8 Proven Advantages of Ecommerce Against Brick and Mortar

Depending on where you live, you might notice a curious trend, Many brick & Mortar heavyweights have disappeared from the retail landscape and more and more online stores are getting in the foot traffic game, using their technology and data savvy to wrest the advantage from their slow-to-adapt counterparts.

This trend should serve as a wake-up call to companies that have not yet developed a competitive e-commerce platform for their retail business.

If you currently have a brick and mortar business, and you haven’t yet made up your mind about taking your business online, now’s the time to get started.

While it’s true that over 90 percent of total sales in the world are made in physical store locations, e-commerce sales are growing at a 17 percent clip every year. That doesn’t even take into account all of the pre-purchase decision making consumers do online, which contributes to the nearly $2 billion of web-influenced sales that occur in physical store locations.

The solution may seem simple – open up an online store. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Not only do you need to have an e-commerce option available, but it needs to keep evolving with the needs of your customers. And it has to do so while being more than simply a place for customers to make a transaction – it should be a seamless extension of the brand experience.

Here are eight compelling advantages of ecommerce you would gain by taking things to the next level.

1. Ubiquity
Ecommerce is no longer just an alternative form of shopping; it’s the norm. Presently you can buy almost anything you want from anywhere in the world, and it keeps getting easier to do this.
The amount and types of available products and services available and sellable online keeps growing. Small businesses and individual entrepreneurs can sell clothes, jewellery and other handmade products.

Travel agencies can help travellers book their next vacation, from flights to hotels and rental cars. Innovators can crowdfund their ideas, projects and apps. And if you are reading this on your lunch hour, you can have food delivered to your office without having to pick up the phone or leave your desk.

Aside from engaging in retail, you can develop business-to-business relationships. You can start the dialogue through social media or email.

2. No more bottlenecks
If you want to stay competitive in your market, you have to move products and services faster. To close sales at a brick and mortar location, salespeople are dependent on walk-ins and cold calling to get things moving. And they’re at the mercy of the customer most of the time.

The idea that “the customer is always right,” or that the customer is always in charge, is one of the tenets of retail and customer service that vendors and salespeople used to worry about because it places them at a disadvantage, or decreases their leverage.

Nowadays, they only need to present their product information clearly and in a well-organized and timely fashion, and it’s the customer’s job to do the rest of the work. There’s no need to pitch, persuade, or engage the client on difficult, tiresome negotiations online.

3. Automation lowers your expenses
One of the most unmistakable advantages of e-commerce is the lowered cost. You can save so much money that you can give your customers heavy discounts and still turn a profit
From organic search engine results, pay per click advertising, and social media, there are many opportunities for cost-effective advertising.

Another way to keep costs down is to automate the various processes involved in ecommerce. Retail processes that customers go through, such as searching for products, checking availability, placing orders, shopping cart, checkout, and billing are familiar to shoppers these days.

Also, inventory management and other back-end operational tasks can be handled not only online, but also remotely via mobile devices.

4. Niche products and services
In the physical world, niche products may be difficult for customers to find. You used to require a telephone, telephone directory, and creative ways to look for the products you want. Some of the research just to get started was just too difficult. And sourcing on a national or international scale was impossible, for all intents and purposes.

Now, all you need is a search engine to find what you want. ecommerce has made niche marketing not only possible, but profitable. It is now possible to find, develop and even create niche markets for products.

5. You learn more, faster
Physical brick and mortar store simply cannot compete with an online e-commerce site in terms of monitoring your performance against your peers. Google Analytics and other SEO tools that can help you monitor your website traffic and ranking on search engines.

Online retail stores can keep tabs on how interested their customers are about their products, simply by checking how often a product’s page gets views. Also, online review sites allow you to track the performance of your business in handling customer service and sales.

The learning curve is much steeper for stores in the physical world who don’t operate online, and a lot of learning that new business owners do along the way takes longer. Having an online store, or at least having an online presence can mean the difference between survival and failure.

6. The internet has levelled the playing field for businesses
Small businesses can compete with larger ones by being cleverer and more internet-savvy. Anyone can get a business started with very little startup capital.

If you have something to sell, no matter how small, you have a fighting chance to get your product out to your target market. Just as importantly, your potential customers can find you easily as well.

7. You can take advantage of digital marketing opportunities

By being online, your business can create ads and post them on social media platforms, and spend very little money in the process. You can reach all of your customers, or target a smaller demographic by zooming in on a cross section of them based on parameters such as age, sex, location, and lifestyle.

Tools that allow you to build and manage your email mailing lists make it easier to reach out to your customers every time you have a new product to promote.

Marketing opportunities are simply far too tedious to engage in, without going digital, and virtually every modern advertising firm engages in digital marketing, with offline services as secondary marketing platforms.

8. Online shopping is safer in more ways than you think

Consumers new to shopping online might still have misgivings about online payment gateways, but security has come a long way, with 256-bit SSL certificates for web pages and their content. That means that information related to your customers’ transactions are hidden from prying eyes. Also, with Level-1 PCI compliance, your customers’ credit card information remains safe.

Brick and mortar stores have to worry about actual break-ins, where merchandise, money, instruments and equipment may be vulnerable. Also, the livelihood and personal safety of your employees may be in harm’s way. Online retail stores would not be forced to close due to theft or property damage.

In summary, the online marketplace is becoming the mainstay of retail, and this seems set to render the traditional brick-and-mortar stores as a rare alternative for online shoppers.