eCommerce has a great history since it was invented back in May 1989, when SequoiaData Crop introduced Compumarket, the first internet-based system for eCommerce.

In the emerging global economy, eCommerce has increasingly become a vital component of business strategy and a solid catalyst for economic development.

The continued expansion of eCommerce could lead to downward pressure on inflation through increased competition, cost savings, and changes in sellers’ pricing behavior.

From startups to small and medium-sized businesses right through to huge brands, there are a large number of companies that can benefit from their online store, where they can sell their products/services.

At the same time, the speedy influx of new technology in the retail experience has driven consumers of all ages to expect a convenient and connected experience that seamlessly aligns with their everyday lives.

If you’re still on the fence about launching your eCommerce store, you may ask yourself why eCommerce is getting attention around the world.

This article is where you’ll find 13 benefits of having an online store as well as knowing the importance of eCommerce…

Why eCommerce Is So Important for Your Business?

The Importance of eCommerce—13 Benefits:

1. eCommerce Helps You Reduce Your Costs

To have an online store it is not necessary that you have all your products presented in a physical space. In fact, there are different companies that operate online where they only show all their inventory through their electronic commerce platform.

This implies not only saving by not needing a rental or purchase of premises but also everything that involves electricity, the Internet, etc. Or if you want to have one so that customers have a physical space, it does not have to be as large as everything you offer. In either case, you will be reducing your costs.

⭐ For example, you can own a well-built online store in no time with costs that don’t exceed $150 yearly with Ecwid, the leading online store builder. What do you think? Take a quick look

2. eCommerce Helps Businesses Go Global

Directly related to the previous point, this fact allows you to put your products for sale anywhere in the world. They will not have the explicit need to travel to where you are to see what you have to offer.

If you are running a physical store, it will be limited by the geographical area that you can service, but owning an eCommerce website will give you the opportunity to increase your outreach. It’ll offer your products & services to customers around the whole world, regardless of the distance and time zone.

Furthermore, this eliminates all kinds of geographical and linguistic tango barriers. Your e-commerce translated into different languages ​​will allow them to buy from different countries.

With eCommerce and mobile commerce as well, the entire world is your playground. Your products or services are within reach for a lot of customers who might be sitting in another corner of the world.

So, if you want to grow your online business worldwide, it is a great idea to start creating your own online store and localize it in different languages with international eCommerce software.

3. eCommerce Can Be Done With Fewer Overheads & Fewer Risk

Starting an online store can mean significantly lower start-up costs compared to a brick-and-mortar retailer. The retailer or the online business owner doesn’t have to take into consideration the high expenses of shop rental, hiring a salesperson to woo the customer, utility bills, security measures, etc.

This, in turn, will enable you to sell your products at competitive prices. Also, having an online store with price intelligence software enables you to enjoy increased profitability with less risk.

Related: The State Of Retailing Online 2019: Omnichannel, Marketing, and Personalization

4. eCommerce Can Broaden Your Brand & Expand Your Business

Having an eCommerce store can be used to broaden your range of products/services for sale, expand your business, bring you more customers, and diversify your sales. It’s the ideal way to take your brand from a traditional brick & mortar store to an innovative, well-loved one.

With eCommerce, there is no need to have more than one branch, just one singular online store allowing you to fully reach customers without having to worry about moving locations, you can just manage your online business from home.

It’s important to mention that, eCommerce will be helpful for Both B2C and B2B businesses to boost their brand awareness in the market.

5. eCommerce Offers Better Marketing Opportunities

Your eCommerce site is the best marketing tool that you would ever have. Thanks to the internet, now anyone can market through online tools like social media marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click ads, and SEO help you build very useful links with marketing automation.

For example, with good SEO, your online store will appear in the top results of SERPs. Also, social media networks will provide you with a platform to engage and build trust with your customers through reviews and ratings, as well as keep them informed with regular posts about your products and offers.

Download the B2C Retail Benchmark Report, Q1 2020, and find insights into the 2019 trends in consumer behavior on retail and brand websites and the best marketing channels in 2020.

A Figure Shows the YoY Comparison of Retail eCommerce Traffic Sources

Related: Ecommerce Marketing in 2019: The Definitive Guide

6. Your Online Store Will Stay Open 24*7/365:

Also, one of the great importance of eCommerce that eCommerce retailers can enjoy is store timings are now 24/7/365 as the eCommerce stores are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, compared to the regular stores.

In this way, retailers can increase their sales by boosting their number of orders. However, it is also helpful for customers as they can purchase products & services whenever they want no matter whether it is midnight or early morning.

7. eCommerce Is Easier & More Convenient

People’s lives are hectic; getting to a physical store means taking a lot of time and effort. So, starting an online store that means you can fit into your customers’ busy lives, making the products they want accessible when they want them.

The enjoyable thing about eCommerce is buying options that are quick, easy, convenient, and user-friendly with the ability to transfer funds online.

“In online shopping, your item is always one click away as opposed to physical shopping where you may be forced to wait for weeks or months before an item you ordered is available,” says Heritage House, which sells boy suits online.

Thanks to eCommerce’s convenience, consumers can save lots of time, and effort as well as money by searching for their products easily and making purchases online.

8. Personalize Your Shopping Experience

If there is one of the clear advantages of having an online store, is to be able to know (and monitor) what your consumer does. Physically, it would be very uncomfortable for a potential buyer to enter your store and you were all the time behind him asking what he wants or why he does not buy your product.

eCommerce allows you, for example, to know at what point in the process you left the purchase halfway and even remember that you left it in the middle by sending an email.

