Before starting a business, we are mostly baffled with a question of arranging high funds and heavy business model to implement.
A decade back, this problem was a hindrance to many new business start-ups and entrepreneurs, but not anymore. With the advent of e-business and e-commerce, it became easy for many business owners to overcome the drawbacks of traditional way of doing business.
We hereby mention the drawbacks of conventional business model which have been now catered by e-commerce platforms:
Less variety of displayed products: Earlier when people used to visit your shop, you had to show the working of the product that you sell. Sometimes, even showing all the variety was not made due to lack of availability or due to human error. With E-commerce, it is made easy to show all the available varieties of the product. You need not fall into the hassle of un-assembling the products every time to every new customer.
The customers can now browse all the available product varieties across the line and choose the best suitable to the customer.
Keep inventories out of control: It is a hassle to manage and count all the inventories on the day to day basis for a business owner working with a very little staff. This eats up a lot of time and tracking becomes difficult.
E-commerce has added functionality of updating the inventories on timely basis. As and when the user places and receives an order, the availability of stock is updated on the e-commerce site.
Limited approach methods: When you have a physical store, you have limited ways to market your store. It digresses one from the core business. You can advertise only with conventional methods and cannot have a full proof system for marketing.
E-commerce gives you a platform to show case your business and make a reach to maximum number of people who would be really interested in buying the products from you. Hence this makes the availability of your business grow substantially.
Low Brand awareness: To establish a good business is one and to create a brand name for the same is other. To be known well amongst competitors in the markets, a good reputation and big brand name is must to retain the business in a better manner.
E-commerce gives you an opportunity to grow and develop your presence here which would thereby; make a position in the surfer’s mind. Hence, this online presence makes your business a big brand.
No brick and mortar system: To attract the customers you earlier had to think about aesthetics and location of your store. Prime locations always used to grab customer’s attention and would lure them to buy the product from you.
This biasness has now been managed using E-commerce platforms. One can easily choose a domain for the business and host his/her product online.
Time bound store facilities: Businesses run on timely basis. They have a drawback that they cannot work after certain hours. E-commerce makes it possible for the customers to make a purchase even after the scheduled working hours of the business.
Hence your sales are not dependent on particular hours only with E-commerce.
Logistics and transport management: logistics and transport are crucial for many industries. Companies come under the contract with warehouses (sub-stockists) to provide them for holding their goods. Now it has hopefully been removed in online mode rather than maintaining them in an offline business.
Hence in E-commerce, we do not have to worry about management and tracking of logistics and even their management.
Payment management: Usually when doing business offline, it is difficult to manage all the cash or cheques. Auditing those payment methods is a cumbersome task.
E-commerce sites have integrated payment gateways to serve better as people can trust the payment sites so that no fear of data loss or data hacking. E-commerce Softwares help you make easy payment modes using credit or debit card.
Get an insight of consumer with young happy behaviour: One needs to be very cautious while your potential customer is buying or no and if he is placing an order, we can track his/her details. We can get insights if that particular customer will buy from you in the future or not by generating analytical reports.
It is certain from the above mentioned points that, E-commerce almost eases out all your business related queries. It makes it possible for a small shop owner to reach the maximum amount of prospects at a minimal cost of almost nothing, compared to offline mode of doing business. These cloud based services are really helpful for people even who are naive. It doesn’t ask any expertise to practice. Thus it is the time to really take a leap towards digitizing.
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Misha holds a Master degree in Marketing and bachelor in computer application. She works as a content & marketing Manager at SoftwareSuggest. She likes travelling to hill stations and reading novels. Follow her on Twitter.