Are You Missing Out On the

There’s gold in the pockets of local consumers,

and eCommerce companies are rushing to pick it

up. But are local businesses even in this race?

In today’s market, 90% of people research

products and companies before visiting the store

in person, and 56% of people purchase products

online. This means that you as a small business

owner have to have an online presence, or you

are just leaving money on the table.

eCommerce tools and strategies are no longer

reserved for giant vendors from out of town.

Thanks to the introduction of social commerce,

person-to-person selling can now go online too. In

the race for local consumer gold, it’s no longer

local “high touch” competing with corporate “high

tech”. Now local has its own high tech, making

eCommerce a race that local businesses can

finally win! Better yet – when local businesses

capture eCommerce spending from local

consumers, the dollars stay local.

Your streets are paved with eCommerce gold –

can you dig it?

According to estimates:

The average American is

projected to spend $1,738

online per year by 2016.

By 2017, online sales are

projected to swell to a total of

over $370 billion.

Besides the traditional web-based shopping cart

model, newer trends like social and mobile are

drawing even more consumers into shopping

online. Social commerce spending is projected

to top $30 billion per year by 2015. Mobile

commerce is pegged to hit $31 billion by the

same time.

Over 70% of US consumers regularly shop or

browse online with their smartphones. Given

that many of those same smartphones are

loaded with social apps, the lines between

social, mobile, and traditional eCommerce

become ever blurrier. The bottom line is, the

smartphone is looking more and more like a

mobile wallet, with advertising screens

strategically placed between the consumer and

her money. Will your business be seen on those

screens?

To get your fair share of mobile and social

revenue, you need “location, location, location”

in the digital streambeds where online spending

is flowing.

Small business is vital to local economies. In a

recent survey, 87% of consumers stated that

small businesses are critical for US economic

health. Consumer Pulse Fact Sheet

According the National Federation of

Independent Retailers, in 2012 $5.5 billion was

spent with local independent businesses. Of this

local spending, 73% stayed home to be

recirculated again and again through the local

economy. By contrast, when local spending

goes to nonlocally owned business, 57% of the

dollars go straight out of town.

The notion of economic stimulus is based on a

multiplier factor in which each dollar spent skips

from business to business to business. For

locally owned businesses, the local multiplier is

bigger, making the positive impact of every local

dollar spent event that much more.

When small business loses the

eCommerce race, the local economy

suffers. To maintain local economies as

vibrant and diverse, small businesses

like yours need to step up to the

challenge of eCommerce. Luckily, you

will have help!

Recent surveys state that 65% of small

businesses do not accept payment on

their web sites. 63% of these

businesses do not have tools to monitor

traffic on their web sites. 53% of small

businesses do not use social media,

and 40% of small businesses do not

even have a web site!

If you don’t play, you can’t win – to get

into the eCommerce game and to stand

a fighting chance, local, small and

independent businesses need an

eCommerce solution that works for

them. Standing still is not an option. By

all indications, traditional advertising

media like newspapers, yellow pages,

and business directories are fading in

significance.

The newer generation of consumers is

mobile and social. Today’s customer

seeks products and services on

electronic screens. How will your

business reach that customer? And if

the right tools to present your business

online were readily available, what kind

of positive impact would that have, both

for your business and for your

community?

Suppose even 10% of online

commerce were shifted to local

businesses. One estimate places

the total economic impact of such a

shift at over $5.6 billion dollars per

year for local economies. Call it the

social commerce stimulus program.

To implement that stimulus

program in your local economy

today, you don’t need to pass a

law. You just need to leverage

available tools to practice the art of

social commerce by putting your

and other independent local

businesses online.

Meylah is a social commerce

platform providing support for

businesses like yours. Far more

than a mere online shopping cart,

Meylah creates hyper-local socially

driven marketplaces to promote

spending within the local

community. Meylah today features

over 75 mini Amazon-like markets

activated to infuse dollars into local

economies through Social

Commerce. This number is

increasing.

Meylah takes as its mission to grow

local economies by over 10 billion

through support of small business

online commerce.

To achieve this mission, Meylah is

launching a Shop Local America

initiative, bringing affordable,

convenient solutions for

businesses needing to move their

marketing messages online.

Through Meylah, putting a small business online is

quick and easy. There are never any charges up

front, and essential tools like payment card

acceptance and social media integration are just a

few clicks away. Given the ability of Meylah to act as

a rapid deployment solution for getting smaller

businesses online, the next step in Shop Local

America is to reach out to consumers.

If each consumer pushes even $5 of spending online

toward local independent businesses, the financial

impact will be huge. Local chambers and merchant

associations can facilitate this process by opening

their own local Meylah marketplaces(example :

Eastside Marketplace powered by Bellevue

Chamber of Commerce, WA). A Meylah marketplace

pulls together offerings from many local businesses,

sorts these products and services by category, and

most importantly, makes the online shopping

experience “sticky” for local consumers.

Meylah never sends a customer comparison

shopping for other products and services multiple

time zones away. Instead, the Meylah social

commerce platform always draws consumers in,

creating a shopping experience that funnels dollars

locally and invites potential customers to consider

the widest range of local small business offerings.

Your local streets are paved with eCommerce gold.

Are you ready to work this find? First, you need your

location on the rising streams of online spending,

streams like social and mobile. Then, you need the

right tools to sift for the nuggets.

Meylah, the hyper-local social commerce platform

provides those tools and solutions to take your

business online. And then the rush is on! Be sure

your local customers understand what is in it for

them – a more vibrant local economy, more dollars

circulating locally, more jobs and spending flowing to

their own local businesses. Meylah is mapping the

way. Just set up a community online marketplace

and lets light up your community/city together in the

Digital World!!!

is the Chief Marketing Officer

of Meylah.com and an expert

and advocate of

e-commerce solutions for

small businesses.

follow her

Email : chai@meylah.com

Twitter@meylah

Facebook.com/meylah

Linkedin.com/chaitrav

www.Meylah.com