Before you have started your own business or thinking about starting one in the future, have you ever thought about e-commerce and why it’s important especially these days ?!
Since the COVID19 pandemic crisis, the business world has changed a lot, many big sized enterprises took the pass into focusing more on e-commerce investments than brick-and-mortar businesses to adapt to the lockdown circumstances and stay on the competitive sphere.
Also, the 2020 business studies have shown that the e-commerce approach saved a lot of owner’s businesses from this pandemic crisis unlike those unfortunately who did not have a good e-commerce infrastructure and suffered a lot from the lockdown period due to rent, cost and wages.
at least they tried to solve this problem like wages, they had to do a downsizing and many people lost their jobs but unfortunately, the downsizing was not even enough for maybe one or two months and they had to shut down their businesses.
For example, you and your friend are going to live by a rainforest place and each one of you both is going to build a home for him/herself, you took into your consideration the rainstorm and made a good inclined shelter to save your place from a nature crisis unlike the other who didn’t care about this situation and when the rainstorm came he lost his place unlike you who made a good imagination about the future situation and you have been ready for it.
According to Webbiquity, the percentage of B2B marketers in e-commerce who expected their budgets to remain stable or increase plunged by 25% from March to April, Also the studies have shown that the dependence on e-commerce in the future percentage has been accelerated to be more due to the COVID19 event.
So let’s have a brief about the meaning of e-commerce and it’s benefits for you as a business owner, e-commerce marketing is about driving awareness and action towards your product or service.
In terms of online or e-commerce marketing and selling, these ads may come in the form of display ads, banner ads, or rich media ads.
Like a wheel, you need a well-established website as a hub and then social media platforms act as spokes being together achieving high efficiency.
You can take your social media posts a step further by creating shoppable content, which is content that enables visitors to buy right away. That can include anything from strategically placed display ads within a social feed to additional tags that take users directly to your website shopping cart.
These methods help you eliminate friction from the buying process, by the way, Instagram is the most suitable social media platform for e-commerce and Facebook is great for reviews and customer service opinions.
Benefits of e-commerce for business owners are:
1-Lower financial costs
An online business can save you a lot of financial obligations than physical store outlets
•you do not have to pay rent or buy a place for your business or make an expansion.
•Few labor members with limited tasks so you don’t have to pay too many wages.
•much more cost-effective than promoting offline These cost savings translate to lower prices for the consumer and more sales for the business for example Facebook ads & Google AdWords.
2-Available 24/7
•Selling online to customers at any time is possible, all they had to do adding the product into their shop cart unlike physical outlets, it could be available for 24 hours, you can’t be on vacation unless you have to pay for more costs.
3-Customer data
•You can easily collect your customer’s data without any type of violation on your website using short data forms and track their favorite marked products then use it for retargeting like email marketing.
4-Process a high number of orders
•Without any type of stress you can sell your products online unlike physical outlets when it’s crowded with customers, you put a lot of stress on your labor and might need to hire more labor to handle this problem because some of your customers will be unsatisfied.
5-Going global
•Being online can help you easily going abroad from your country, reach your customers anytime & anyplace, might be later an international brand and enter the international market competition which enhances your brand to be more strong, creative and highly competitive.
6-Grow through organic content
•Grow your business through organic content like blogs, images, videos, and popularity without paying a cent for Ads.
7-Easier to scale up
•Scaling up or growing your online store is very simple to do, All you need to do is buying more inventory and some digital content & tweaks and maybe more space for storage which is comparable needs lower cost than a physical store that requires more floor space (and the expense that comes with it!), employees and shelf space.
8-Provide safe business and instant transactions
•Online business is extremely safe because your transactions are made by visa, also avoiding fraud and steeling this might happen in your physical outlet.
9-Increase market share
•Being available mostly everywhere makes your customer base wider which has a turn in increasing your business market share.
10-Reach out to customers who do not like shopping
•Some people don’t like going into the mall or they don’t have enough time to shop, all they have to do is a simple click then the transaction is done.
Do not hesitate to go online, hesitation is defeat.