5 Major Benefits of Ecommerce for Businesses

Transcript: You need an ecommerce store.  Well, if you’re just a random internet user, I guess you don’t. But if you’re a business owner who sells stuff…you really need to have an ecommerce website. 

Look at Amazon as an example. In 2018, small to midsize businesses in the U.S.

sold over 4000 items every minute through Amazon. Sure, you don’t have to sell your products on Amazon, but that statistic just shows how huge ecommerce has become over time and the growing importance of ecommerce in modern business.  There are so many benefits of ecommerce for businesses, and I’m going to explain five of them in this video. 

1. Extended hours

After a long day of work at your physical store, you want to go home. So you do. But with an ecommerce store, you can keep selling while you’re at home curled up with a good book and a hot cup of chamomile tea.  I guess that’s oddly specific. But the point is, with an ecommerce store, you can sell your products all day, every day.  So if someone can’t make it to your physical location during your operating hours, they can head over to your website and make their purchase. 

2. Relatively low cost

Another great benefit of ecommerce for businesses is the low cost.  If you don’t have a physical store and focus solely on your ecommerce store, you eliminate a lot of expenses like rent, utilities, and the cost of a large staff to maintain the store.  If you want to sell on your website, you do have the expense of website maintenance. You don’t want your website to list the wrong items, glitch when people try to make a purchase or crash entirely.  If you plan to use online marketplaces like Amazon or Shopify, you also introduce costs for each platform.  But again, you probably don’t need a huge staff, and you have the opportunity to sell a lot more products than you would with just a physical store. 

3. Remarketing

One thing you definitely can’t do with a physical store is remarket your products to every customer who browses your shop.  Remarketing is a form of digital advertising that places your ads in front of people who have previously interacted with your ecommerce store.  In a physical store, people can browse, interact with your products, and then leave without a trace.  The impact of ecommerce is that you can use remarketing to serve ads to people who were already interested enough in your products to look at them online.  You can use ads featuring sales or coupons to sweeten the deal and close the sale. 

4. Targeted suggestions

In a physical store, sometimes you might see displays with related items, like chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers for s’mores.  You can do this on an even bigger scale with an ecommerce store.  If someone views a certain product on your site, you can include a spot that shows them other related items people are searching for, or other items people have purchased.  Maybe someone wants a fancy toothbrush, and you show them that people who also purchased that toothbrush bought toothpaste and floss. Now that person buys toothpaste and floss, and you’ve just upsold a customer without having to do any extra work.   If you track browsing history on your site, you can make suggestions to people based on things they’ve recently searched, too.  These little suggestions can have a big impact. I can’t stress enough the importance of ecommerce in modern business. 

5. Broader customer base

Lastly, an ecommerce store removes the physical boundaries of a brick and mortar location.  With proper ecommerce optimization, people across the world can find your online store and make a purchase. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Texas and the customer is in Vermont. They can make a purchase on your ecommerce store from the comfort of their own home. Or their car.

Or their office. If your site uses up-to-date search engine optimization tactics, people will be able to find your business without ever having interacted with you before.  You don’t need to pay for them to see ads or spam their inboxes with sales emails until they get tired of your company.  As long as your site is optimized well, and they search for something you offer, they can find you. 

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How’s that for the importance of ecommerce?

I hope I’ve convinced you to utilize ecommerce for your business.  As the world becomes more digital, it’s important for your business to keep up with demand.  If you want to learn more about ecommerce, we have a ton of resources on the WebFX blog.  And as always, subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest in digital marketing.