What Are The Benefits Of eCommerce?

Are you considering starting your own eCommerce business? If so, great, now is the perfect time to get started because worldwide eCommerce sales are growing incredibly fast.

In fact, e-retail sales in 2021 accounted for an estimated 19.6% of retail sales worldwide. This figure is only expected to grow.

With these sorts of numbers floating about, it isn’t a surprise to see most companies and self-employed individuals taking their business online.

While there may be risks, like there are with any business, there are a lot of benefits to look at too. 

In this blog post, you’ll find the benefits that come with eCommerce businesses.

While you might not experience all of the benefits of eCommerce, hopefully, we will give you the inspiration and motivation you need to take the challenge on.

The benefits we will look at should also help you on your entrepreneurial journey.

Let’s get stuck in, shall we!

What Is eCommerce?

Before we get into the list of eCommerce benefits, for those that don’t know what it is yet, it is important to understand exactly what eCommerce is. 

The word eCommerce is used to describe the term electronic commerce.

The term electronic commerce simply refers to a unique business model that effortlessly allows businesses and individuals to buy and sell services and goods online, over the internet. 

eCommerce businesses currently operate in four large market segments. These segments are psychographic, behavioral, demographic, and geographic.

Buying and selling through eCommerce platforms can take place on tablets, smartphones, computers, and a host of other smart devices.

The Benefits Of eCommerce

Now we all have a better understanding of what eCommerce is, we can start taking a look at the benefits that come along with it.

1. Low Financial Costs

One of the biggest eCommerce benefits is the low financial costs it requires to get started.

Businesses with physical locations and stores have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to set up their businesses.

Costs can include the rental of office and store spaces, signs, inventory, and basic equipment. Don’t forget, the owner might also have to employ staff on a daily basis. 

With an eCommerce dropshipping business, setup costs are usually much lower. Simple things like logo design and branding are much cheaper.

Even things like the virtual rent of a Shopify store are much cheaper than renting a physical location. 

On top of that, you might only need to hire staff when you reach a certain level. This can’t be done with most physical businesses, as you need people to run the business from the off.

2. Take Your Brand International 

Thanks to the international eCommerce market, business owners have the perfect opportunity to sell their products or services internationally.

Selling to customers around the world is a huge benefit of eCommerce, as it lets you find a large audience that you wouldn’t otherwise have.

For example, if you own a small store in the US, you will only find customers from your local area.

On the other hand, if you have an online store in the U.S. customers from around Europe can easily access your store and buy products. 

Obviously, this increased audience is massive for any business, as it helps grow the business quicker and broadens its marketplace incredibly. 

3. More Affordable Staff

Employing staff is usually one of the biggest costs a business has, but when it comes to eCommerce, it can be a lot cheaper. Easily one of the best eCommerce benefits, eCommerce lets us hire staff from anywhere around the world. 

Virtually outsourcing your work, you can employ staff members from countries where the cost of living is a lot cheaper. This will then reduce your costs and increase profits. 

You will also find that by running an eCommerce business, you won’t need as many staff members full stop. You won’t need as many staff members as you won’t have a full location to manage.

Likewise, you also won’t have to employ anyone at launch because you can run the business yourself. Therefore, you can start employing staff as the business grows.

4. Stay Open 24/7

Another huge advantage eCommerce has is the ability for businesses to stay open 24 hours a day.

Thanks to advertising systems like Facebook Ads, your business can attract customers from any part of the world at any time of day.

Whether it be 10 pm or 3 am, customers can pay you a visit and purchase any goods.

This is very different from physical businesses that usually operate between the hours of 8 or 9 am to 10 to 11 pm. 

Being open 24/7 gives your business a competitive edge over the competition and ensures busy customers can still use your business. 

All you need to do to keep your business open 24/7 is automate your systems.

5. Easier To Show Off Your Best Sellers

ECommerce businesses make life a lot easier when it comes to showcasing your best products. Thanks to simple display features, you can easily show off the products you want customers to see. 

Technically, the same can be done in-store, but looking at a simple catalog online is much easier than trawling through the aisles and shelves in a physical location.

Aside from making bestsellers easier to see, eCommerce allows you to specifically retarget your audience with products.

This can be done through advertising, good product photography, and email marketing.

6. Create Personalized Shopping Experiences

A benefit of eCommerce that some people seem to miss is that you can tailor and enhance your online stores landing pages to suit a specific audience.

Creating personalized landing pages for different groups of customers gives you a much better chance of capturing and enticing people to look at certain products, potentially leading to them making a purchase.

By doing something so simple online, you are completely removing the need to nurture the customer the second they come through the door, which is exactly what you have to do to entice customers into a physical location. 

All the hard work to entice customers can instead be done in advance and automated so that you don’t have to worry about nurturing customers ever again.

7. More Impulse Purchases

Studies have shown that online shoppers are much more inclined to partake in impulse purchasing than individuals shopping in person.

This can be played on massively by eCommerce businesses that can cleverly play with human emotions to encourage impulse buys.

Most eCommerce businesses do this by using professional, vibrant images on their website and by utilizing scarcity tactics.

Scarcity tactics can come in the form of countdown clocks and limited quantity listings.

Both of these things work because they cause panic amongst people who are concerned they won’t be able to get the same product later. 

8. Better Customer Experience

Keeping customers happy is absolutely crucial to running a successful business whether it be online or a physical store. Thanks to eCommerce, keeping customers happy is generally a lot easier. 

The reason for this is quite simple. Being able to shop online without leaving the comfort of their own home makes customers feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable as they shop.

This is particularly the case when compared to stores that hassle their customers the second they walk through the door.

Being forced to interact with employees about a current promotion or being asked about their experience so far are two things that easily put customers off.

9. Handle More Orders

The final benefit of running an eCommerce store, especially a dropshipping business, is being able to process a much higher volume of orders.

As your business starts to grow, you can employ staff members who will help process orders quickly, so you can do more at a cheaper cost than owning a physical location.

The beauty of dropshipping is that you also don’t have to store the physical products. Therefore, you will never have to worry about stock levels and control.

In physical locations, you will have to deal with storage issues related to stock control and long queues as a result of not meeting customer demand.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, that concludes our list of the biggest benefits of eCommerce.

As you can see from our list, there are plenty of impressive benefits that make eCommerce businesses well worth the investment in terms of time and money. 

While these benefits aren’t guaranteed, with hard work, dedication, organization, and patience, there’s no reason why most, if not all of them, are achievable. 

Now you’ve been through this post, we hope you have a positive perspective of why eCommerce is the business to get into and have maybe even started thinking about how you could do so.