Both B2B and B2C businesses are facing continued challenges as the UK high street continues to dwindle. More and more traditional bricks-and-mortar business owners are starting to look at their business model and ask themselves “Why sell online?”, “What are the benefits of e-commerce for my small business?”.
Contents:
Reasons Why Small Business Should Sell Online:
1. Sell More!
While the UK’s retail sector for non-e-commerce has stagnated alongside inflation, e-commerce currently accounts for 30% of all UK retail sales AND it’s growing. UK e-commerce sales by small businesses with 10-49 employees is showing the biggest % increase; an increase of 337% between 2012-2017!
Sell in Your Sleep
Owning a 24-hour, traditional store is likely to be not workable for most businesses. Staffing your store (or manning it yourself) and increased overheads such as heat and power make opening 24hrs prohibitive. An online store does not need these overheads. If your information is clear, concise and you answer your clients’ FAQs you can sell 24/7/365 at no extra cost and process the orders when you re-open.
E-commerce Sites are Excellent Salespeople!
If you run a sales team, it won’t surprise you that 80% of sales are made by 20% of salespeople.
A well-set-up e-commerce website is not afraid to upsell or cross-sell your other products. You can choose to encourage clients to buy a more expensive item or one that earns you more profit. Selling platforms can also learn what products users buy together and offer them at checkout.
E-commerce for Small B2B Businesses
Trade businesses can have complex structures and require alterations to make e-commerce work for them. Yet, when you consider that B2B and B2C e-commerce sales are almost neck-and-neck; minor changes to your business methods could provide a serious increase in sales.
2. Be Where Your New & Existing Customers Are
To visit your store, your client needs to be on your street. To visit your online store, a customer needs to be online. In the UK, adult internet users spend an average of 4 hours online per day. So, it’s safe to say that having an online store would make selling your products more accessible to clients.
Bring Your Target Customers to You
Having an online store can support your traditional business. Consumer behaviour shows us that 80% of people will use your online store to research before visiting your physical store. This increased intentionality and desire to make more informed decisions is compounded by today’s social climate: we’re all feeling the squeeze and want to find worthwhile products, and you can reflect that in your e-commerce store.
Using digital marketing techniques to put your online store in front of new and existing clients will make it easier for clients to buy your products and understand what you have to offer them. But a successful online store will also increase your in-store and telephone sales.
3. Reduce Selling Costs & Support Your Existing Business
An online shop doesn’t need heat, light and expensive rent or rates amongst other operating expenses when compared to a physical shop. Staffing a bricks-and-mortar shop is also more expensive and having staff waiting for customers in your off-peak selling periods reduces your profit margin further. Instead, staff can be utilised during off-peak times to process and pack online orders ready to be shipped/collected.
4. It’s Inexpensive to Get Up & Running Fast
By now the question of “why sell online?” has probably moved on to “how much does it cost to go online” and “how long does it take?”. To answer that head-on, it’s extremely quick and inexpensive to get started, but will depend on store complexity and how many products/services you’d like to sell.
Attaching a Store to Your Existing Website
If you’re happy with your existing website, it is likely that you can attach a store for very little expense. If your site is built on an open-source platform like WordPress, you can plug in a store very easily. In this case, upgrading your site could cost as little as a few hundred pounds. Altering a bespoke-built site could cost more, but if you find an experienced web designer who understands your vision this will be well worth the investment.
Starting From Scratch
You may need to start from scratch if you don’t have a website or if your existing website needs upgrading from the ground up. Starting from scratch will cost more (think £1,200+) to set up. The upside is that you can design it exactly how you want it rather than bolting it onto an existing site. You’ll be 100% in control of your site’s look and feel, allowing you to tailor it exactly to your brand guidelines as well as your customers’ needs.
What About Offline Costs?
There are a few ongoing running costs to having an online store. Most costs are associated with selling more of your product or service. You may need more space for stock or more staff to process orders as they increase.
Drop shipping could be a solution in your industry. Drop shipping can negate the requirement for more stock or more warehousing space. By having your supplier stock your product and distribute it directly to your customer you can save even more and not even handle the product yourself! Most e-commerce stores can talk to drop-shippers to streamline the service you offer.
