Consumers are continuously changing the way they want to shop over the last decade and traders are keeping up. Shopkeepers are attentively searching, contrasting, and buying physical and social sites from internet portals, markets, smartphone applications. Consumers search for remarkable opportunities in these digital and traditional touchpoints with brands as revolutionary technology facilitates their journeys.
Whether you are interested in expanding or just starting your brick and mortar venture, online sales have many advantages to gain a lasting strategy. Just look at brands that change the retail industry by building digital-first approaches for loyal customers. Last year, in the next five years, 81 percent of consumers are planning to shop for direct brands. Where did these companies build up? Online.
Look at the top advantages of eCommerce marketing when you consider online selling.
Top 9 eCommerce benefits
Here are the key reasons why eCommerce is the primary source of revenue for the first time and established merchants.
1. Fast Go-to-Market Time
As opposed to traditional retail stores, eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Squarespace can be used to create a shop with pre-made templates (if you want a basic store). In contrast to traditional retailers. Hosting, compliance with PCIs, maintaining platforms, etc. Marketplaces like Amazon or eBay just require you to start selling an account.
In recent years, SaaS-based e-Commerce platforms like these have made creating attractive and reliable sites with minimal effort realistic and straightforward for business owners. To have a professional website up and running just one evening, you do not require profound technical or eCommerce knowledge. Before you consider domestic resources or a digital agency, you can even expand substantially and move your site to the next level.
With eCommerce solutions, you can get off the ground quickly, particularly if you have created words of mouth or the social connection to get on. You can quickly upload a website and drive traffic to your new website.
2. Low Cost
In many cases, it costs less to start an eCommerce business.
eCommerce and marketplaces are free to sign-up or prices as low as $20/month.
Marketplaces are free to sign-up and take a small percentage fee for sold items.
Use drop shipping to procure inventory without a large, upfront investment.
Social media, organic search, and Google Adwords are cost-effective ways to market your business.
Run and manage the business by yourself to eliminate the costs of payroll.
When you first start, eCommerce can prevent many of the big, early investments conventional retailers can incur – such as physical shops, inventories, or wages. You can successfully expand your business with an online store as the sales increase.
3. Shoppers Start Online
Digital channels continue to be used more and more. 87% of shoppers started digital channel product searches from 71% last year. Shoppers are more likely to start online research, especially in markets like Amazon and eBay, even if they eventually buy from a physical store.
Online shoppers research prices, comparison of brands, search customer reviews, check inventory levels, etc. for a variety of reasons. You only have an online presence to ensure potential shopkeepers find your products. It is important for customers to find the information they are searching for, though it is only to check store hours or locations. Where your first clients are shopping, you always want to be and there is evidence on the net.
4. Customer Data Insights
One advantage of online sales that you may not have thought about is how easy it is to collect, measure, and act on customer data. If you want to be hyper-focused on the customer’s experience, then you need to own your consumer data. Online sales allow you to collect first-hand data by tracking customer interactions. You will have a constant feedback loop of actionable insights to continue to innovate your customer experience.
It is important, as always, to think about ethical ways of collecting and acting on consumer data. Privacy laws like GDPR are in place to think about. And if you’re collecting sensitive data, you’d better protect it as well.
5. Reach New Customers
As mentioned above, eCommerce sales can take on a number of different formats. Each channel has its own unique audience, which sellers can reach. An online site can help you reach out to international shoppers. Social sites are likely to reach new demographics. Marketplaces like Amazon have the widest audience, but they can also help you find niche markets. Marketplaces such as Etsy, Newegg, and Poshmark serve specific audiences looking for certain products. The best part is that you can also use a combination of online touchpoints to engage multiple audiences at once.
Unlike brick and mortar, online channels are not limited to who can physically visit your store. Whether you’re just starting out or an existing vendor, you can reach someone online that you haven’t been able to do before.
6. Lowering Costs
Because e-commerce tends to have far lower costs than brick-and-mortar setups, adding an online component to your existing business doesn’t need to be a high-risk investment and, in fact, in most cases, it would be a much better choice than opening another store if that’s something you feel you could easily lose money on.
Why is it cheaper to run an online store? Here are a couple of important points to note:
Sales of advertising
Digital advertising is cheap compared to traditional channels and can be more easily adjusted to suit different budgets. You can use a blend of traditional and digital to market your entire operation, or even switch to digital and save a lot of money.
Email is just one example of a simple digital tool that remains a cost-effective and easy way to send information to segmented markets
Save the Staff
You’re not going to have to pay in-person staff and could actually consider integrating something like a chatbot into your social media and customer service activities instead of live help. You may also want to hire an overseas Virtual Assistant or Marketing Specialist if you are looking for people to manage your customer service or other activities on a 24-hour basis.
Save on your rent
There will be some initial costs for web setup and maintenance – for example, to add a Shopify account to your current website, or even to make a revision. Shop costs only a few thousand per year, and for this fee, you can also use other built-in features that will help you run our business more smoothly. This is especially the case if you are already paying for space to store inventory and willing to ship from your location.
7. Easily Scale and Growth
One of the key benefits of running a business online is that you can easily optimize and scale your budget in line with all other aspects of your business, and it’s not too difficult to scale your business if you see your customer base expand and grow.
For example, if you are running Facebook ads, you can easily adjust them in line with your purchasing behavior. And even if you find some dips or shrinkage – say, if your offerings tend to be seasonal, you can adjust your marketing and inventory accordingly.
8. A more satisfying customer experience
For many tech-savvy individuals who are used to making online purchases, they may not know that it’s just a smoother and more comfortable experience for a lot of people who are used to it. Not only does the customer not need to leave the comfort of their own home, but they can also avoid traffic, parking, and crowded salesmen trying to upsell or interrupt a conversation with a friend.
When a shop is set up correctly, the ease of searching, browsing, and ordering can easily outweigh the extra shipping costs. This is especially the case if special features such as live chats set up to answer customer questions 24-7, a feat that is becoming more and more affordable if you consider overseas outsourcing or chatbots.
9.Passive Earnings
If you are able to keep your shop open 24-7 and expand your offerings to a global audience, this means that you have the potential to create a passive revenue stream – that is, your revenue does not necessarily depend on great salespeople or opening hours. If you and your customers are no longer limited to logistics, such as location and time of day, you have plenty of opportunities to boost revenue in new ways.
