25 Advantages and Disadvantages of Ecommerce for Businesses in 2018

This article will take you to the ride of understanding an eCommerce world by sharing more information over about its advantages and disadvantages. E-Commerce is one of the powerful online tools which can help your business grow and glow all across the globe.

You can never doubt about the ability to sell good and services online which have made businesses more viable and profitable. It is really important to see the buyers trend and look over everything before starting an eCommerce store because that is what makes your business to go global by taking strategic decisions.

Advantages:-

1. Speed up the buying process and save time for customers

It literally speeds up the buying process because when someone thinks of buying one specific product from the physical store which is very far and not easily available. Here how the eCommerce helps the customer to avail the specific product easily and speedily.

For example – Sometimes customer are not able to find a particular product from the store and even by visiting other chained stores, this is where eCommerce come into a scene with a quick response over the requirement by even helping to purchase the particular product without wasting time.

eCommerce helps the one to choose from a wide range of online accessed products easily and get it delivered too; it helps you to access online global market standards.

Such type of buying process can help you to reduce the travelling time and helps you with choosing plenty of options which you might be looking forward to getting your own one.

2. Personalize the store as per the customer expectation.

One of the online business benefit which will enhance your online shopping experience. It is because every purchase which is made online will be referred as per location and recommended as per customers advanced searches.

It is one kind of personalize store where every customer has a different front page because of their location and previous purchases. Even customers are eligible sometime to get extra services because of previous history and loyalty towards the services. Such kind of store helps the customer to fulfill their expectations.

3. Reduce recurring cost while hiring virtual support resources.

One of the factors which can benefit in eCommerce is that by hiring employees is affordable. It is like you can choose to outsource your task and work to your virtual assistants in different countries.

It will make your presence of the company in a different location at the same time always. In this case, you will not need many employees in an eCommerce business as compared retail locations.

4. Easily retarget your customers.

There are many ways to retarget the customer and sell the product nicely. Below are some of the techniques which you can use to retarget customers:-

• Share a coupon when customers leave the checkout page.
• Even by sending emails which are pitching upsell and cross-sell.
• Can be done through Google paid and organic search results.
• It can be done through the customer’s number of visits to a specific page with a certain period of time.

5. Easier to encourage an impulse buy

Impulse buying is one of the techniques where it works as a common behavior of customer’s perception towards a particular product. It is related to the control of human psychological behavior which is like some people possess personality traits that can be said as impulse buying tendencies.

This is what can be used on an eCommerce platform too by making the product more attractive with images, other color options and even by showing a video of the product. So the customer can get the same aura of buying the product from the store.

6. Reviews Available

It has so many positive recommendations which can give more values to your eCommerce website and help customers to build more trust over a particular product.  It can help you to be clear and more visible about the product that helps you with more product selection too.

All of the reviews are valuable to customers, which can really help a lot to built trust over the products and services

7. Able to provide detailed information to the customer.

Every customer looks for more details over the products so that it can help them to take a wise decision over their purchases. It is one kind of description which really helps a lot and expresses about any particular product.

It is in short one kind of information which is been shared clearly on the description about the product, that helps the user to take a final decision on the requirements.

The flow which is been shared below the product in detail makes the customer to understand it in more details and that makes them to put them on a cart for their final check out with making them aware of all the features and functions of the product.

8. Best Quality of services in reasonably low operation cost

It is one of the benefits which plays a very vital role over an eCommerce platform. In most of the case, physical retail stores have to pay a lot to maintain their presence in the market by paying rent or even if it’s own. There are several upfront costs which affect the store which is physically owned.

E-commerce store will help you cut off more than 60% of the price which has been run through a physical store. When you talk about operation cost it is very high as compared to the online store. One has to pay their staff, location charges, inventory, store design etc, which affects a lot.

9. Quick and affordable marketing

You will not have to spend many bucks to market your e-commerce biz. There are many ways to pull your eCommerce business into this online world through various ways of online marketing which are quick and affordable.

Here are some of the uniques ways which can just make you understand and help you with improvising marketing techniques.

• Always go with great content this is what helps you to be more visible in the market through creative content marketing.
• You can even go for creative marketing video which expresses about the product and services.
• Social networking helps you to make your presence everywhere because there is no one who is currently not into socializing.
• Even there are DIY infographics which helps you to express about presence, you can say contrary that it works as browser.
• It helps you to enlighten the life to old data too.
• Every customer can be reached through digital market just have to focus on the techniques to approach them.

Related Article: 25 Best E-Commerce CMS Platform For Your Online Website In 2018

This what makes all things affordable because when you try to same on offline marketing it is expensive and time consuming a lot.

10. Provide flexibility to the customer to buy product 24/7.

It has more flexibility over the regular store because the services are available 24/7 and though helps to serve you the services at any time and anyplace.

There is a lot of change in the online markets recently which are providing you services helping you with the recommendation, sales support, chat support and even helps you find similar products. E-commerce is one of the platform which available for consumers 24/7 and globally.

11. Less store setup cost and quick ROI (Return of investments)

When you talk about eCommerce it has less amount of investment as compared to the offline store, it takes a huge amount of investment to set up an offline store which affects your business a lot by lacking on the return of investments.

This happens all because all investment which is been done over maintaining the store, on the contrary, it takes less amount of investment to make an online one.

Even after investing a lot of money over stock, labor, services, maintenance, electricity bill, rent (if any) etc, these will never help you out to gain profits over your investments. E-commerce stores are affordable and though if you see nicely than you will find that there is not much of investment as compared to the offline store and has more benefits too.

