You have probably heard the term e-commerce floating around and used frequently, especially in recent years. It is basically a word that refers to selling and purchasing things online. Most people have purchased at least something online, things like airline tickets, electronic equipment and more. Many companies have added the functionality for their consumers to be able to purchase things online from them, installing e-commerce solutions. So why are companies doing this? Here are five major benefits to adding e-commerce solutions to your website.
Cost
Making e-commerce a part of your business plan can help immensely in terms of providing revenue without a major cost. It can be a tremendous way to reduce your operating costs while not damaging your sales volume. With e-commerce, you are letting the website do all of the work for you, and with increasing confidence amongst consumers to make purchases online, you can come out ahead. You can be making sales (and thus, money) in your sleep since your website can be “open” for business all day every day. So why not reduce some costs by not having to employ as much staff and physical facility presence.
Reach
With a physical store, you have to rely on people actually getting to your store and coming in to purchase their desired items. The beauty of e-commerce is the ability to reach far beyond just a local market and tap into markets that may be far away. You can even reach a global audience with an online store.
Additional Sales
With how sophisticated e-commerce platforms and tools have become in recent years, companies have the ability to upsell to their customers. So, you can sell someone a pair of shorts, for example, and before they check out you can suggest a shirt that might go well with them. The opportunities for additional revenue are quite incredible and companies that are taking advantage of them give themselves a better chance at increasing revenue.
Data
One of the beauties of e-commerce is its measurability and the data that it can provide. For example, you can easily pull reports that show your sales volume, and a whole host of other statistics that can help you better understand your customers and their purchasing behavior. Also, in a shopping cart environment, customers fill out their contact information. So, you get access to names, addresses, and email addresses which not only can help you understand who your customer is, but also help you contact them later.
Direct Marketing
The beauty of e-commerce is that it provides an actionable step for consumers to take. So, you can provide marketing messaging to them in a variety of mediums and compel them to take the action of purchasing. You can then measure the effectiveness of your marketing message by seeing how many people actually follow through with the purchase.
At AlphaGraphics, we not only offering a variety of printing services in Fort Lauderdalefor your company, we also offer digital solutions like website design. Give us a call today and let us help you with your needs.