these companies succeed in achieving that through these new channels!

The global leader in “daily deals” is now valued at almost $13 billion after saying it increased the offering by 5 million shares to 35 million in total and pricing them at $20 each, above an initial range of $16 to $18. Is this good business, or simply a return of the crazy valuations that heralded the spectacular crashing to earth of the majority of 1^st generation Internet companies.

What does Groupon actually do for its customers?

There are mixed reports on the validity of the daily deals model. While the company undoubtedly offers small businesses coverage to a huge customer database, that they would never be able to build themselves, many companies have struggled to break even when take-up has been high. They are forced to price the service often at a loss.

However, for those businesses simply “looking to get people in the door”, then this offers an unrivalled opportunity.

The threat of competition:

But can Groupon really sustain such a high valuation? The shares have traded robustly in the first week, but the threat of more competition hangs heavily over its business model. Many of the major online retailers are creating their own flash-sale sites to sell off stock, and many retailers are now offering time or volume-limited sales either on their own sites, or via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

This trend is likely to continue, making the proposition of third-party daily deal sites less exclusive and making it harder for them to source compelling deals. If, as some investment specialists predict, backers simply “flip” their investment – sell straight away and profit on the initial buzz – it could start a downward spiral and something akin to the burst dotcom bubble all over again.

The next few months will tell if the spectre of overvalued internet companies is coming back to haunt us. In the meantime, $13bn company in 3 years from its inception..not bad for 3 years work!

Mobile has a lot going for it:

But smartphones excel not just in their look, but also in their utility. And the consumerisation of the mobile phone owes a lot to the cloud. For much of the personal computing era, the content that people needed for work or entertainment had to be stored on PCs’ hard disks, or on external drives and USB keys. Now huge amounts of data reside in the cloud, and can be instantly retrieved from almost anywhere in the world.

The rise of the cloud benefits the smartphone user in other ways too. It has manifested itself in a multitude of consumer-focused web services from Facebook, which has over 800m users, to a host of smaller firms such as Foursquare, which was created specifically to let people tell their friends where they are.

Find your SoLoMo

A combination of social networking, location-signalling, and mobile computing (SoLoMo) is changing the way we use web services. It is encouraging to use them more frequently on a smartphone or tablet device, than we would a PC.

The proliferation of broadband connections has also helped catapult this into the mainstream. Fixed-line broadband connections are now commonplace, often with a Wi-Fi link at the end of them to allow people to use their devices wherever they are. You can now stay connected to the internet almost anywhere.

For you as a small business with an online presence, our advice is take a look at m-commerce..and fast.  We have been advising on this blog to take social media seriously for many months now, and fortunately a lot of our customers have responded.

Engaging via social media, alerting potential customers of special offers when they are in your area or searching for relevant information around your products via their smartphones..these are yet more opportunities to make e-commerce and even larger part of your business into the future.

You need two websites nowadays:

One thing that this should flag up for businesses, is that a social media presence, has become, at the very least, as important as your web site. Any product-focused operation needs to be where its customers are. Social media’s power to engage an interested audience, and to enable customers and prospects to advocate your brand for free only strengthens this argument.

But there has been a backlash among the Internet population about the control online behemoths such as Facebook and Google seem to have over us. These brands are much maligned in the media..we are constantly told that these people cannot be trusted.

Facebook and Google: Friends or foes??

People have a choice. There are plenty of search engines aside from Google. There are numerous other ways to organise and enhance social lives, or to promote your brand in a positive way, other than Facebook. These are just two of the best at what they do. We use them for convenience and for the quality of their service if nothing else.

If Google started to give erroneous and irrelevant results on a regular basis, we would soon turn away. And the same with Facebook..if it was really that intrusive and “Big-brother”like, we would soon delete accounts…and the population would fall at a much faster rate than Facebook users are currently jumping ship.

Friends for sure:

Rather than being perceived as dominant and oppressive control freaks in the online space, these two brands should be embraced and appreciated for the great things they are. There are very few people reading this, who will not have benefited from either brands myriad of great services. If that wasn’t the case, we would soon be off to use someone who could give us what we want!

The tablet market hotting up:

The latest product is the Kindle Fire. A direct competitor to the iPad. Albeit with a smaller screen and Wi-Fi connectivity only, I am sure this is nothing more than Amazon’s first shot across the Apple bow. The similarities between Amazon and Apple are obvious. Both have a huge collection of content that encompasses films, books and music. Customers of both companies can store content in the cloud and retrieve it from anywhere.