12. No Geographical limitation, tap the global market form the day one.

It is like the customer will have access to the online store from anywhere in the world, which can globally be accessed. This is what every customer is looking forward to having as their service because sometimes customers are not able to find a particular product which not available at the store location but though online store works like a magic to provide them with multiple options. So, that they can avail the services easily.

That is the main reason why eCommerce store helps you to be visible over the global market, where you will be fully available to everyone across the globe from the day one itself.

13. Reduce Resource hiring and training cost.

In eCommerce you will not have to hire many employees as compared to the store, it is because when you open an online store your half of the work is been done through approaching customers directly by providing detailed information and visibility of the products.

You will not have to hire a seller to express everything about the product or have to train them. This is what makes eCommerce more effective in cost deduction of hiring and training employees.

14. Avoid human error while dealing with customers.

In the path of e-commerce, you will never face the issue of human error because every product is updated with details on the site, so that makes easy for the customer to have more visibility over the products.

This is what makes the customer feel comfortable to buy online as compared to the store. The stores are way more difficult sometimes because due to lack of options, comparison and descriptions.

When you visit a store you will always find that the seller tries to express with things which are not much convincing but though still, you will have to hear it till the end. This is what makes the customer more confusing to buy or not? It is like getting pitched again and again for the same on what you are not looking for to get checked out.

15. Environment – Friendly

You can say the eCommerce is totally eco-friendly as compared to the store. It is because when we visit a store at a time of purchase, we receive a bill, receipts, coupons etc.

These harms our environment a lot and that is the reason why eCommerce bought such services which are much eco-friendly and easy to maintain.

16. Compare product and price

In the world of eCommerce, you can compare the products easily which shares a detailed description over it. The most beneficial part of eCommerce is that you can avail and understand the product clearly but though this happens totally opposite when you visit a store.

In store you might not be able to find the product and will not be able to compare it, even you might have to visit multiple shops to know the differences.

This is what saves time for the customers when we look into the world of eCommerce. Every service which are been provided through eCommerce are made to serve customers to have easy access with more details and less time-consuming.

Disadvantages:-

 1. Lack of personal touch

It is kind of consumer feeling that consumer can’t feel and touch the product. Sometimes no matter how good a product is explained and expressed you will not be able to sense the touch, smell, taste, and sound, through the dimensionality of a screen. This is what makes eCommerce sometime in a situation where customer faces bit trust issues over products.

 2. Unsure about the quality

One of the biggest problems with buying things online is that you will have no guarantee of a products’ quality. Reviews are not always helpful and though all the researches will never assure you about the quality of a product.

It may mislead customers to increase sales bu though for they will have to make sure and get aware that sometimes faulty products are being sold online too.

Related Article: 10 Things To Consider When Designing An ECommerce Website

3. Late Delivery

When someone plans to order a product online they are never assured to get delivered as per time and there are plenty of issues which make such situation very delicate for customers.

It is like you are waiting for an entire day leaving your work to just receive your new phone for example and though you are not getting delivered on that day itself.

Such a situation makes consumer wait a lot for the delivery but at end services almost loses the trust of customers on that moment itself.

4. Security issues

E-commerce sites record all the important details about the customers which are to be kept secured because it includes details like name, phone no, address,  and bank details. If in these case sites don’t implement rigorous cybersecurity quantity.

Every online store has an issue with security whether they are small, medium or enterprise businesses. In short, you can say that online store has security issues which can never be predicted in this world of eCommerce.

5. Internet bandwidth

E-commerce is the store which totally runs on the internet and though it needs a good connection to run the business online. If you are not the good bandwidth connection than you might face issue with placing the orders, loading pages, and check out issues too.

The services are online, so there will be always some issues with the internet bandwidth and this issue works contrary from both ends.

6. Some products are difficult to purchase online

Yes, it is true some products are really difficult to purchase online like, gold, spectacles and other which you required very customized one.

It is not that easy to trust on those which are kept online in an image to express but let’s say for example gold is not the product which can be easily purchased online. One has to verify physically and has to look on to the size too, so it is not easy at all to purchase online.

7. E-commerce is highly competitive

Every single step into eCommerce is very competitive because the online market has been growing rapidly. One has to focus on the services and try to learn more about the strategies to makes their visibility global market.

It is a game of content which plays a unique role in the world of internet, why content because everything that matters is the searches at the end. Everyone tries to make searches easy with keywords so that their name pops up easily on the front page of the internet searches.

8. It is difficult to try before buying.

You can say that online shoppers will not have much ability to inspect physically, even sometimes they lose the power to negotiate the price and payment terms might exist different as compared to local stores.

While online shopping you will not have a person to talk and sometimes items are back ordered if they are not in stock though these create a lot of problems.

9. Site Crash issues

This is one of the problems where you have to reckon the service to get online again because when you talk about eCommerce store, they face issue with servers sometimes which causes lots of problem on sales.

It is because when the site goes down the entire services won’t be available and you will have to wait for hours to get the store is online again.

If you are looking forward to developing your own online store there are some of the platforms which you choose from and those are:-

• Magento
• Shopify
• Prestashop
• WooCommerce
• BigCommerce

There are many of them from which you can choose from but the above mentioned are the one which is highly in demand of eCommerce web development. Magento development is one of the famous eCommerce platforms that everyone prefers for their online web store.