Are you thinking of creating your own online store? Are you still doubting that it might be the biggest decision you ever made in your business life? Well, an eCommerce website is a sure-fire way to make money online and even offline in this dispensation.
This article reveals to you ten of the most incredible benefits of selling online through an e-commerce website. Before we dive fully into the nitty-gritty of this article, you would like to know exactly what an eCommerce business is and what it stands for. Let’s get right into that.
What is an eCommerce store?
An eCommerce store is a website that was made specifically for online transactions (sale and purchase of products). It is a more cost-effective way for sellers to put their products out to a larger audience and make more sales without spending too much. Buyers also have this cost-effectiveness in mind when searching for products because they believe that online stores offer products at more discounted prices than land-based stores.
Ecommerce stores can come in two forms: a branded website or shopping applications. one thing, however, is common with both eCommerce platforms, it helps the business owner to sell any product online to more customers.
The world is gradually gravitating towards shopping online and with the advancements in technology and strategic push from social media platforms, we can expect the surge in eCommerce web development to increase. Ecommerce development is an important part of digital marketing for companies that plan to provide customers with the products that they offer and increase the sale value of their inventory.
Difference between an eCommerce website and a regular website
An eCommerce website allows you to run business processes and commercial transactions online without any hitch. The website is created specifically for sales. A regular website, on the other hand, is created for other purposes including giving a business an online presence, creating news and blogs, and several others.
There is a misconception that an eCommerce site is not as effective for targeting search engine results pages as regular blogs and business sites. With a good eCommerce development strategy, your e-commerce website can also target specific keywords that let you appear on search engines.
To help keep you on the right path, you should read our article on some of the deadliest eCommerce mistakes to avoid.
Advantages of eCommerce web development services
At the most basic level, an eCommerce store offers you some of the benefits that a physical store can never give to you. It proffers solutions to some of the limitations of brick and mortar stores. Below are some of the benefits of running eCommerce sites:
1. No closing time
Unlike a brick-and-mortar store where you have to close your business at certain hours of the day to reopen later, an internet store allows you to stay active and sell to your customers 27 hours a day and 7 days a week. This will also help you boost your online presence in several countries and time zones.
2. Sell to a wider range of customers
There are no limitations to what appears on the world wide web. There are no restrictions to locations that you can sell to unless you restrict the site yourself. eCommerce websites allow you to sell to online shoppers from several countries without increasing operating costs.
3. Increased understanding of customer behavior through feedback and google analytics
The best way to understand your customers is to see how they behave around your business. What better way to see that than to use metrics. Website metrics allow you to see how your customers behave around every product on your website. Putting your business online means that you can easily study customers’ reactions to your business.
4. Opportunities to break into new markets
With an online business, breaking into markets is as easy and rewarding as it comes. Although eCommerce businesses may have to niche down to make more impact, there are no limitations as to what you can sell and where you can sell it. With your eCommerce store, you can explore markets in other countries and industries.
You get to create multiple and new sales channels, giving you the unfair advantage to sell to anyone and everyone.
5. An online store helps you make upsells
Upsells are another way to get your online customers to make decisions that you want them to make. it also helps you determine the value that customers place on online shopping and the products that you offer. How do upsells work? It is simple. Assume that you put up a product and your customer clicks on it. On the description page, they see a few other products with text above them like, “You may also like” but these products may be slightly more expensive. You can determine the customer’s value by their choices on that page.
6. Helps you provide detailed information about each product
Compared to land-based stores where you may not be able to properly describe a product to a new customer, online marketplaces make it easy for the consumer to learn more about the product before making purchases. With your eCommerce website, you can properly describe every product and compel your website visitors to make a purchase.
7. Low maintenance and operation costs
Ecommerce websites don’t cost so much to maintain as much as land-based stores. The cost of running your website on the world wide web will never be as much as the rent you pay for a land-based store. Another way it helps reduce cost is that you don’t need to employ too many staff and storekeepers to keep your business active. It is all automated and ready to go.
8. Insights to customer data
Your eCommerce store can help you get a clear understanding and knowledge of your customers and potential customers. Putting you in a better position to get develop a digital marketing strategy that can help you target them for ads. Customers are more obliged to divulge their phone numbers, emails, home addresses, and other data to an eCommerce website that they already trust.
9. Easy inventory management
With just a few clicks, you can easily and comfortably control online sales, manage inventory, shipping, and many more. By using eCommerce web development tools you can easily study your store to know which products you need to restock and which ones have expired.
10. User-friendly features
Ecommerce stores come with user-friendly features like currency support, shopping cart, language, payment gateway, and calculator. Ecommerce business websites are created to make sales easier and less time-consuming. Whether you’re trying to run a small business, a multi-million dollar business or something in between, a fully functional eCommerce website will help you reach customers a lot easier.
Note that eCommerce doesn’t end on the website. Most eCommerce website owners also pay a lot of attention to mobile app development, depending on their business needs. This is because some buyers may prefer to have the application on their phones and computers instead of having to constantly log in through their web browsers.
What you need to start a successful eCommerce store
Starting an eCommerce store is similar to starting any other kind of website. To begin, you will need the help of professional website developers in your city to create a responsive eCommerce site for you. Below are some of the things the web developer will do for you:
- Domain name
- Hosting
- A responsive e-commerce website design
- A relevant theme
- Shopping cart
- Mobile-friendly website
- Social media integration
- Email marketing tools
- A friendly return policy
- Third-party shipment integration
Getting a domain name may sound like an easy thing to do but you have to bear in mind that any name you choose will stand as your business name in the eyes of your website users. It is advisable to use the name of your business. If this is your only business, you must come up with a name that you don’t intend to change anytime soon. This is because it takes a lot of work and loss of trust to move your entire website into a new domain.
Also, a good hosting plan is not the cheapest but one that can offer you enough security, uptime, speed, and several others. There are tons of hosting companies to choose from and it may be confusing to decide which one is best for you. We can help you with that.
Designing a responsive eCommerce store will depend hugely on the web builder you decide to use. While there are tens of them out there, we highly recommend Shopify, and here’s why.
Conclusion
ECommerce development is the new way to put your company and brand out there at very little cost. All your competitors are selling products online, so should you.
Reach out to Milia Marketing today and let us help you create an eCommerce site that not only gives your company a place to stay online but also assures you of a huge boost in sales.
