eCommerce — Pros & Cons

eCommerce is a must have all over the globe for a successful business but there are advantages and disadvantages to point out if you are thinking about starting your own e-store.

Firstly will start with the advantages:

1. Speed up the buying process and save time for customers

It literally speeds up the buying process when someone thinks of buying one specific product from the physical store which is very far and not easily available. For example — a customer is not able to find a particular product from the store and even by visiting other chained stores, this is where eCommerce come into a scene with a quick response over the requirement by even helping to purchase the particular product without wasting time.

Such type of buying process can help you to reduce the traveling time and helps you with choosing plenty of options which you might be looking forward to getting your own one.

2. Makes wider options for customers than to buy products from physical store

Mostly store chains don’t have the same products out and the customer may need to go from one store to another to buy a specific item. eCommerce makes a solution in this case.

3. Saves costs for the business owner for employees that can be replaced with virtual support

One of the factors which can benefit in eCommerce is that by hiring employees is affordable. You can choose to outsource your tasks to your virtual assistants in different countries.

4. Easy to retarget customers. For example, with coupons, left e-mail addresses, google search analysis

A customer can receive a coupon after checkout, e-mails with sale information and much more. This technique can be utilized to easily get your customers back to your store.

5. Easy to encourage impulsive purchases

Impulse buying is one of the techniques where it works as a common behavior of customer’s perception towards a particular product. It is related to the control of human psychological behavior which is like some people possess personality traits that can be said as impulse buying tendencies.

6. Available reviews and recommendations

Recommendations give value to your business and make your business more reliable for the customer.

7. Available detailed information about the product

Every customer looks for more details over the products so that it can help them to take a wise decision over their purchases. It is one kind of description which really helps a lot and expresses about any particular product.

8. Possibility to lower costs due to cutting physical store rent, staff, store design etc.

It is one of the benefits which plays a very vital role over an eCommerce platform. In most of the case, physical retail stores have to pay a lot to maintain their presence in the market by paying rent or even if it’s own. There are several upfront costs which affect the store which is physically owned.

9. Quicker marketing because it is easier to pull eCommerce business into online marketing

You will not have to spend a lot to market your eCommerce business. There are many ways to pull your eCommerce business into this online world through various ways of online marketing which are quick and affordable.

10. Flexibility for customers to shop 24/7

It has more flexibility over the regular store because the services are available 24/7 and though helps to serve you the services at any time and any place.

11. Less store set up costs and quicker return of investments

When you talk about eCommerce it has less amount of investment as compared to the offline store, it takes a huge amount of investment to set up an offline store which affects your business a lot by lacking on the return of investments.

12. Quicker training for new employees because all information about products is already given

You will not have to hire a seller to express everything about the product or have to train them. This is what makes eCommerce more effective in cost deduction of hiring and training employees.

13. Less human errors on eCommerce owners’ side

In the path of eCommerce, you will never face the issue of human error because every product is updated with details on the site, so that makes easy for the customer to have more visibility over the products.

14. Possibility to easily compare products and prices

In store you might not be able to find the product and will not be able to compare it, even you might have to visit multiple shops to know the differences.

15. No geographical limits

It is like the customer will have access to the online store from anywhere in the world, which can be accessed globally.

Nothing can’t be completely perfect so here come the disadvantages:

1. Lack of personal touch

Sometimes no matter how good a product is explained and expressed you will not be able to sense the touch, smell, taste, and sound, through the dimensionality of a screen.

2. Insecurity about the quality

One of the biggest problems with buying things online is that you will have no guarantee of a products’ quality.

3. Possible late delivery due to third parties

When someone plans to order a product online they are never assured to get delivered as per time and there are plenty of issues which make such situation very delicate for customers.

4. Insecurity about personal information

E-commerce sites record all the important details about the customers which are to be kept secured because it includes details like name, phone no, address, and bank details.

5. Very competitive business because of the growth of online stores

Every single step into eCommerce is very competitive because the online market has been growing rapidly. One has to focus on the services and try to learn more about the strategies to makes their visibility global market.

6. Mostly there is no possibility to receive a sample or to try on

Physical stores get this advantage big time. E-stores can write a detailed description but in the meantime, there still can be issues.

7. Site crashes

This is one of the problems where you have to reckon the service to get online again because when you talk about eCommerce store, they face issue with servers sometimes which causes lots of problem on sales.

Takeaway

As as you can see there are more advantages but take note about problems that may happen with a poor internet connection, minutes to hours lost because of the site crashes, lost or delayed delivery.

In the end, eCommerce is a must nowadays for a successful business and you just need to understand whether you are ready for that or not. You will face difficulties no matter you have your online store or not, it’s just a matter of facing them and getting your name out.