Ecommerce expo in Budapest
“The first Hungarian SME event, where you could meet all the participants of the e business, including logistics, finance, law, marketing, etc.” was the sentence to great visitors and gather attention for the event on the official website. Did we participate? Yes! Did we learn new things about the Hungarian market? Let’s dive into the conference and we will see.
The first e-commerce expo of Hungary took place on the 24th of March in Budapest. The location was the well-known Lurdy House, which later turned out to be a great choice because of its’ size and easy accessibility. The conference and expo at the same time, opened up at 8 a.m. for visitors to wonder around before the presentations started. More than 40 small, medium or big companies represented themselves on the exhibition area, with uncountable flyers and printed magazines to offer for participants of the event, causing one could have felt like on a car expo in America during the 80’s. The organizers divided presentations and the flow of the day to five parts, namely web-shop establishment & home business, marketing and customer getting, conversion & loyalty, global & offline, and last but not least upgrowth & automization. Altogether approximately 50 presentations had been opened and closed on this day by professionals from all areas of expertise. We focused on the global opportunities and marketing aspects of the day with a soul purpose to learn and gather experiences from a foreign market. We have chosen 3 presentations to talk about today.
The day had been kicked off by Szabolcs Valner, founder of Vatera.hu and Managing Director of Digital Factory at the moment. Szabolcs was talking about the pros and cons for a firm that decides to enter a foreign market, and invest money and manpower by doing that. The main idea is to always research and ask the questions before taking serious steps in investments. Can we offer something new or better for the targeted market? Did we reach the limits of the current market? In what do we have to invest in order to make it to the foreign market? Is there any chance for growing in a reasonable time period? Answering these questions, and researching the target market can easily help us to determine whether to make the steps we are planning or not.
Followed by Illés Vadász, currently Industry Manager at Google (Hungary Area), previously one of the founder member of the Hungarian Google office. Illés had focused his interest and presentation to the various tools Google offers for a pre-market research. He demonstrated the raw power of Google Trends, Google Consumer Barometer, and the rather well-known Keyword Planner, providing key information about usage. Illés was trying to emphasize the fact that these tools are perfectly usable for a market research before entering one, highlighting the usability and trend following feature of Google Trends, the power of the Consumer Barometer, and easy usability of the Keyword Planner.
Later during the afternoon a collective information sharing, a so-called roundtable discussion took part involving 3 web shop owners, whom reached extraordinary results on the field. The discussion concentrated on the very effect social media can have on the online businesses. All participants shared their ideology about how to use social media to support and boost online sales, and fortunately the ideologies matched on the very basis that today the usage of social media solutions is not even a must, but the lack of it can have negative aspects on a business. The synergy of social media sites still has a big effect on sales numbers, as for instance 60% of every day Facebook users’ primary device is their mobile phone to check Facebook. This creates a trend for online businesses to make themselves available, and create shopping smooth on mobile devices as well.
They all agreed in the importance of unique content to be shared, as a stronger presence is not everything any more. Facebook is offering a full experience on mobile, and rolling out solutions -such as Calls to Action Buttons, the Carousel, or the Canvas experience - to provide users the opportunity to stay for all information reachable. Instagram, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and the list could go on, but each of these social media solutions are unique in some way. All in all to reach the synergy must require knowledge and experience, although in exchange we could create a machine which works 24/7 for us and for our business to achieve goals we have been dreaming of for years.
