What are the advantages of Ecommerce?
E-Commerce Websites works like a 27/4 ATM machine – Your Ecommerce business is open for consumers 24/7 every day of the year. The doors never close.
Increasing customer base – The customer base is every business’s main concern, online or off. When having a website online, a business doesn’t have to worry about getting the best shop frontage people from around the world have access to their products and can come back at anytime.
Expand international business outreach – With the right online marketing, your prospect around the globe can find your website and buy your products without even leaving their home.
Instant transactions – With e-commerce there is no more waiting for the check to clear, or a 30-day waiting time for certain other types of payment in the traditional business.
Much lower cost to maintain – After the initial e-commerce website setup, if you do not require to hire external expertise to do major changes regularly, a website yearly maintenance fee mainly involve just domain renewal and web hosting fee which may cost less than (estimated) USD 200 per year. In comparison, this is costing much less than even just one month of rental for retail / office space (Note: business space in Singapore can easily cost a few thousand per month depend on floor size and location).
Enhance Branding awareness – A Ecommerce website work hand-in-hand with existing business branding. In the past, any new business prospect will ask for your name card or product brochure, Nowadays, they are most likely to ask What is you website address
What are the disadvantages of e-commerce?
Technically challenging to set up a website, more so for a Ecommerce website
Not sure of where to start, how to start – there are many marketplaces like Shopee, Lazada, as well as having your own Ecommerce site, and there are pros and cons of selling products on these marketplaces versus your own Ecommerce site
Required totally different skills from traditional brick and mortar business
Security issue – website may be hacked and it can be very time consuming to resolve
Maintain a website can be challenging, although there are some Ecommerce platform like Shopify which make the website creation and maintenance process less daunting, however, Shopify is charging subscription monthly / yearly fee regardless of whether your Ecommerce website sell anything at all. Moreover, it is very difficult to migrate to other web host if you choose to do so in future.
