A wider range of stock can be offered for sale online and orders can be filled as they come in, which saves money on warehouse costs. It also reduces the risk of over ordering on a product that doesn’t sell well.
Designs can easily be changed at any time on a website, this is much harder to do with a brick store. If the website offers a feedback submission form the customers can tell the company what they would like to see and the website can change accordingly.
Business start-up was very different before the age of e-commerce. The costs involved in setting up a high street location are considerably higher than the start-up costs of an online business. If a business didn't take off it would leave the owners with a lot of costly equipment and a huge hole in their bank accounts.
Setting up an online business can be achieved with very little initial cost; especially if the entrepreneur chooses to use a third party such as eBay to sell their product. Businesses have the freedom to start very small and grow as the profits start to come in. If a business is not successful the costs are easily written off.
Advertising a new online business can often be done for free, most company’s now have Facebook and twitter pages to advertise their business and huge interest can be generated in a business if they “go viral” – this is a phrase used on the internet to describe advertising that is interesting or funny in such a way that people who see it want to show it to all their friends. Many hosting companies also offer Google ad words vouchers so the company can spread the word for no cost at all in the beginning.
Opening a brick shop - especially on your own - requires a wide range of skills, contacts (suppliers, investors, etc.) and very long working hours to keep the business running in the beginning. Whereas using websites like eBay or amazon is accessible to anyone with basic computer knowledge and a couple of hours a week of free time.
Many brick businesses were already well established before the internet was widely available to the public and later launched websites to complement their already popular high street stores. These days small companies or individuals can easily start to sell their products on the internet first; and if their online endeavours prove to be successful they may later open a physical store. Simply be is one example of this.
While the cost and effort involved in starting an online business is very minimal, the competition is fierce. As mentioned above, before the days of online shopping customers had very little choice about where to spend their money; it's a very different story today. The list of places to shop online is almost endless and it can be extremely difficult to stand out and grab the customers’ attention. The fact that it's so easy to set up an online business also means that it's just as easy to give up on said business. The internet is forever changing and in turn makes customers fickle and less likely to be loyal to one particular brand. Business owners who have put in a lot of time, effort and money in to setting up a shop are much less likely to give up at the first hurdle. This is why stores that have been around for decades continue to thrive today; such businesses would probably still survive for a very long time even if they chose not to expand their business to the online customer base.
Companies that have tried to bring their services online after being offline for so many years often run in to problems with people who are not familiar with technology. For example power suppliers now send out USB connectors for gas cards and electricity keys which allow you to top up online. When these were first sent out a lot of older customers were intimidated and confused by these new devices being forced upon them and rang up to complain. Fewer and fewer local shops now offer gas and electricity top ups and if they do they often only accept cash - no card payments allowed - due to the costs they have to pay to process these payments.
There is now a digital divide between those who can access e-commerce and those who cannot, whether it's due to not having access to the internet in their area, or simply because they don't know how to use it. Elderly people for example could benefit greatly from shopping or handling their utilities and banking online - it could enable them to shop or pay bills from home without having to worry about transport or bad weather. There are now also services to order repeat-prescriptions on the internet and have them delivered straight to your door. Unfortunately a large proportion of the older generation have not been able to keep up with new technology and the internet is still a mystery to many.
The main way today's shopping experiences differ from those of the past is the accessibility of an endless array of products. Shopping is now a much more global experience. Instead of having a handful of local shops to choose from customers have access to a huge range of products from all over the world. This makes customers demand more from shop owners; this is why a lot of smaller local businesses are shutting down. Customers find it much more convenient to do all of their shopping from the same place rather than visit several different specialist stores. Department stores and supermarkets have been around for a long time but the internet age has made this type of shopping even more easy and convenient for the customer. This has affected the amount of jobs available in retail, not all that long ago it was easy to walk into a local high street job with a CV and be offered a job on the spot, nowadays there are much less jobs available at this level which has left a big chunk of the unskilled workforce unemployed. On the bright side the demand for web developers, programmers, technician’s and other computer focussed professionals has gone through the roof. This in turn brings in more revenue for various educational establishments as more and more people decide to learn new skills to keep up with an ever changing world.
When e-commerce was a new concept, many customers were apprehensive about submitting their payment details; concerned with fraud or identity theft. In the beginning there wasn’t much comfort offered to customers by way of security but things have come a long way since then. There are now several layers of security to go through when making a purchase online and recent figures show that most people now prefer to shop online with their credit cards. With the popularity of mediation services such as Paypal the customer only needs to enter their details once – it’s then just a case of logging in to make a purchase. In cases where security has been breached and customer details have been leaked this has completely shattered the consumers trust in the company. Meaning they are not only liable for breaching legislation but will lose a lot of their customer base.
Many customers will not buy from a website that does not have a reasonable returns policy, which means the cost of sending back unwanted or damaged items could leave the company out of pocket. For this reason many customers still prefer to shop on the high street when it comes to clothing or footwear. There is no way to tell if something you’ve ordered online will fit you or look as good as it did on the model until it actually arrives. Some people also prefer the high street simply for the human interaction and customer service. However since the dawn of e-commerce the way we shop has all become high speed. People want the best deals and they want them now – leaving no time for idle chit chat with sales assistants. Some businesses have tried to add in the human touch to their websites by adding a “live chat” option – where you can talk to an actual human representative in real time. Meaning you can have all the convenience of shopping online with the added bonus of customer service built right in.
An online business needs to rely on a third party to deliver the goods, if packages are damaged or lost on the way to the customer the company will have lost inventory and have to pay postage costs.
More choice and the ability to purchase whatever we need without ever leaving the house has revolutionised not only the way we shop; but how we manage every aspect of our lives; banking, booking holidays, conducting research, communicating and even how we spend our leisure time has changed completely because of the internet. Who knows what the future holds, will the need for physical stores die out completely? Only time will tell.