Posted by Maria Katrina dela Cruz
Nov 05, 2020
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Even at the peak of pre-pandemic days, doing online business was gaining prominence among small business owners, and now that quarantine restrictions are still somehow imposed, exploring the benefits of shifting to e-commerce gives a perspective of new opportunities to do business.
The volatility of today’s situation creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. Such a climate affects the growth of SMEs that continue to operate in the current time, which then draws attention to a platform that better caters their requirement and keeps physical interaction at a minimum: the e-commerce space.
If you’re considering migrating to the online space, examine what it has in store for you.
Advantages of e-commerce over traditional commerce
The proliferation of technology into business is what made e-commerce a revolutionary movement. Aside from its high convenience, it also poses an impeccable strategy to generate sales, less the troubles of costs and limitations.
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Overcoming geographical restrictions
If you have a brick and mortar firm, you know the struggle of being bounded by distance. E-commerce allows you to bite more than you can chew since you can expand your outside your respective geographic reach.
The entire online environment is your limit. You can market your services to everyone and go head-to with industry giants, given that you have the right strategy. All you need is a phone and a stable internet connection, then you’re good to go.
This flexibility is also seen as an asset in the e-commerce community because it gives you the power to oversee the business anytime, anywhere.
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Increased visibility
E-commerce provides you with higher chances of reaching new markets.
Depending on the platform that you put your business in, you can discover new demographics and reach international audiences. There is beauty in the ubiquity of online platforms as it takes your network up a notch effortlessly.
Organic searches is the number one cause of page traffic for e-commerce businesses. Adding up social media traffic and online advertisements, this can really tip the scales for most SMEs in making the switch.
Related: 4 Point Roadmap in Starting an E-Commerce Business
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Lower operating costs
Among the plethora of benefits in shifting to e-commerce, this rings the loudest and most important for business owners.
Upfront expenses will be very low for online businesses since they don’t have to acquire physical space to operate. Aside from this, you also save funds from acquiring employees, wages, rent and benefits.
You can use the money instead to maintain your website, upgrade its usability and boost your services to a wider reach.
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Measurable performance
E-commerce is a space where everything is trackable.
To measure your online store’s performance, you need figures and e-commerce is just the right platform for that. Through applications such as Google Analytics, statistics are made available for you. Metrics such as page traffic or percentage of total orders processed are available when you need them.
Using this information, you can find out whether your business is doing good. If there is a dip in the performance, there will be enough data to back up your future strategy.
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Better Consumer experience
Having a physical store entails a different kind of customer experience, and e-commerce does too. However, the latter also branches out to two more categories: for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C).
E-commerce gives consumers the best of in-store experience since you can see the products, get advice about the services and see testimonials from individuals or companies who availed the same product or service.
E-commerce for B2B (business-to-business) companies are more complex than B2Cs since they are long-term partnerships, which means you need to step up your customer experience to make them arrive at the buying stage.
Read Next: Best Practices in Managing Accounting for E-Commerce Business
Making the move to the online business space can highly complement your brick and mortar through the numerous benefits of shifting to e-commerce. With the right strategy, you can reap the best of both worlds and further expand your firm in both platforms.
