The explosion of the internet completely revolutionised the retail experience and changed the way we shop forever. Analysts increasingly talk about the “death of the high street” as more and more revenue shifts from physical to online stores, and businesses that fail to make this shift are left behind.
eCommerce Benefits
There are several benefits to eCommerce over traditional brick and mortar shops including:
- Lower costs – The cost profile of an online store is significantly cheaper as you don’t need to pay for a physical retail location, and you don’t have to staff the shop to interact with customers.
- Global reach – While a high street shop has only a very limited footfall, an eCommerce business can easily attract and sell to customers from anywhere in the world.
- Agile and adaptable – Outfitting a physical shop takes time and money, therefore making changes is difficult and slow. An eCommerce platform lets you make changes very quickly as you learn what your customers like and don’t like.
- Direct to consumer – For manufacturers, eCommerce offers the opportunity to cut out the middleman and sell direct to the end consumer. This allows you to significantly increase your margin and open new revenue streams.
eCommerce Digital Marketing
One of the other great benefits of eCommerce is that there are a plethora of ways to attract and engage your target audience. While it is notoriously difficult to track the success of traditional marketing channels, with digital marketing there are a variety of tools that allow you to target very specific customer segments:
- Blog – By writing engaging content that relates to your products you can attract your target market back to your online store time and again. Optimising this content for search engines means that your site will appear near the top of the search results for relevant terms, further increasing the traffic to your site.
- Social media – Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow you to interact directly with a global audience in a way that would have been completely impossible in the past. Sharing latest deals and promotions will keep your business in the front of your customers mind.
- Third party reviews – Traditional business used testimonials to show the quality of their work, but online you can go a step further, allowing customers to leave honest, unbiased feedback. Third party reviews are a great way to build trust and credibility, and are a useful source of feedback for you to take on board and make your products better.
- Analytics – Free tracking software lets you see precisely where your traffic is coming from, which pages they land on and how long they spend on your site. This gives you valuable data that you can use to gain greater insight as to what is working and what isn’t.
Holistic Digital Business Development
Launching an eCommerce business requires a combination of digital strategy, marketing and technical skills. At AsOne we create long-term partnerships with our clients, helping them realise their business aspirations using our in-depth knowledge of eCommerce platforms and digital marketing.
We’ve helped high street retailers create an online presence, and we’ve helped manufacturers launch new revenue streams by selling direct to consumers.
If you’d like more information on launching an eCommerce platform, or improving the performance of an existing site, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