But price clearly differentiates the two. The Kindle Fire, due out in November, can be bought for just $199. The latest version of the Kindle e-reader, can be acquired for just $79. This gives a clear indication of Amazon’s strategy; recently enforced by the CEO: ” We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.”

Great products, low prices:

Amazon’s unrivaled ability to drive down the price of everything it sells, is what gives them a colossal advantage. This is supported by a suite of innovative services to grateful customers.

Amazon has invested heavily in cloud computing, and their future success is, to an extent, contingent upon the success of the imminent tablet. If the tablet is popular, this will boost sales of Amazon’s cloud-based content, in the same way that the Kindle e-reader boosted sales of e-books.

Apple and Amazon squaring up to each other??

A price war between Apple and Amazon may be sparked. Apple made $7.3bn net profit in the latest quarter. Their profit margin is in excess of 20%, compared to Amazon’s 4%. On these figures, Apple could be the worst company in the world to pick a fight with! Should be an interesting tablet landscape unfolding in 2012!

The digitisation of books:

Books are indeed swiftly following music and newspapers into the digital world. This has major advantages both for readers and publishers. Getting the balance right in terms of print-runs is no longer an issue. And readers love the flexibility and easy downloading options. And of course, when reading via a Kindle, or Ipad, no-one knows what you are reading!

The big problem for publishers will be piracy. A routine search on a file-sharing website such as Pirate Bay, shows many e-books already there for download, either individually or as part of a bundle.

As the “agency” pricing model takes hold in the digital world, there is a multitude of cheap books and self-published novelists only too happy to sell their books at low prices to widen their readership.

The dominance of Amazon:

Amazon sells over 90% of e-books in the UK, and is clearly the dominant player. Even with the success of the iPad, Apple’s iBookstore has struggled to gain a decent market share. With a tablet computer pitched as a rival to the iPad imminent, Amazon is tightening it’s grip alarmingly on the e-book market.

The usual counter-argument of there is nothing to rival the experience of being in the bookshop, is old hat now.  Consumers have clearly moved on. And supermarkets are now major players in terms of sales; casting another dark cloud upon their horizon. Both traditional booksellers and publishers must confront the problems that have afflicted other media industries that have gone digital, if they are to survive the “Amazonisation” of the book industry.

Furthermore, voice functionality allows shoppers to find a product by talking to the app. A barcode scanner also lets you scan the empty biscuit packet once you have devoured the contents. It will automatically then be placed in your shopping basket.

Unsurprisingly, Ocado’s percentage of sales generated via mobile devices continually rises. Smartphone penetration in the UK is rising fast, and retailers must get on board if they want growth.

Location-based retail is another factor in mobile retail. The ability for a restaurant or a shop to give special offers to people in the area at any point in time, is an incredible boon to retailers. The fact that people always have their mobile with them, is a major plus. Relevant promotions based on geo-location services or your purchase history will arrive on your screen at just the right time. Now that fueling the impulse buy like nothing that has gone before!

A whopping £5.2billion was spent online in the UK during April of this year. This equates to £82 per person, and a year-on-year increase of 19%. Figures the High Street may well never reach again. Indeed, the High St is reporting some of its worst results in years.

One of the key factors in driving e-commerce is comparison shopping. Instantaneously, consumers can find the best price for what they are looking for. People are still shopping, but they are increasingly savvy. They are going online to find the best deal.

With the advent of social commerce channels, and mobile applications, growth in e-commerce is forecast to continue. Indeed, those multi-channel retailers – those with both a high-street and an online presence – have seen the fastest growth in the past year.

It is when recognised brands such as Tesco, House of Fraser, and John Lewis, are focusing on their online presence, that you know online retail is truly coming of age. Indeed, John Lewis’s online sales have risen 24% in the past year.

The development of technology has clearly assisted these retailers in their ability to facilitate successful transactions. Now the challenge for e-retailers both big and small, is to integrate the growing number of sales channels to ensure a clear marketing message and consistent customer experience.

Many foresee mobile commerce soon overtaking desktop internet access and are gearing up with shopping applications for mobile phones. This means consumers will expect to receive relevant messages based on where they are.

So if you are a traditional shop, get serious about the web and its possibilities to ensure long-term success.