9 Benefits of eCommerce for Small Businesses & Entrepreneurs
We are living in a time where the internet is an integral part of our lives. Either it’s about choosing the right route for your destination, or, researching before purchasing something, the internet has covered it all. There is no denying the fact that we are moving towards a world that would be internet-dependent.
Especially during the times of COVID-19, when consumer behavior has witnessed a shift towards online shopping, it’s the right time for you to understand the effects and benefits of eCommerce to take your retail store online.
For someone who is not a regular internet savvy person migrating from offline to online can be a bit challenging. He might face challenges related to technological development, making online business strategies, and building a team of professionals to handle the business successfully.
However, with proper guidance and help from professional eCommerce consultants, it becomes a smooth migration process for them. It’s essential for you as an internet entrepreneur to choose consultant services based on your eCommerce business model. This will ease the overall process, and at the same time will help you better strategize things for your company.
Benefits of eCommerce for Small Businesses
Increased Business Reach
One of the most significant advantages of eCommerce is that it takes your business to people where it’s not possible for you to be present physically. By having an online store, you can sell your products/services to different locations from a single location. Moreover, if you opt for shipping solutions like Shiprocket, you will be able to ship across 29000+ pin codes in the country. So, while operating at a single location, you can serve customers all across the country. And not just country but the globe as well, as with Shiprocket, you can ship your products to 220* countries as well.
Increased Business Revenue
As your business reach widens, your customer base would grow, which will directly impact the number of sales. Thus, it will boost your revenue. With increased revenue, you can increase your product line, or invest more in marketing to capture more audience.
Search Engine Traffic
Reaching out to an audience by sending emails, contacting via phone, or pushing marketing messages can be a tiresome task. But, thanks to the search engine traffic, attracting people to the store has become much more comfortable. Through the means of an eCommerce business, you can land well in the search engines and start receiving recurring traffic to your store. Slowly, with the best eCommerce practices, you can convert these to a steady flow of customers for your business. You just need to make the website SEO-friendly to appear in the searches and attract more traffic.
Low Operational Cost
One of the benefits of having an online store is that you don’t have to build physical stores at all the locations where you want to sell your products/services, a single eStore would do that for you. This will keep your business operational cost on the lower side. So, while you have access to customers from all across the country, your operational cost is kept at a minimum.
Online Reputation Building
As a small offline business, when your customers appreciate your products/services, it’s tough for you to take advantage of those appreciations to influence new customers. But, with an online presence of your business, your customers can share their appreciation over social media profiles of your business. These reviews are publically available for everyone to see and this helps you to influence your new users to get converted to customers. However, for this to happen, you need to have your business accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other such social media platforms.
Flexible Timings
As you would be running your business online, you can remain open for new orders and your customers 24×7, which is not feasible in the case of an offline brick and mortar store. So, by going online, you can receive orders 24X7 and never let any opportunity slip away from you.
Reviews
Word of mouth is still one of the most popular marketing methods that can help any brand go viral overnight. While in a retail environment it is difficult to get customer reviews, it is much comfortable and hassle-free online. You can ask customers for reviews online and build credibility by publishing these on social media platforms and other sales channels.
Ease of Product Tracking
Tracking a product online can be one of the most significant advantages of an eCommerce business. You can quickly know the status of your inventory especially when you hand it over to the fulfillment company. This way you can see where the product is and when will it reach your customer.
Alternatively, you can also track products that will soon run out of stock in your inventory and stock more inventory as per the requirements.
Automated Product Delivery Solutions Available
One of the concerns of an online business could be about managing and handling the delivery of the products to their customers who are living in different parts of the world. For them, the good news is that there are various eCommerce logistics and shipping platforms available today that can deliver any product in any part of the world from anywhere as per the requirement.
Shiprocket is the most used courier package delivery platform used by the eCommerce companies in India because of its service quality, lower costs, and the ability to manage the most number of serviceable pin codes. With Shiprocket, you can deliver your products to 29000+ pin codes in India and 220+ countries globally using 17+ courier partners.
Conclusion
The advantages of eCommerce are manifold. It saves time and energy, and also you can sell your product or service to a huge audience all over the world with just a mouse click. Compared to other businesses, it is cost-effective. By minimizing the damage of operations and increasing sales through better reach, you can do wonders for your business.
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This is a very impressive post which gives me a lot of knowledge about the benefits of ecommerce for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Thanks for clearing out the benefits. We now start our online busineess and this infor was verz useful