12IB-029 : Week 3 submission for blog

Key challenges faced by Internet Startups

Dear sir,

Based on my reading about online startups, I want to share the basic difficulties which online startups face, specially during there initial years.

No doubt that brick-and-mortar companies encounter several obstacles that Internet start ups do not, but their are certain key challenges that Internet startups face as compared to brick-and-mortar companies:

1. Its hard to build trust

When people open a brick-and-mortar company, customers come and feel more secure doing business with them because their presence is known to several parties: property manager/landlord, county/city tax department, distributors, and so on. From customers' perceptions, brick-and-mortar companies also tend to stay long-term since it takes time to move away with  furniture and goods/products. On the contrary, customers tend to be more suspicious when browsing a website because the website can disappear in an hour without leaving any traces and customers have no way to track down if they lose money, need to return, or simply contact the company. 

2. More competitors

Brick-and-mortar companies do have competitors but usually within a specific region, there are no or just a few competitors. In contrast, Internet startups usually encounter more competitors due to:
- Internet is borderless, so competitors can be all over the world. 

3. Unable to reach customers

Brick-and-mortar companies usually target on local people, So, they usually pick a great location with high traffic or in a shopping mall, so they get more exposure to local people. They can drop leaflets at residential homes to invite them to visit. For Internet startups, they need to deploy different marketing strategies.

4. Website performance issues

Since this is the place that customers visit and decide if they want to do transactions with the company, it must invest significantly in design, making the website attractive and at the same time easy to navigate and take actions. The website performance, reliability, and security are also crucial. 

Thanks

Neelansh Gupta

12IB-029

Sec- C