For the majority of firms, this year has truly cemented the need for Ecommerce choices. When COVID-19 initially arrived, many businesses were compelled to close their doors to customers, and very few were prepared to sell their products online. Many companies have been able to change course, but many others who were running on such slim margins to begin with were forced to close.
The benefit of being able to obtain what you require from the convenience of your home has been made clear to the globe by COVID-19. In just a few short months, we have witnessed the online sale of automobiles, virtual tours of homes, and the standardisation of contactless delivery. Many of these shifts are continuing as economies begin to expand once more.
After surviving the lock-down, now is a fantastic moment to start considering how to future-proof your company. You’ll be happy you’re prepared to sell your goods and carry on with business despite stringent social constraints if the second wave does arrive.
If you’re still not persuaded, here are five factors that every product-based company should take into account, pandemic or not:
1. Social Distance Evidence
We all hope that the era of social isolation is coming to an end, but it’s always a good idea to prepare for the worse. Many forecast a second wave to hit in the fall or early next year, which would force us back to our houses and our tight social seclusion practises.
If this is the case, online sales will pick back up because most of us prefer to have our purchases delivered to us. Your consumers won’t have to be concerned about placing themselves in danger by doing business with you in a public place thanks to an online store. Moreover, by avoiding customer interaction, your team can concentrate on completing online purchases.
At the beginning of the year, we observed a large number of businesses using social media to keep in touch with their clients. In order to complete orders, this required publishing pictures of their merchandise and corresponding with clients via DMs or the phone. While many firms were able to survive using this strategy, the absence of automation reduced their productivity and ultimately constrained the number of clients they could service. Additionally, it limited customers’ ability to buy outside of typical business hours, preventing them from doing so while lounging on their couches in the evenings while watching Netflix—a surprisingly popular time to shop!
2. Outstanding Return on Investment
The cost of developing a new e-commerce website is one that many companies are reluctant to incur. But it becomes obvious when you consider the ROI!
An Ecommerce website is substantially less expensive to set up and maintain than a physical and mortar storefront. Of course, the first setup will be the most expensive, but after that, many Ecommerce systems offer reasonable monthly rates and are simple to upgrade and maintain internally by current personnel with a little training. Then, if funds are available, you can increase your marketing budget in order to use Google advertisements or social media platforms to reach additional clients. The emphasis being on order fulfilment and customer support results in much lower workforce requirements for an online store.
Owners of brick and mortar businesses must pay monthly rent, hire more employees, and rely on walk-in clients to make sales. Although marketing can be done online, the ultimate step still involves inviting a customer to come into your store to make a purchase. By advertising with the goods already available to be put to a virtual shopping cart at that same moment, you may fully eliminate that step.
When compared to the expense of maintaining a storefront, an e-commerce website quickly pays for itself and can become a huge source of future income.
3. Your shop is constantly open
The automation of an internet store is its best feature. Customers are free to browse at their convenience, add goods to their cart, and complete purchases at any time, any day of the week. Customers don’t have to wait for employees to show up or for a store to open. They simply browse at their own pace, confident that any purchases they make will be delivered within the predetermined shipping window.
This gives you as a business owner a lot of freedom and flexibility because you know that even when you’re not there, your company is still operating. Instead of opening and maintaining a storefront, handling cash, and engaging with consumers, your staffing needs now centre on completing orders and attending to customer care requests.
4. Improve your knowledge of your clients.
You may discover quite a bit about your customers’ purchasing habits as a brick and mortar store owner. Mostly things like the most frequent shopping times, the typical price of an item, and basic demographics. They all rely on watching actual people in action.
With an e-commerce website, you have access to a wealth of information about your clients, your site, what people are looking for online, and where they are coming from. All of this information is automatically tracked and is always at your disposal. incredibly useful indicators including the most popular products, the busiest days and hours for completed transactions, patterns of shopping cart abandonment, stagnating products, and pages that don’t provide results. Detailed demographic information on your customers is, arguably, the most crucial data you can acquire because it will help you target your marketing efforts to the people who are most likely to make purchases and keep coming back.
In a physical business, you have no means of understanding why a customer departs without making a purchase, what they were doing just before leaving, or whether they had previously shopped with you. There are, of course, ways to keep track of some of these things, but again, doing so depends on staff observation or gathering the data at the moment of purchase, which only provides you with a limited view into your customers’ shopping experiences.
Source: online business Singapore , how do you start your own business online
