Five easy reasons to choose e-commerce

Publication Date: 2007-01-23

Article category: e-Commerce

The 'e' in e-Commerce stands for easy.

Having worked in both traditional bricks and mortar retailing and on-line retailing, I've got to say the on-line version is much easier.

I know a lot of good creative, customer service oriented retailers who shy away from on-line retailing, due to either a lack of knowledge or the sort of scare stories the Sunday papers thrive on. This is a shame because it is exactly these experienced, customer focused, careful business people who could enjoy and reap the rewards of an on-line store. Thats why I've created a list of five ways that on-line retailing is actualy easier and safer than it's bricks and mortar equivalent.

1. It's Cheap.

OK, lets not mess around, this has to be one of the big advantages of e-commerce. The reason you get great deals on-line is the costs and overheads of the retailers is so low. If you already own a shop, you could be on-line and trading for under £1000! Now apart from taking a pitch at the local car boot sale where else could you get another outlet or revenue stream from for that price? Plus as you grow your costs will rise at a fraction of the rate that your turnover increases. You also get out of wearing fingerless gloves and shouting your marketing slogans at your customers on cold wet mornings, which has to be a good thing!

2. It's Safe.

No really, it is. I know you all think you'll get ripped off by dangerous gangs from Nigeria, but the truth is with the application of the same caution and common sense you use in your shop, you would be very unlucky to lose money. The fact is you're safer dealing on-line than face to face, because with every transaction you take you will know:

• The customers name
• The customers address (or the address to which the card is registered)
• If the card is stolen or in any other way flagged as cautionary by the bank
• If the delivery address is blacklisted in any way.

This is more than you know about your face to face customers, plus all the information is passed in encrypted form using military grade encryption.

Plus, no shop-lifters, ever. (Now thats got to have put a smile on your face).

3. It's Simple.

If you're already a good retailer you already know 95% of the skills needed to run an on-line store. Remember at the other end of the internet connection is a person, just like the ones you've got walking around your store, and the buying habits and retail psychology is just the same.

The actual administration of the store should be simple, and you should discuss this aspect with your e-commerce provider during the set up. The level of control you want will govern the knowledge and technical skills you require, but for the majority of on-line retailers once the store is set up a simple form based administration package should suffice. If you currently use stock control or accounting software then the skills should be easily within your grasp.

However, do not under estimate the workload required to get your stock catalogue up loaded to the website. Every item you want to sell online will have several pieces of information associated with it that need to be entered by hand, either by you, your employees or your e-commerce provider. This will take time and must be done carefully, but once done new stock can easily be added as it comes in.

4. It's Big.

The internet is big, very very big. We are now talking about billions of web pages, a typical search on a common topic in Google may get over half a million possible pages and nobody looks past page three. So lets face it you don't stand a hope.

Well yes and no. If you decide to take on Amazon on a face to face fight over the paperback novel market then you'd better have very deep pockets, and you'll still lose. But on the internet it's all about niches. To put it simply you need to find a market that you can dominate, or at least thrive in. This means specialising in a product range, a service provision, a method of delivery or a customer model that is not over supplied. This is often refered to as 'The Long Tail', and is defined by internet giant Amazon as "We sold more things today that we did not sell yesterday than the things we did sell yesterday" Erm, confused? OK what this means is if you add up all your sales from top selling lines and slow selling lines, by volume you sell more slow sellers than top sellers if you have a big enough catalogue. Providing you have low overheads (see It's Cheap) and your storage costs are low, which yours are. No really they are, if this is an extension to a bricks and mortar business you already carry stock, it's there staring back at you across your sales floor, so you have no additional storage costs, you just sell the stuff you already have a bit quicker.

The point is don't worry about all this stuff. If your e-commerce provider is worth his or her salt they should be able to find your niche, examine the competition, develop a strategy to over take the competition and implement the marketing necessary to do it.

5. It comes with a Map.

Imagine if every time your customers went out shopping they called you to say what they were looking for, how much easier would it be to stock the right things at the right time in the right quantities. Well this is what the internet gives you, complete records of who looked for what, where and when. It doesn't take all the risk and venture out of it, after all it doesn't tell you what people will look for next week, month or year, but it does give you some pretty big hints.

But wait there's more. Now imagine that every customer who came in your shop was wearing a tracking device that told you where they cam from, what they were looking for when they came, what they looked at while they were in your shop and what they thought about buying but then put back. Wow, how useful would that be? A line not moving? see if people are looking at it, if so maybe it's not presented well, if they're not looking at it maybe it's in the wrong category, or perhaps it's just the wrong line. People putting a product in their basket but then leaving the basket without paying? Check the price in your competition.

With this sort of analysis, it takes time to spot the tends, to get your eye in. But once you can you have so much control and feedback.

6. It's Unavoidable.

OK, I said 5 ways it's easier, but I'm afraid number 6 is just a fact. Sorry, but the Internet is here, it's not going away and you will either have to embrace it or go the same way as the grocer who ignored the coming of the supermarkets, remember him? No and nor does anyone else.

Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative.

The Internet is not a threat, it's not your competition, it's not something to moan about. It's your opportunity to sit down at the same table as the big boys, get a bite of that shiny apple. The small agile business can find a niche on the internet, with their lower costs they can utilise smaller niches that cannot sustain a larger business, they can take advantage of fleeting transitory niches that the bigger retailers take too long to gear up for. The Internet allows small businesses to do well what they have always striven to do, grow into bigger businesses.

Article Author: Stuart