Most times, entrepreneurs venturing into the business landscape are often at a crossroad choosing between building eCommerce and offline sales. While eCommerce sales involve online sales of goods and services, offline sales deal with a physical store or outlet.
Due to the advancement in technology, eCommerce sales no offers so many benefits as offline sales. As of 2007, overall retail revenue from eCommerce was 5.1% and 16% in 2019. This shows substantial growth in the eCommerce business.
Some of the benefits of eCommerce sales include:
Lower Operational Cost: Setting up an online shop or business is cost-effective compared to a physical store. There are many bills to be paid from operational costs, employee salary, inventories, and other payments in an offline store. However, these costs do not apply in online stores; this is why online retailers sell their products at a lower cost.
Access to a Global Market: Over 50% of the world’s population have access to the internet. With this number constantly growing, online retailers know that the global market is theirs to dominate if they offer an array of quality products and services.
Open 24 hours daily: With an online business, there are no closing hours. Employees are not needed to manage the store. Rather customers can shop at any time leading to an increased profit.
Better opportunities for Marketing: Marketing can now be done easily through online tools such as email marketing, social media marketing, pay-per-click ads, search engine marketing. This implies that online stores offer you an avenue to reach more customers using various tools.
Quick and Easy to use: An online store provides a lot of conveniences when shopping. It is easier to locate products by navigating or just searching for them. In addition, potential customers do not need to have so much expertise in order to use online stores.
Importance of Having Your Online Shop
There are so many benefits of having your online store. They include the following:
A more personalized and direct communication system with your customers
A higher level of customer retention and loyalty
Access to customer’s data such as email, browsing/purchase history.
Shapes the image of your shop or business
Help your shop to have a Unique Selling Point (USP)
Benefit from on-site promotions with more exposure
Conclusion
The internet is one of the greatest and most significant inventions in this modern age of technology. It provides a substantial channel to the market, which businesses can’t ignore. Ecommerce stores are now helping business owners reach more customers and increase profit on investment. One of the best ways to own your online store at a cheap cost is by selling on platforms like DG1.com. DG1 is a cloud-based business suite software designed for small and mid-sized businesses (SME's) that cannot otherwise afford the huge upfront costs and liabilities of enterprise digital systems.
