With more consumers shopping online than ever before, businesses that want to boost their bottom lines must get in on the action.
Whether it's running an online-only store, or adding online shopping to an already established brick-and-mortar business, Web sales are necessary. Those who don't find a way to sell their goods via the Internet will quickly see their customers take their money elsewhere.
Businesses have two main options for selling goods online: run their own e-commerce websites or sell their goods via an already established online marketplace.
To run their own e-commerce sites, businesses will need several critical services and pieces of software. Among the most important are a Web hosting service, shopping cart software and credit card processor.
If getting all that lined seems too challenging, small businesses can take the simpler route of setting up a store in one of the many online marketplaces, such as Amazon.com, Ebay or Etsy.
To help small businesses get their wares on the Web, Business News Daily has created a complete guide on all of the ins and outs of selling goods and services online.
Cons of e-commerce
E-commerce comes with some drawbacks, too. Online stores often lose out on the ability to interact with their customers in person. Brick-and-mortar businesses can build their customer bases by creating personal relationships with buyers. E-commerce website development businesses don't have that option, which makes it even more critical that they ensure smooth business transactions.
E-commerce ventures also face cutthroat competition. For every one online business, at least another 10 businesses on the Web sell the same thing. Hundreds of thousands of e-commerce sites operate worldwide, meaning online businesses must work even harder than brick-and-mortar businesses to stand out from the crowd.
Finally, e-commerce businesse must deal with technical issues that brick-and-mortar locations never face. E-commerce websites businesses are run completely online, so if something goes wrong with the website, credit card processor or any of the other aspect of the operation, the business has to shut down to be fixed. While some of these problems may be out of the business owner's hands, they still can end in the same result: lost money and lost customers.