Ecommerce sites play a very important role in the lives of many, be it the consumers or the retailers. A brick and mortar store owner might be happy with his current setup but we won’t push into this discussion. All we want him to do is just to look at the figures and see what the transition has to offer him. Here are some of the major roles that an e-commerce website would play that are either very difficult otherwise or cost a lot of money.
Hosting VS shelving
When an e-commerce website is set, the e-commerce store owner has to buy a domain name, a web host and a software package for its e-commerce activities. The cost of all these items runs from just few dollars to few hundred dollars. On the other hand, when a brick and mortar store owner wants to shelve inventory, it takes a lot of rent, man power, and continuous inventory management. An e-commerce site owner not only reduces costs associated with doing online business but can also attach the inventory tied to its sales, thus reducing the cost of maintaining the inventory other wise.
Marketing
When a retail store is established, one of the regular cost features is the front of the store that has to have a well lit display of the store. This well placed front display billboard not only costs thousands of dollars in making but it also takes a lot of cost in terms of the electricity to light it up in the night and may include the rent to be paid as in case of some regional laws. The board is also sadly located just on the location where it is. Online marketing on the other hand does need a lot less money and more of knowledge. The marketing efforts online are global in nature and attract customers from all over the world.
Processing
Online order processing from the transaction to credit card verification and the inventory updating, everything is done just in a quick succession which makes online e-commerce stores almost automated in terms of maintenance of the different kinds of records. While offline you have to go through all the torturous procedures like tallying vouchers, checking inventory cards, maintaining ledgers, and physical counts.
This is just a glimpse of the major advantages that you would have if you have an online ecommerce store over a usual brick and mortar store. Think about it before just dumping in it without any solid reason to back.