You can go one step further by partnering with a print-on-demand supplier for certain products, such as apparel and accessories. This way, you can add a personal touch to the product and drop ship custom-printed shorts, backpacks, phone cases, shoes, t-shirts, and more. By adding uniqueness to the product, you differentiate yourself from the competition and appeal to a broader audience.
5. Improve Your Customer Service
Making life easy for customers will help you gain more sales. It’s as simple as that. Having an online store isn’t just about displaying your prices online; it’s much more. By improving communication through email, live messaging and useful content you can improve customer experience.
This means adding “how-to’s”, reviews and advice. By mitigating feelings of uncertainty FAQs, videos and reviews can also further improve customer experience and increase conversion rates as your customers can make empowered buyer decisions. Pair these features with digital content marketing to engage and inform your audience and encourage them to use your site throughout their purchase journey.
Think: If you can create interest, inform and supply a product all in one-site, your client has no reason to visit your competitors’ websites.
6. Measure Your Success
One of the main advantages of selling online is the wealth of information it provides marketers with. By connecting your site to platforms like Google Analytics you can understand your customers on a granular level.
You will find which customers purchase what, and where they come from, how long they stay on a page and which blog posts produce clicks. With all this information, you’ll be able to better utilise your marketing budget and drive further sales in the future without extra cost.
7. Social Media Integration
There are approximately 57.1 million active social media users in the UK, and what a waste it would be to leave this market untapped. Fortunately, with the advent of social media channels like Instagram and TikTok introducing product tagging, social media is more integrated into e-commerce.
By levelling up your social media marketing strategy, you can generate more organic leads and drive users directly to your store. Build an online community around your brand and your users will share your content organically, allowing you to grow your business and showcase its unique brand identity. And the best part is that it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg!
8. Tapping Into Local SEO
As online searches get more and more specific, the benefits of implementing SEO for your e-commerce store goes without saying. By improving simple things like your product titles and URLS with solid keyword research, you can drive more leads to your site – and more footfall to your physical shop too!
Instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all approach to reaching customers, producing specific, relevant and well-researched content will help you improve your customer experience by tending to their individual needs and preferences. And whilst you won’t see results instantly, building a bedrock of good SEO practices will futureproof your business and allow you tailor your approach with fluctuating trends.
9. More Targeted Marketing
One of the benefits of e-commerce for small business owners is that it eliminates the need to reach everybody, which can be very costly. With your online store’s analytics, you can refine your audience, breaking them down into segments, which you can then market to across different channels.
Using PPC for e-commerce, it’s relatively easy to retarget or remarket to customers who may have visited your site on occasion but never buy. The same goes for captivating pop-ups and lead magnets; you can personalise your marketing with demographics, geography and interests in mind.
10. Increased Scalability
It’s far easier to scale up an e-commerce store than one with a physical location. Whether you want to introduce new products into the mix or you want to start selling internationally, it’s easier to manage the demands of an influx of customers online than from a physical shop.
Where you might need additional staff, floorspace and resources with a traditional bricks-and-mortar shop, all that is required for expanding your e-commerce business is extra inventory, some digital adjustments and perhaps some extra storage space. With the internet as your backdrop, you don’t need to worry about setting up a new shop in another location as you’re already tapped into a global market.
What Does the Future Hold for e-commerce?
While it’s impossible to predict the future (as we learnt from the pandemic), purchasing trends are unlikely to fluctuate in the short to medium term. We expect e-commerce to continue to grow steadily and at a higher rate compared with non-e-commerce sales.
While we see continued growth in e-commerce, the way people buy online is changing fast. Smartphones account for 70% of e-commerce sales and this is expected to rise in the future. This supports the importance of mobile-friendly sites. It also means that it’s likely that search engines like Google will further penalise sites that aren’t mobile-friendly in the future.
Conclusion
To summarise, the benefits of e-commerce for small business owners are manifold and they cover everything from an increased profit margin to additional digital marketing avenues to reach new customers.
Bricks-and-mortar stores still have their advantages and many shoppers still use them. But, an online store can complement a physical store perfectly by filling in the gaps where it falls short.
When thinking about an e-commerce store your business should also plan for the future and make it accessible for mobile users and people with disabilities. Ensure you optimise sales opportunities in this rapidly growing trend of smartphone sales by talking to an expert and getting your e-commerce store revamped today.
