The Pros and Cons of Ecommerce

Physical shops are in decline and we are increasingly moving towards selling goods online. People often think that selling online is the obvious choice, but for some businesses, it might be better to sell your goods in the more traditional way. There are pros and cons to e-commerce, and you will need to look at them to decide whether it is the best route for you. These are some of the pros and cons of selling online.

The Benefits of Selling Online

There are a lot of benefits to selling your goods online. Firstly, it is cheaper and easier to set up. You won’t need to worry about finding retailers to sell your products, which will usually involve a lengthy process of pitching to buyers. Even if you are successful they will probably start out with smaller amounts. With online selling, you can get yourself set up and selling immediately.

You also remove the restrictions of opening hours and location by selling online. Customers can buy from you 24 hours a day, from anywhere in the world. Whereas in a physical shop, you can only reach a small number of people in the local area.

The general running costs of selling online are a lot lower. It requires less employees as you don’t need anybody to operate tills or show the goods to customers. This can be a real help in the early stages of a business when you are trying to keep costs low.

Flexibility is another key aspect of selling online. You will be free to work from home if you like, and the hours that you need to work are much more flexible.

The Benefits of Physical Premises

You might think that selling your goods online is definitely the best option but there are benefits to selling through a physical shop. If you are using a third-party website like Ebay or Amazon, they will take a portion of your profit on each product. You can avoid this by setting up your own shop but this brings its own issues with it.

There will also be more admin for you to do. You will have to write listings, put up pictures, and spend a lot of hours packaging up the products and posting them out. If you are selling through retailers, you can employ a company like http://www.jetexlogistics.com/index.php who will ship the goods for you.

Less customer contact can also be a issue. Depending on what your product is, customers might be reluctant to buy without seeing it first hand and being able to touch it. If you think that your product is something that people might want to try before they buy, then it’s best to sell it through retailers. People are also willing to pay more, on average, for products that they have seen up close. This means that by selling through a retailer, you could make more money without all of the hassle of having to package and post the goods. You will also have the benefit of passing foot traffic in a retailer, that could significantly increase sales.

So you can see, while online retail is taking over, it might not be the best choice for you.

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• eCommerce

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