What is e-commerce and what does it mean for my business

E-commerce and online stores.  Are you thinking large corporations, fancy software, a back end bank-to-bank transaction?   For many businesses owners it’s a futuristic concept that still doesn’t really relate to the everyday life of a basic business.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong.

E-commerce is a corporate sounding word that essentially means any business transaction completed primarily through electronic means.  The easiest way to think of e-commerce is to see how it impacts every point of the basic sales funnel.

	TRADITIONAL	E-COMMERCE
Awareness	TV, Advertisements	Search Engines, Online Advertisements, Mobile Phone Applications
Information	Brochures	Websites: traditional computers and mobile phones
Communication	Letters, printed forms	Email
Purchase	In store, Mail order catalogues	Online store
Payment	Cash, cheque, EFTPOS, credit card	Credit card, PAYPAL etc
Receipt	Paper receipt	Email
Post-purchase Loyalty	In store, phone	Social media, Discussion forums

As you can see from the graph above, every aspect of your business’s product sales is affected by the introduction of electronic methods.  Every part of the process of buying and selling goods is changing because people prefer to conduct transactions via electronic methods instead of traditional ones.  In fact, in Australia, it’s estimated that $37 billion of sales will be conducted electronically.  That’s the reality of e-commerce.

Will eCommerce just die out as a fad?

eCommerce is not a fad.  In fact, e-commerce is growing at a faster rate than traditional commerce.  It will soon be a trillion dollar aspect of sales all around the world.

As the population ages and younger generations become more familiar with new technologies that allow easier access to online information and buying, the number of people utilizing electronic methods to buy their goods will grow.

What does this mean for your business?

It means you need to embrace eCommerce or your business will die.

We know that’s harsh but it’s the cold truth.

Businesses who do not provide information in an electronic format, allow their products to be bought over the internet or have a solid method for marketing and interacting with their customers through social media just simply won’t get attention.

And we all know what not getting any attention means for the revenue of a business.

Your customers, either right now or very soon in the future, want to interact with you through your online store.  They want to browse a website instead of a store, they want to pay with paypal instead of cash, they want to tell their friends how much they love the product they just bought from you by posting a picture of it to their facebook feed or Pinterest board.

If these terms are new to you, don’t worry.  Learning these applications and using the tools is easy.  Designing the best strategy for your business overall can be more difficult.  How much money should you spend on social media?  Should you use Google Adwords or SEO?  Who is the safest provider to accept online credit card payments with?

This is why working with a company that can provide you with solutions for all of those questions is so simple and effective.  Talk to us today about your business and we will take it online for you so you’re not missing out of a piece of the eCommerce pie!