The e-commerce is something more and more present. Here we analyze some of the advantages and disadvantages of electronic commerce in the current market and in the future shopify tools.
The use of electronic commerce is growing year by year and the forecasts in the short and medium term are to continue rising. This is causing changes in the commercial market and is also causing marketing companies to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this phenomenon.
In the analysis that we are going to carry out today there are points in which the advantages of some are the disadvantages of others, points in which everyone wins and points in which everyone loses. We refer to sellers and buyers.
When one or several entrepreneurs consider the creation of a business on the Internet or the adaptation of an existing one in the offline universe to the network, it is necessary to analyze the advantages that the company would have and those that the customers would have. In this way you could assess how much effort would be necessary to take advantage of the advantages and solve the drawbacks of an e-commerce.
Strengths of electronic commerce
We will start by talking about those aspects that are advantageous for sellers, buyers or both.
Highlights the fact that there is no queuing to buy, something especially interesting for buyers who can also access stores and products in remote locations.
The options that are offered and that can be found are increasingly broad in online stores that are usually available every day of the week, 24 hours a day. These stores have the ability to buy and sell to other consumers and take advantage of the C2C (consumer-to-consumer) trade, which is the abbreviation used in electronic commerce to define a customer-to-customer strategy. In this type of strategy, the company is the intermediary of the operations between different clients and charges for these services.
Continuing with the advantages of electronic commerce, it should be noted that in some type of product the purchase is immediate; for example, in digital download products such as software, e-books, music or movies, which can be used just purchased from the moment they are downloaded.
In electronic commerce there are also no limitations or space constraints, which allows having more products available. At the same time, it is easier to grow and offer more and better products and services, as well as the ease and speed to communicate. In addition, the purchase and the customer experience are personalized.
At an economic level there is no need to handle cash and transactions and contracts are fast and efficient. In addition, staff costs are reduced.
Buyers can know at the time of purchase if a product is available or not and sellers also get advantages from better inventory management, as they can replenish the merchandise before it runs out.
Through search engines and SEO positioning there is the possibility of finding more customers for sellers or locating better stores for buyers.
They also gain presence less commercial and more specialized products that have their market share. Here also buyers and sellers come out winning.
Finally, traceability or the ability to make an exhaustive monitoring of the product during transport stands out. For example, products may be identified by bar codes or other more advanced technologies. In this way the products are controlled throughout the logistics process. Online tracking platforms provide customers with information about the status of an order or a shipment.
Having controlled the traceability of a product, you can act more efficiently to the incidents that may arise.
Weaknesses of e-commerce
There are aspects or circumstances of e-commerce that harm sellers and that may also create obstacles for buyers such as lack of communication and personal relationship or the inability to test a product before buying it.
The dependence on the Internet is total. First of all it is necessary to have a secure connection and of course you have to have a device from which to connect. All this goes in relation to the fear of fraudulent payments, scams and theft of personal information. In fact it is difficult or almost impossible to detect scams and scammers.
For sellers there are additional costs according to the form of payment that in most cases they have to assume themselves. Sometimes, there is some discomfort when it comes to managing returns and sometimes there are also delays in receiving the products.
There is also a case that benefits buyers, but hinders sellers such as the ease of comparing prices or sending the product individually.
As a conclusion of this analysis, the pros outweigh the cons in terms of electronic commerce. The success of a business may depend to a large extent on a good analysis of the opportunities and threats that the market may bring to that specific business. One thing is that electronic commerce is booming and another is that we are interested in opening an e-commerce of all of them. What is essential is to make a good analysis and market study before opening an electronic commerce.