Retail business and internet competition

     In my tuning business I have for many years offered the Cory line of cleaning products for piano cabinets and keys.  Customers would often ask me how to clean the keys or the piano cabinet and these products are in my opinion the best for this purpose.  The key bright  product is especially good for the material deposited on keytops by children who would sit down to play after eating their favorite candy.  I carry these products with me and many of my customers use them.
     There are now several hundred musical products that I can offer that can be found on the product page of my web site.  Before the internet a music store would have competition in their immediate area but the internet has changed all that.  Now their are huge internet stores offering many more products than the biggest store could stock and the customer can shop online and the purchases can be shipped directly to their door.  Offering products in the field was for me a simple response to the  customer' stated needs and when I was in the customers living room offering these products the customer was saving the time and money of either driving to the music store or taking the time to get online and select products.
     My online product page and shopping cart has had a much harder time.  Even when I am offering a known product like a Manhasset music stand at a lower price than my competition the potential customer has to find me in order to buy.  There are so many online competitors for identical products that having good products at the best price is not enough.  I am finding this to be a great challenge.  I may know a lot about music stands but I struggle with being computer savvy.  One can of course hire this expertise but when you are small funding for this purpose is very hard to come by.
     The internet is a very powerful business tool.  In a service business computers can easily store info about a large customer base as I have.  I use a great program to generate reminder postcards for my customers and my accounting program is very useful for tax reporting purposes but the internet can be an equally powerful competitor in the arena of retail sales