In the last decade, consumption habits have changed dramatically: shoppers search, compare and thus buy from online sites, marketplaces, mobile apps, physical stores and social sites.
As innovative technology helps their journey, consumers are looking for remarkable experiences at these digital as well as physical touchpoints with brands.
Whether you are looking to expand your business or just getting started, e-commerce has many advantages for a long-term strategy, that is, to gain customers.
For example, if you have a physical store, you are limited by the geographic area you can serve. With an e-commerce website, the whole world is open to your business.
Furthermore, e-commerce on mobile devices has dissolved all remaining limitations. In this article we separate the 6 main advantages of doing an e-commerce, that is, taking your profits and results to another level. Are you ready? Good reading!
What is e-commerce?
Before diving headlong into an ecommerce business, you should know what it includes.
E-commerce encompasses any commercial transaction that involves the transfer of information over the internet.
This is a broad description for a reason. E-commerce can take many different formats. It can include a branded website, mobile app, marketplaces, but also social media platforms.
While there are many ways to sell to consumers over the internet, the main advantage of selling online is that you can sell to consumers anywhere, anytime. You can get to know the customer where and when they are shopping.
It doesn't matter if they're sitting at home on the couch, on their lunch break at work, or even using your app in a physical store – they can complete an online purchase. See now the main advantages of adopting this type of business:
Advantages of an e-commerce: Gain new customers with search engine visibility
Physical retail is driven by brands and relationships. In addition to these two engines, online retail is also driven by search engine traffic. It's not uncommon for customers to follow a link in search engine results and land on an e-commerce site they've never heard of. This additional source of traffic can be the tipping point for some e-commerce companies.
Lower costs
One of the most tangible positives of e-commerce is the reduced cost. A portion of these reduced costs could be passed on to customers in the form of discounted prices. Here are some of the ways costs can be reduced with e-commerce:
- Advertising and marketing: Organic search engine traffic, pay-per-click and social media traffic are some of the advertising channels that can be cost effective.
- Personnel: Automating checkout, billing, payments, inventory management, and other operational processes reduces the number of employees required to run an e-commerce setup.
Find the product faster
It is no longer a matter of pushing a shopping cart to the correct aisle or exploring the desired product. On an e-commerce site, customers can click through intuitive navigation or use a search box to narrow down their product search right away. Some sites remember customer preferences and shopping lists to facilitate repeat purchases.
Advantages of an e-commerce: Eliminate the time and cost of travel
It's not uncommon for customers to travel long distances to reach their favorite physical store. E-commerce allows them to visit the same store virtually, with just a few mouse clicks.
Provide comparison shopping
E-commerce makes it easy to compare purchases. There are several online services that allow customers to browse various e-commerce merchants and find the best prices.
Enable offers, coupons and group purchases in your E-commerce
While there are physical equivalents for offers, coupons and group shopping, shopping online makes it much more convenient. For example, if a customer has a deep discount coupon for turkey at one brick-and-mortar store and toilet paper at another, she may find it unfeasible to take advantage of both discounts. But the customer could do this online with a few mouse clicks.
Provide abundant information
There are limitations to the amount of information you can display in a physical store. It's difficult to equip employees to respond to customers who need information across all product lines. E-commerce sites can easily make additional information available to customers. Most of this information comes from vendors and therefore costs nothing to create or maintain.
Create targeted communication
Using the information a customer provides on the registration form, but also placing cookies on the customer's computer, an e-commerce merchant can access a lot of information about their customers. You can use it to communicate relevant messages.
stay open all the time
E-commerce websites can run all the time. From the merchant's perspective, this increases the number of orders they receive. From a customer perspective, an “always open” store is more convenient.
Create markets for niche products
Buyers and sellers of niche products may find it difficult to locate themselves in the physical world. Online, it's just a matter of the customer looking for the product in a search engine. An example might be buying obsolete parts. Instead of destroying old equipment for lack of replacement parts, today then, we can locate parts online with great ease.
Advantages of an e-commerce: Content Marketing Strategy
An online presence allows you to provide more information about your products as well as services to your customers. A branded website especially gives sellers a place to provide key content to customers.
Key product content includes detailed product descriptions, product comparisons, as well as in-store stock availability and pricing. This information helps a customer make their purchase decision both in-store and online.
Your e-commerce website may also provide more information about your company or how to use your products. Web pages as well as email marketing can be dedicated to your brand's history and how your products are made. Posts but also blog videos can provide useful content about using your products or services. Learn more about how a content marketing strategy can increase online sales.
For example, food companies provide recipes and tips to consumers on their website. This type of content creates a story for your brand while providing a better customer experience. In a competitive market, this type of information sets you apart from other sellers.
Advantages of an e-commerce: Passive Earnings
If you can keep your store open 24 hours a day, and you're able to expand your offerings to a global audience, that means you have the potential to create a passive income stream – meaning your revenue doesn't necessarily depend on large numbers. vendors or hours of operation. When you and your customers are no longer constrained by logistics such as location and time of day, you have many opportunities to increase revenue in new ways.
Conclusion on the advantages of an e-commerce
While in most cases it's quite smooth and low-risk to open an e-commerce for your business, you'll want to keep a few things in mind. On the one hand, you will want to ensure that you invest in a highly professional web developer/designer (or agency) to help you create a solid system for your website that will be sustainable, but also secure over a long period of time.
With Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look and a modern layout for your website. Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions, that is, to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies and brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.
