Running a retail store offline well is good but getting your business online is a good idea, but are you wondering how to expand sales globally? Are you hesitant to break into e-commerce because of security concerns?
If you are thinking for your online retail business and that’s where your clients are, there’s never a better time to gain a better understanding of what it takes to sustain an e-commerce business. Let’s see how?
Staying Competitive
Generally, everyone continues to shop in-store, & this market is still far larger than online shoppers. Today, online shopping is expected to grow at a great pace with the high number of millennial in the US being the most likely demography to make purchases. In today’s growing online market, you must learn about e-commerce as soon as you can because it has grown high over the last few years with the much high revenue.
Going Global
E-commerce business is something that can benefit you as a global platform by depending on your product and services, this could be key to your revenue. Here expanding your business globally could allow you to spend into new facets of your business.
Lowering Costs
As compared to offline business, e-commerce tends to carry far lower costs and adding an online component to your existing business doesn’t need to be a high-risk investment & in fact, in most cases would be a far better choice than offline business if that’s something that you feel you could easily lose money on.
Why is it a lower cost to run an online store? Here are a few important points to Note:
Sales on Advertising
Digital marketing is less expensive compare to traditional channels & can be more easily adjusted to fit varying budgets. Here, you can also combine the traditional & digital market in your entire process, or even can easily switch to primarily digital marketing and save a lot of money. A best example is Email, it is a simple digital tool that remains a cost-effective & simple way to share the information and data to segmented markets.
Save on Staff
Yes! Online business means you can save a lot more than your offline business, here you don’t have to pay in-person staff & in fact could consider integrating something like a Chatbot into your social media & customer service activities instead of live help. Here you can also hire an overseas virtual assistant if you are looking for people to handle customer service and other activities daily.
Save on Rent
Of course, there are some initial costs to do with web setup & maintenance, for instance, integrating a Shopify Store Setup services account into your current website. Shopify costs only a few thousand per year, for their charges, here you can also use other built-in features that will help you run our business more smoothly. This is specifically in the case when you are already paying for space to store inventory & are willing to ship from your location.
Different Traffic Streams
You probably already have a website set up to support your business, but is it getting much traffic? Developing an online presence can help you understand your market better so that you can offer them new and innovative products as well as promote your on-the-ground store.
How do you do this? Search Engine Optimization on your site is key and digital marketing strategies can be huge when it comes to customer research and targeting your marketing both online and offline.
Easily Scale and Grow
One key benefit of running a business online is that you can easily optimize and scale your budget following all other aspects of the business, and it’s not too difficult to scale your business should you see your customer base expand and grow.
For instance, if you are running Facebook ads, you can easily adjust these by 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 by these changes as well.
A More Pleasant Customer Experience
For many tech-savvy individuals who are used to making online purchases, they may not know that for a lot of people who are used to it, it’s just a smoother and more comfortable experience for many. Not only does a customer not need to leave the comfort of their own home, but they also get to avoid traffic, parking, and pushy salespeople trying to upsell or interrupt your conversation with a friend.
When a shop is set upright, the ease of searching, browsing, and ordering can easily outweigh the extra shipping cost. This is especially the case if special features such as live chats that are set up to answer customer questions 24/7, a feat which is becoming more and more affordable if you consider overseas outsourcing or Chatbots.
If you can keep your shop open 24/7 and you can expand your offerings to a global audience, this means that you have the potential to create a passive income stream – that is, your revenue doesn’t necessarily rely on great salespeople or opening hours. When you and your customers are no longer restricted by logistics such as location and time of day, you have plenty of opportunities to boost revenue in new ways.
Conclusion
In a general sense, it’s typically pretty easy, low-risk and low-cost to start an e-commerce business, whether or not you already have a brick-and-mortar store. So long as you pick your products wisely and have an appropriate business plan, there’s plenty of potential for passive income and high ROI over the long term.
E-commerce certainly may not be right for everyone, or it may not even be the right time for you, but it’s important to consider an e-commerce-based strategy if you have a retail operation or even an idea you want to put into action over the next several years.
