8 Advantages of Online Shopping for Small Business
Advantages of Online Shopping For SMall Business
For anyone who wants to buy your products they have to be able to get access to them.
When you only sell them in one location or if you have a chain of locations you are limited to selling products to those who are willing and able to come to you. That means you are missing out on a huge market that is available to you.
If you hesitate to build an E-commerce website to sell your products, there are a few good reasons to move it up on your to-do list.
Here are at least 8 benefits of having online shopping for your business:
Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast
1. Customers are spending money online.
In 2018, global consumers have spent around $2.8 trillion purchasing online goods and that number is expected to grow to $4.8 trillion in the next few years.
Any business owner that stays offline will be missing out on their share of those profits.
While some shoppers still make a routine heading out to their local shopping centre’s or malls.
Many are now skipping the trip and doing a lot of their shopping while sitting at home.
If your competitors are making their products available to their customers and you are not then you are losing that business.
Running a physical store requires paying:
- Rent for the space
- Paying wages to your staff to be there during business hours
- Appropriate licensing and permits
- Utility bills – heating, electrics, water, sewage and more
- Business rates
- Furniture and decorations
- Building maintenance
- Cleaning supplies
- Security Services – Guards, CCTV’s etc
- Selling supplies like POS systems and cash registers
All of this adds up to a huge expense account and most of them are ongoing which will eat up into your sales and profit figures.
Selling products on a website on the other hand cuts out most of those costs.
You will still need to pay for things like web hosting and marketing and may need to hire some staff but this depends on the size of the E- commerce store that you run.
The overall costs are more manageable and easy to plan for.
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When you are tired, busy, feeling under the weather or just feeling a little lazy you do not want to spend time driving somewhere and walking in a store for the products you want to buy.
There are a lot of things going on in the world today and not everyone wants to take a trip to the store.
Browsing an E- commerce website online and making selections is easier, faster and requires a lot less energy.
People are more likely to spend their money when it does not feel like work to do or just to avoid traffic jams or being out in the cold and wet weather.
Online shopping is not 100% effortless but it is pretty close.
When you sell your products through an online store you remove a lot of barriers and hustle compared to being physically at the store.
85% of consumers use Google for product discovery and shopping.
Without an E-Commerce website your products have no chance of showing up when potential customers start looking for what you sell online.
When every product you sell is listed on a page on your E-Commerce site – all of them will be indexed by Google. That is the first step to your products showing up in search results.
If you want those product pages to show up on the first page of Google then that requires an investment in SEO best practices.
But before you can even start thinking about that you need an E-commerce website for your products.
Today almost a third of all shopping consumers do are online on a mobile device – phones, notepads or tablets.
Mobile shopping makes it possible for people to make purchases at the exact moment they decide they want something.
Whether they are at a dinner party, strolling through the park or lying on the beach? If customers think of something they want, they can make the purchase immediately.
This creates more opportunities for sales. There are no risks of losing potential customers who have mobile device. It is good for your business to have a mobile friendly website.
Online selling is very effective in allowing you to determine which products are selling successfully to ensure the stock levels of these products are maintained or increased if demand grows.
This will provide you with insights on how these successful products can be diversified, to develop a larger range of products to sell through the website.
Online selling provides your business and opportunity to grow your business in terms of sales, customer base and profits.
Amazon’s online shopping website has developed successfully around scaling their product range and monitoring closely what is selling with customers.
This has consequently allowed them to dramatically diversify their product range into many sectors.
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If your business is involved and sells within the trade industry sector then online selling will allow you to sell at higher margins.
This will make the profits on your products even higher.
The shopping cart and payment options on these websites also mean you are gaining a 100% payment from the customer straight away.
Improving your cash flow especially when customers provide you with payments in several instalments is a great way for consistency in your business.
There are several reliable payment systems you can choose for your e-commerce website including; PayPal, Google Checkout, Sage Payment Solutions, World Pay and more.
This will ensure all your payment transactions are processed successfully so your business receives the payments immediately, efficiently and securely.
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Online shopping makes servicing niche market consumers better, easier more efficiently.
It can be difficult for that rare coin collector to find a seller or a buyer. However with the ease and broad coverage of the internet, this makes that search easier.
If you serve a niche market, you may find it easier to distribute your products online and you will open your business to a greater depth of consumers. This will provide a loyal customer base for your business.
Wrapping Up
The reasons mentioned above will make you realise that there are opportunities out there for everyone. This will eventually bring you to your step of the journey – Creating an E-commerce Website for your business.
Further Reading: Create Your Own Top Level Domain (TLD)
For more information on how Best Digital-Marketing can help you build and create your own E-Commerce Website:
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Advantages of Online Shopping for Small Business