) Lower Set Up & Running Costs Than An Offline Businesses

The cost of actually setting up an e-commerce website is lower than that of an offline businesses. The whole sales system for your business is automated online. You will therefore save on staff, wages and other business costs, which are usually an expense such as electricity, rent and heating costs. The money that you have saved can then be used to develop your e-commerce website and product range further. E-commerce websites will also help you expand your product offering faster than is normally possible within an offline business situation.

2) The Business Can Be Operated From Anywhere

E-commerce websites reduce any geographical restrictions you would normally face with an office based business. You can be anywhere around the world and still successfully oversee your e-commerce business. The essential items you need in order to oversee your e-commerce website from anywhere are; having access to emails, the Internet and phones.

3) Scale-ability

E-commerce websites are very effective in allowing you to determine which products are selling successfully, to ensure the stock levels of these products are increased. Additionally how these successful products can be diversified to develop a larger range of products to sell through the website. This will allow you to grow your business in terms of sales, customer base and profits. Amazon’s online shopping website has developed successfully around scaling their product range, and monitoring closely what is selling with customers. This has consequently allowed them to dramatically diversify their product range into many sectors.

4) No Opening Time Restrictions

With ecommerce websites you are not restricting your potential customers, as they can view your website at any time of day. This means as a business, you are maximising your sales and profits. How can your sales be further maximised? You can do this through a range of sales initiatives such as special offers and online marketing initiatives. For more information on creating special offers read our articles 20 Special offer ideas for marketing your business and How to increase conversion rates for your special offers.

Key sales strategies you could employ to increase your online sales include upselling and cross selling. Upselling involves offering products that directly relate to the products the customer has just selected to purchase. Products with very low cost so the customer doesn’t really have to think about it, and they usually compliment the purchase they have just made making it an easy buying decision. By doing this you encourage the average basket value to go up.
Cross-selling allows you to encourage people to spend more money by buying additional products. This is usually related to the main product your customer is purchasing. On e-commerce websites this may be included as, “You may also like”, “Wear with this”, “Perfect match with”, “Why don’t you go pro”. These are all tactics to increase sales revenues for your business.