The history of sailing is over thousand years old and it is founded on plenty of peculiar traditions which have kept this art alive until today; the e-commerce is a new-born economic sector which boomed together with the world-wide spreading of Internet, it suffered a deep breakdown in 2001, but which is now one of the most reliable economic branches, despite of its main protagonists being “virtual”. The E-commerce represents a constantly developing sector, always updated and on the cutting edge for all what concerns providing services; in contrast the art of sailing calls to mind a calm atmosphere where everything – news included – smells like tradition.
What do these completely different worlds have in common?
Web portals for on-line boat sales represent the link between these two realities, which in this way create a unique situation, as close as possible to the perfect competition market form: many buyers, many sellers, supply and demand as the unique elements determining price levels and quantity sold on the market. In the past pleasure boats market was strongly affected by elements disturbing the functioning of the perfect competition such as incomplete or imperfect information, obstacles in communication and goods transfer, but Internet has decisively contributed to the elimination of these barriers.
All web-portals for on-line new and used boats sales are the perfect link for demand and supply, since they allow and enable everybody to post advertisements for free; every portal, however, sets its rules and guidelines in order to keep the whole system under control and in order to prevent any misuse or any use of the services it offers for illegal purposes: safety and reliability are the key to success for all e-commerce firms, especially in this case since products dealt with on this market are of a very high economic value.
Sailing portals main function can be described as “infobrokering” because they collect and save information in their data-bases, process gathered data in order to make them available and enable every user to easily find the piece of information needed. In this way everything works faster, costs are cut and searching is optimized, since every search is based on clear criteria and that enhance chances to get exactly the result every single user is asking for. Success of a web-portal for e-commerce depends directly on its structural features: which kind of and how many services it offers, its reliability and the attention it pays to customer caring activities. Creating a good quality e-commerce portal actually does not mean only transforming an advertisements page into a web-page: collected information have to be organized, users require assistance and the right context has to be created in order to facilitate transactions.
Reaching a always broader target of users means increasing your chances to be successful and within the pleasure boat sales sector it has become a requirement that must be met since this a peculiar market niche, which has developed across state-borders and economic categories: web portals actually address pleasure sailors, dealers as well as producers.
Creating a web portal for new and used boats sales requires two kinds of specific know-how: on the one hand there is a peculiar IT-knowledge to build a reliable and safe structure, on the other hand a deep knowledge of the pleasure sailing sector in order to shape the website according to the needs of the on-line boats sales market.
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