Ecommerce is not a fad. It is the evolution of business. Ecommerce will not replace conventional brick and mortar stores, for the foreseeable future anyway. Instead, ecommerce could help conventional stores improve their bottom line without forking out heavy investments usually associated to store expansions.
Reliable Software
One of the most important ingredients to a successful ecommerce store is a reliable ecommerce solution. Fortunately, there are many shopping cart software which are reliable. This could be due to the fact that some of the ecommerce solution providers have been a round for sometime and have been able to fine tune their solution over the years.
Of course, no solution is perfect. But problems and glitches are solved fast thanks to competent programmers and support staff. Merchants can get help via knowledge base files, live chat, Skype, email and support tickets.
A reliable ecommerce solution with low downtime means there will be more up-time for a business to make money.
Easy To Use
The thing that will make or break an ecommerce solution is its ease of use. A user-friendly ecommerce solution would not have a steep learning curve. From a human resource and finance point of view, this translates to lower cost of training. In fact, with a real easy to use shopping cart software, a business can have a very small team running a few online stores at the same time.
Cost Effective
Most shopping cart software offer various price points which target specific user requirements. For home-based businesses run by first-time business owners, an ecommerce solution subscription plan which costs around $60 a month would suffice. For conventional businesses which want to expand their market reach with the help of the internet, plans around the $150 a month range would seem attractive.
With the help of a feature pack shopping cart software, you can integrate your business with that of your supplier or that of a drop shipper. This would allow your drop shipper to fulfill your orders and free up inventory space for you thus saving you even more money.
Bigger Market
Once you have taken your business online, you can then market your product to the whole world. You can use Pay Per click to drive instant traffic to your store while you use SEO techniques to naturally rank on organic search results. Either way, you will be opening the door to more opportunities to improve your bottom line.
Naturally, there will be more competition but the economies of scale you enjoy from higher product turnover will allow you to pass on your savings to your customers, thus allowing you to compete as well.