Electronic commerce as it is fully known is the act of trading in services and products via the use of computer networks. E-commerce draws upon a myriad of technologies to operate, primarily the internet and various types of devices that can connect to it. There are numerous advantages to using this approach for customers and business. This is the reason it is becoming so vital to retail.
With e-commerce, one can overcome the barrier that is geographical location. If you are in possession of a physical shop, you will find yourself limited by the area that you can provide to. With e-commerce websites at your disposal, the barriers are removed and you can sell to a much wider audience.
A business can gain new clients with search engine visibility as well thanks to e-commerce. Physical retail operations are successful because of relationships and branding. Aside from these two driving forces, online retail also makes use of the traffic generated by search engines. It isn’t unheard of for people to follow a link in their results and find themselves on an e-commerce website that they weren’t aware of. For some businesses, this source of traffic can generate huge revenue for them.
One of the things that people love the most about e-commerce is the lower costs. Some of the ways that costs can be reduced with this kind of approach include using social media, organic search engine traffic, and pay-per-click ads as your main advertising channels. In terms of personnel, the automation of payments, billing, checkouts and other operational processes reduces the amount of employees that are needed to run an e-commerce operation.
The rise in e-commerce websites means that customers can generally purchase everything they need online and have it delivered. Searching for products online is much easier than browsing in a shop too. Some websites are even designed to memorise a customer’s favourites so that repeat sales are easier to achieve.
A lot of but not all shops are open 24/7. E-commerce however is constantly running. From the merchant’s perspective, this increases the number of orders that they can get. From the customer’s viewpoint, this is an always available and highly convenient option.
E-commerce is fast taking over the sales scene and it’s easy to see why. With convenience and potentially limitless opportunities, both consumers and providers alike, can benefit from a system like this.
If you would like to launch a new e-commerce website or want to introduce new features to an existing site you can ask our North East team for advice. At Web Consultancy we have experience with online stores of various sizes, from those selling a small selection to large sites with thousands of products in numerous categories.