What SMBs can benefit from eCommerce –Turning your swampy store full of webs into a swaggy web store
Have you been one merchant just around the corner catering to the needs of the town? Are the locals that frequent your store the same ones? And so with the numbers? Does it look like there is no way your business is going to grow since your revenue is just enough to make both ends meet? Do you wonder how, and do you wonder why?
You might be missing the biggest commercial explosion there is.
eCommerce.
Invading the digital turf
How the Internet was used to break borders, working hours, store spaces, traveling schedules, delivery of goods, and payment transfers, to name a few, was unprecedented that the digital turf once ruled by giants like Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba is now being broken through by an emerging class of small and medium businesses and individual enterprises.
As a purchaser, you will be exposed to a wide array of products beyond what your favorite store on the next block could only offer.
As a merchant, you will now be given a chance to run your business beyond the limited brick-and-mortar shop you love to the borderless online store you will love more.
13 is a lucky number
Going electronic with the current physical commerce you have will provide you immense revenue benefit and the exhilarating excitement you will experience in serving other people from the world over apart from the loyal customers that come in and go out of your little shop. Here is a Lucky 13 list, to name a few.
1. Cost. Turning to software applications, online marketing, and IT services are minimal compared to running a store, paying the rental, including water, power, labor, and other increments. This means low costs in every turn.
2. Labor. Staff hiring will give you choices not limited to your place of origin. Staffing can be filled in by competent persons from other countries at competitive salaries based on their country’s affordable labor and tax.
3. Management. If staff can come from anywhere, so does you as the manager. Your store system continues to run even if you are on the run or on a walk. You can manage your store anywhere in the world.
4. Inventory. Say goodbye to a taxing physical inventory and say hello to the easiest product inventory ever online. Every product movement can be tracked and registers the number of products left. Even as a product leaves your storage, you can already order for replenishment from your fulfillment company or your manufacturer.
5. Marketing. There are countless ways you can promote your online store by using automated marketing tools and software like Google and Facebook ads, WordPress blogs, or Mailchimp for emails and analytics. With these automated engine samples, you can track your advertising output versus customer response and visits in gauging your ROI.
6. Statistics. Visits to your online store will be recorded, including the product, the page, and the visitor’s country or place of origin. Browsing and buying patterns arising from those visits will help you in your business and merchandise analysis, something quite missing in your physical shop.
7. Search Engines. When you have been distributing flyers and brochures and putting up posters to let people know of your business’s existence, search engines, this time, will lead customers to products according to their search queries. Online browsing activities are converted to metrics and algorithms that will pair your business products accordingly, providing you traffic with regularity, and as you rank higher, so will your sales be.
8. Social Media. Private persons and media influencers alike have the power to express their opinions on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. By all means, they can put a product forth to a viral mode, especially given the following these influencers have. Prospective buyers nowadays are wont to visiting comment sections and reviews first before ever purchasing a product. Media traffic can potentially turn into sales.
9. eMail. One of the most effective marketing tools online is email. Your website can easily obtain customer’s email addresses as they sign-up to confirm their orders. It is also a way to communicate with them your future products, events, or messages.
10. Written Reviews. Positively written reviews bring so much recommendation of reputation where your business credibility revolves around. As we have said in the social media section, the positive interest reviews can go viral instantly, sending your sales to heights!
11. Feedback. Valuable to any business is the customer feedback it can get to keep customer satisfaction at par. Sure there will be suggestions and other issues that need to be heard and answered or even acted upon immediately to mitigate problems that may arise and compromise your business overall. An automated customer feedback is an eCommerce standard in forms, aside from email, of online forum, customer survey, or a 24-hour online customer support service via telephone.
12. ROI. Remember the time when your brick-and-mortar store can only accommodate and serve the locale? With an online store, the possibilities are endless. With an online store running 24 hours a day serving a worldwide market, customers are multiplied, and the return on investment is magnified even with stiff competition.
13. Repeat Purchase. It would be a lot easier with an online store to track which products sell the most, the fastest, and the least, the most frequent customers, their favorites, and the products that profit you the most. These analytics will help you sustain your business for the long term.
Conclusion
eCommerce has electronically simplified the way people shop nowadays. They can now shop in the comforts of their home. With just a few clicks and browses, their purchases will be right at their doorsteps in a matter of days. If your business can cater to people’s needs in a digital way, no matter how small your store is, you are now part of the eCommerce revolution asserting its part in the digital landscape providing products and services that levels up the way lives are lived on the way to a brighter future.
If you are at the crossroads of uncertainty on how go about going digital with your physical storefront, or figuring out how to go on a web business straight away, Xion Global is on the standby to guide every small or medium enterprise to maximize the benefits of eCommerce.
Xion Global is a pioneering eCommerce platform built on a blockchain infrastructure for companies and start-ups of all sizes that wish to offer products and services online through subscriptions or one-off payments. Decentralized and automated, it offers a one-stop-shop for all needs mentioned above and so much more. It is an end-to-end solution that is user-friendly and comprehensively meets any business’s needs, still dabbling with or already fully committed to start selling online. It is, indeed, built for the emerging new generation of entrepreneurs.
