In Cre Loaded, we have been managing projects of digitalization of companies since we have developed online stores for a wide variety of clients and products.
In all this time, we have seen everything: successes, failures, real revelations and a long etcetera. A detail that almost always happens, is that the customer does not know what to expect in advance of your online store.
Therefore, we want to leave you with this list of advantages and disadvantages of online stores so that you can have more information before carrying out a digital strategy.
Characteristics of the Internet and online stores
The first thing we have to take into account is that online businesses have completely different characteristics from traditional businesses.
Many of the recipes that have worked for you in your physical store will not necessarily work for you on your website.
To highlight something important about Online Shops, we can stress that it is not necessary to have large quantities of stock to meet the demand of potential customers.
Disadvantages of online shops
Having a profitable eCommerce website is not an easy task. You have to have a broad notion of online marketing in general. That implies, that there are many factors to take into account and many things that you must attend to. Even if you have been working with your offline store for many years.
Concepts such as SEO, SEM, SMO and others should be part of your daily life.
Dependence on third parties: the success of your shop will often be linked to the quality of your hosting provider.
- Select a good quality one
- Investment in online advertising: you can have the best product, but if you don’t advertise, it will be like selling water in the middle of the desert. No one will ever know
- Transport company: no matter how excellent your website is. If your transport service takes 1 day longer than it promised, the sticks will rain down on you
- Competition is just a click away: people are already very used to surfing (and buying) on the Internet. The design, usability and accessibility of the site, are fundamental to give an impression of professionalism and confidence
- External payment method: unless you can sell cash on delivery, all other payment methods, will depend on an external manager. Whether it is the POS of a bank or cash register or PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.
- Purchases are not immediate: people surf many websites and compare before deciding. You must be the best option at that moment so that they choose your store and not your tab neighbor’s in the browser
- Advantages of online shops
- We have already seen some of the disadvantages (I’m sure there are many more), but to leave a good taste in your mouth, we leave you with the advantages, which are many more.
- Online stores operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so you’re selling all the time, all the time
- You can sell non-physical things. You can sell products that do not even require stock or transportation (digital books, music, applications, etc.)
- The advertising you do can be much more segmented and is completely measurable in its results
- Your market is the world. There are no borders to your online store. If you have your website well optimized, you can sell in any corner of the planet
- You can accommodate your product to the latent demand you can identify
- The system of an online store records the processes of buying and selling a business. This makes it easier to keep statistics and get feedback
- Reduction of logistic costs and adaptation of the stock to the demand
- Generation of loyalty actions: if you correctly support your store with valuable content from your profiles in social networks, you can generate a real community of ambassadors of your brand, which will help you generate a better online reputation as well as act as prescribers of your products.
- Equal opportunities: perhaps the most important advantage. If you do things right, your space is exactly the same as a multi-national one and you can compete as an equal, even beat it. The space where the customer relates to your business is the screen of their device and you will be on equal terms with other competitors.
We would like to know your opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of buying and selling on the Internet