Internet Business Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

For a long time now, Borders has had a way to search for any book you want, online. They also sync with their brick and mortar stores and allow you to search inside their brick and mortar stores.

This is a great feature for procrastinators like me. I need a book at the last minute and don’t have time to wait for Amazon, or worse yet a slow seller, to ship it to me.

This happened to me two weeks ago. I am taking a class on Business Ethics for my Business Management degree from National University.

I ordered the book 6 days before my class started. I thought those 6 days, plus a couple days that we don’t really do anything should be plenty of time.

Then came my first test, 12 days after ordering my book from a private seller on Amazon.

I didn’t have my book, and had a test that was straight from the book. I checked online and Borders didn’t have it in store anywhere near me.

Then I checked Barnes & Noble’s website and never could find any way to search and see if my book was in any of the local stores (about 5 within 1 hour’s drive).

Then, after failing with my quest online I figured I would check the library. Our local library allows you to search online, and I found the book!

I was in Barnes & Noble yesterday and guess what, they had the book! Too late of course, now I have the book I ordered, and the book I checked out of the library.

Barnes & Noble has the technology to allow searching online, no doubt.

I am going to speculate a couple reasons why they don’t allow you to search their in-store inventory online.

When shopping online, I know what I want and I am looking for the least expensive price from a reputable source.

When buying online there is nobody to remind me that I need a bowl and fish food for my newly purchased goldfish.

In store shoppers are at the mercy of the store selling the product they want. Sure you can go somewhere else, but for $2.00 I won’t drive anywhere.

I guarantee that when Barnes & Noble looks at their profit per sale online, compared to their profit per sale in their stores, the differences are huge.

Keep that in mind next time you are running an “Internet Only” offer!