Internet and e-commerce technology is advancing at an impressive rate, as it has been for the quite a few years now. Selling your products online is becoming much easier and more affective than other retail outlets. Let me discuss some of the benefits.
Marketing
Marketing a business can be expensive. Even the smallest businesses have to promote themselves hard to be found now. You may have costs of directory ads, leaflets and distribution, business cards, networking events, newspaper ads, signage, public event’s and more. With an E-commerce site, you are able to promote this across the internet at a fraction of the cost.
Many business listings are free, social sites are free, you can obtain recommendations from popular sites and blogs for free, networking via linked in is free and the list goes on. I would agree this is a lot of work when you do all of these things yourself, so you could have someone provide internet marketing for you. This would still be a fraction of the price of your previous marketing budget.
E-commerce has massive potential for scale
Having a store on the high street only limits you to just the foot traffic in your area. With an e-commerce site you have the potential to sell nationally or even internationally.
Overheads
Think of your monthly store costs for rent, gas, electric, staff, repairs and maintenance etc. Now compare this cost to the cost of running a website. Depending on your type of business, you may have storage and delivery costs as well, but I would still be willing to put my life savings on the fact that it would be much cheaper than running a store.
Selling from your E-commerce site
Making a sale through a website is far less time consuming than over the phone or in store. By that I mean, you potentially have to do nothing, absolutely nothing!! The work comes in when you are developing your E-commerce design to be an efficient sales environment. In which customers can easily find what they require and make the purchase. Ultimately the E-commerce design can be handled by our web design company. Read more about our E-commerce design.
Up sell
A Well designed E-commerce site will have the ability to encourage customers to purchase additional items or upgrade their purchase very effectively, time and time again
Future sales
When you make a sale through an E-commerce site you can ask the customer if they would like to know about future products. As a result you will be able to generate a frequent customer base of returning customers with an efficient E-mail marketing campaign.
I would not for a second suggest to a small business owner to up sticks, sell their store and move their business directly to the internet, unless their store was making a huge loss. After all it takes time to establish an internet reputation. But the sooner an e-commerce site is created the sooner you can start that transition to more efficient and profitable business.
Source: Edirect
