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By FBNews.net
And that is one of the benefits of the Internet: businesses don´t have to go in the red or spend months of development time to initiate changes: they can happen very cheaply and, literally, over night.
"We have so many new strategies we´ll be incorporating over the next few months. We´ll be adding a discounted section, we´re working with various search engines to improve our placement, and we´re looking at expanding our market into the far East."
But that 93% Internet sales increase hasn´t made Vincent complacent. There´s still plenty of competition—most of it in the form of auctions, both live and online. The key to matching, and ultimately surpassing, the competition lies in finding your business´ key strengths and expanding on them. While auctions can be inviting, they aren´t always in the customers´ best interest, and Vincent knows that people are catching on.
"There´s been a shift on the Internet toward auction businesses in the last few years, and since we´re not an auction business, we have to figure out how to compete against companies that are doing something very different from what we´re doing. I think the way to do it is to get out there and really highlight the strengths of our company.
"Auctions are a great vehicle for selling items, but they might not always be the best option. Sometimes you wait for months to get paid; there are a tremendous amount of fees involved. With our company, when you sell your items to us, you get a check the next day. It´s a simple process."
Because auctions do represent competition for Metropolis, they´ve decided to keep pace with their competitors by making some of their inventory available on Ebay. A link to their Ebay listings is even featured on the Metropoliscomics.com homepage.
"We do sell some stuff very cheaply on Ebay, and it´s a way for people who don´t necessarily want to spend large amounts of money on comic books to get some deals they can be happy with."
While they´ve seen a giant leap in the use of their web site, it still only accounts for 10% of their overall business. Customers frequently refer to the site to check on the price or availability of a particular title, but many still call in their orders or visit the store. Vincent still relies on face-to-face interaction with his customers through comic book conventions and trade shows, since most of his customers want to look closely at their treasures before purchase. As important as the Internet has become, new innovations can´t always replace older conventions:
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