Category Archives: Business
Online shopping around the world
Jeff Bezos on brands and reputation
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
— Jeff Bezos
New direction: e-commerce market in Central Europe
Recently we attended Webit Congress & Expo in Sofia (Bulgaria). Many people are interested in Central European e-commerce market (or, being more general, the Internet market). Is this a part of Europe that’s open to cooperation? What are the experiences of businesses there? And what is the current state of development? So let’s take a look at two countries in this region: Romania and Bulgaria.
Fathoming Amazon: 9 Things to Know
Interview with Krzysztof Bartnik – editor in chief in eKomercyjnie.pl
I waited patiently to interview Krzysztof Bartnik about his experiences running eKomercyjnie.pl service and magazine. I knew it would be worth it and then, finally, he came through the door! He apologized but I know online vendors have a long queue of important things to do and think about work day and night. Plus Krzysztof simultaneously runs an online service and a magazine for and about the Polish e-commerce sector, so he’s constantly training vendors, presenting at conferences and organizing national promotions like Free Shipping Day. But right now, he’s excited to talk about his e-commerce experiences.
Jeff Bezos on customer service
If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.
If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.– Jeff Bezos
Good rules of e-commerce
Have you ever met any unfair e-commerce practices? For example, you’ve ordered a product in an e-shop and after the checkout and confirming the purchase, you saw a higher price than the one on the product’s page? Or maybe you were waiting too long for the delivery without any information from the online vendor? Or maybe you’ve seen web stores, where no privacy policy or contact information was published, and you didn’t feel you could trust them enough to buy something?
How to survive more than a 1000 years in business?
If a company is old, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s antiquated or out of date in any way. But it also doesn’t have to indicate its credibility. Actually, the age itself doesn’t present any value at all. However, we can suspect one thing – if a certain company managed to survive for a long time, it may mean that they’ve actually been doing something the right way.
Of course I’m not going to tell you how you can make your business last for centuries – I’d have to be a prophet or a charlatan to do this. Besides, who’s really interested in all those centuries? All we may expect is to make our business work well for us and to leave it in good condition for our children. We don’t care what will happen 5 or 10 generations later. We’ll be already gone, buried and forgotten (sorry for saying it so directly, but that’s just the truth).
Anyway, instead of advising, I’d like to do some analyzing. Let’s get a closer look on some examples of those businesses that are really, really old.
US debt visualized: Stacked in $100 bills
Here’s a link to a visualization of the United States debt.
It’s showed step by step in $100 bills, you just follow the numbers and… well, you can surely check whether your idea of “how much is one trillion dollars” was correct. But it doesn’t stop there.