This, in addition, can help you to improve your shopping experience for another occasion: shortening the steps to complete the order or offering those buyers products with similar characteristics.

9. Improve the Image of Your Business

Among the advantages of having an online store, there is no doubt that it also includes improving the image of your company. Offering a good online sales platform to users will give your company a great corporate appearance.

Not only will it prove to be up-to-date, but it will also show interest in facilitating consumer purchases. For example, it prevents you from traveling to the physical place of sale and allows you to compare prices from home.

In addition, thanks to what we have mentioned as loyalty or feedback, you can even implement improvements in your products that customers will value positively

10. Easily Receive Feedback on Products

Have you always wanted to know what consumers think of what you sell in order to offer more or improve it? Well, the online store will allow you to receive that feedback so you can implement improvements in your business. Through star ratings, with the possibility of leaving comments.

In addition, the customer will feel heard after their purchase. There is no better way to thank you for your confidence in purchasing your company’s products. What’s more, if you offer quality you will have nothing to worry about.

Enabling a direct channel where others see what they can expect from a given asset is a great public exercise of trust in your business.

It’s a lucky day for business owners to have a platform like Ecwid to create their online store without programmers and designers, sign up now and start creating your online store!

11. Maximum Security of Transactions

Today, operating over the Internet is almost safer and more reliable than doing it in a physical store. From your home, without anyone spying on your secret number or your credit card. Of course, the eCommerce website must have an SSL certificate.

This certificate not only allows safe browsing on the web. In addition, it keeps the data encrypted, in such a way that it is totally safe to enter keys and passwords.

This will not only be necessary for the customer’s business account but to use of even more sensitive data such as credit card information with complete peace of mind.

It’s worth mentioning that, 33% of eCommerce experts identified security, mobile payments, and mobile apps as the most important investments in 2019. Security will continue to be one of the greatest focuses of eCommerce.

With changes in technology, user behaviors, and shopping patterns, sellers will have to provide solutions to ensure the trust and safety of shopping processes.

Check the Full Report: eCommerce Trends 2020: The 7th Edition | Divante

12 Ready for the Trade of the Future

This is another important detail of thinking about the long-term of your business. Search patterns and consumer spending, the advancement of technology, and the latest statistics estimate that by 2040, 95% of purchases will be made through the internet.

Therefore, we are not only talking about a trend of the present but also about what the commercial relations of the future will be. And just as if you are not on the Internet you do not exist, if your business does not sell on the Internet it is limiting its sales in a massive way.

13. Increase in Sales

Everything seen above is focused on one thing: being able to increase your sales. At the end of the day, your business is based on being able to sell more, and therefore it is what it is aimed at.

All the previous points contribute to the fact that the tenth and last advantage is that there is an increase in the purchases of your products. Reaching more customers, improving your products thanks to comments, or being available 24 hours a day will undoubtedly contribute to all of this.

Note: you can easily start your online store using Systeme.io now!

The Role of eCommerce in Business and Selling in 2022:

We could see that the role of eCommerce has begun to be very important since the COVID-19 pandemic because, during the lockdowns, everyone has changed their ways of shopping and started to get almost everything online!

Here is the role of eCommerce in business and selling:

• Point of purchase marketing or point sale: It is more than displaying items in ideal areas, with eCommerce you can level up your POS systems such as sales analytics, comprehensive inventory management, 24/7 customer support, and payment processing.
• Lead generation: eCommerce responds to the changes that happen as the consumers change and evolve their needs.
• Data gathering and analysis: To understand your customers, you need to gather data to help you better understand them, therefore, you need to integrate an analytics platform into your eCommerce website. It’s always easier when you gather data and analyze it with a tool, that’s why Data Cubed is the right tool to save money and gather data.
• eCommerce and content marketing: Because today’s customers expect more from businesses and brands, you need to have helpful information beyond those available on your products page. You need to increase digital customer engagement by attracting, informing and entertaining them.

The Top 5 Sucess Factors of eCommerce:

The importance of eCommerce for your business can’t be denied, and therefore, check the top 6 factors in eCommerce success:

• High-quality products are important in order to keep your customers loyal to your business, so make sure you procure your goods from trusted suppliers.
• The product pricing is important, you don’t want it to be too low for customers to doubt the quality of it or too high that they can’t afford to buy it.
• Make your store accessible on many devices such as mobile devices. You can do things to make your online store viewed better on mobile devices like optimizing your images and using responsive design.
• A first impression lasts forever, so make sure you have a good-looking website and make the best eye-catching designs if possible.
• Lastly, security is a top priority. It is one of the main concerns with eCommerce for consumers and business owners, as their personal and financial information is being handled online.

Therefore, make use of SSL to secure your customers’ online shopping experience. This will be not only be necessary for the customer’s business account but to use of even more sensitive data such as credit card information with complete peace of mind.

SSL certificates can be either single-domain, low-cost, or cheap wildcard SSL, multi-domain SSL, or code signing certificates. It depends upon the targeted domains and subdomains that require a particular type of SSL certificate.

Final Word

In general, it’s typically pretty easy, low-cost and low-risk to start an eCommerce business. So long as you pick your products/services wisely, have an appropriate business plan, picked up the right partner to help you build your own store, there’s plenty of potential for passive income and high ROI over the long term.