Traditional small business models continue to thrive across the United States and across the world, but over the past decade or so, the rise of the eCommerce-only business model has taken center stage.
From Google to Amazon to Facebook, businesses that rely solely on virtual commerce have sought to overtake traditional business models.
In fact, the United States Census Bureau recently reported that nearly 60% of manufacturing revenue was due to eCommerce alone.
This is partly due to the fact that the Internet has provided so much reach into consumers’ lives, but it also has to do with cost.
Inventory and Ecommerce
In the past, a traditional retail business would often need to have physical inventory. This in and of itself was and is a difficult position to find oneself in.
When you go to Walmart or a similar store, it may seem that there is an endless amount of variety of products, but what you might not realize is that such department stores have to balance need and desire with how much inventory of a particular product is ordered and stored.
In retail locations like Walmart, you see what’s on the shelf, but you don’t see what is sitting in the back waiting to be sold. If a product doesn’t sell well, the store often has to eat the losses because it purchased inventory.
Ecommerce solves this problem by allowing virtual storefronts to only place orders from manufacturers when a consumer places an order.
Because there is less (or no) overhead, the eCommerce retailer doesn’t have to spend money on potentially wasted inventory in order to have products on-hand that a consumer may or may not want, ultimately resulting in savings for the customer and increased profits for the business.
Is Your Ecommerce Business Designed to Succeed?
When taking a look at an article from Kalio Commerce, a resource for eCommercePlatform solutions, you can see that it’s important to marry eCommerce with strategic and efficient web design in order to succeed.
The truth is that you can’t just throw any eCommerce system on the web and cross your fingers. Everything from web design to testing to analytics and metrics comes into play.
Is your site easy to browse? Can potential or returning customers easily find what they are looking for? How simple is it to complete a transaction? Is your ecommerce site optimized for mobile?
If you answered “no” or “difficult” to any of these questions; it’s time to rethink your approach to eCommerce.
Upgrade in Your Business’ Future
It’s also important to consider the amount of traffic your eCommerce site receives as it grows.
Many business owners choose to work with free or inexpensive software development products early on, but many of these are unable to handle large volumes of transactional traffic as business grows.
As a result, it would be a good idea to monitor your site’s transactions, loading times, conversion rates, and bounces rates to compare and contrast. This should provide you with enough knowledge to understand whether upgrading your eCommerce solutions provider is the best choice.
About the Author: Andrew Rusnak is an author who writes on topics that include eCommerce and digital marketing.