While more people are coming to eCommerce sites for online shopping, retail store runners are facing tough competition in the market. Here, I bring a list of pros and cons of having a retail store or an online store. How to know which idea will suit your retail business eCommerce or a physical store- read more to know about it.
When you decide to open a store, you must plan your product, the consumer, and business goals to find the best option among online or retail store. Usually small business owners get confuse and cannot decide which option will suit them the most. When you ask experts in the market, they will suggest opening online eCommerce stores is a better idea since it is cheaper. If you ask them how, they will give you the following reasons.
Online eCommerce Stores Pros:
1. There is No Rent to Pay
Unlike brick and mortar store, online store is rent free because there is no building or physical store and so there is no utility bill too. However, online store does require online web hosting and technical support. There is no such requirement to decorate your store, purchase inside and outside display units and other things. You depend on yourself and don’t need to hire employees to run your online portal.
Your costs are directly related to your website, shipping and online payment mode. You need to pay for your domain name, you need to pay to Magento eCommerce Development Company who designs and builds your website and eCommerce platform. At times, it can be expensive but cost you less than opening a small retail storefront.
2. Saves Traveling Time And Expenses Of The Customer
When you open an online store, customers visit your online retail website and make purchases instantly. The products are then delivered at their door step. This saves the time of travelling and energy of the customer. They just browse the products in less than a minute and make order online.
3. Placing Ads And Get Paid
You can use the empty website space to advertise brands and get paid for it! Who doesn’t love making extra income after all?
Online eCommerce Stores Cons:
These are the benefits of opening an online store. However, the same service also shares some negative points. Let’s discuss them in detail:
• There Is No Touch And Feel Policy
When you want to shop any dress or furniture through online store, you won’t get any opportunity to touch and feel the material. Moreover, the margins for such products are high at online retail store. And then there are people who prefer buying the products after seeing, touching, and testing them before final purchases. For such customers, a retail store building works better. If you have such customer base, you must get a physical outlet for your products and run it successfully.
• Difficult To Gain Trust Of The Customers
The cases of online fraudulent are on rise and thus, customers are afraid to make purchases at online store. There are Facebook pages like Online Fraud Brands making people aware about such fraud websites. To gain customer trust, you can share right address details of the office so that your customer can reach you in a trouble. Most customers only shop from the websites that have proper office details and provide ‘cash on delivery’ option to them. Once you do that, you start gaining your customer trust.
What tools are best for building a small website on a budget?
There Are Some Tools That Can Help You Build A Small Website In A Limited Budget:
- Wix: Wix offers vast range of design templates for free. This is a small business website building tool that has user friendly template. You just need to drag and drop template to create a website. There are also some premium subscription levels for businesses to explore.
- WordPress: Small businesses love WordPress platform since 30% of all websites are made via WordPress. It’s a simplest blog building platform that can be used by beginners. There are over 350 applicable templates that can be used for small business with customizing option.
- Weebly: Weebly remains popular among small businesses. It’s a great fit for businesses that require online store, websites or blogs.
- Squarespace: Squarespace is popular among creative industries and eCommerce companies, but this doesn’t mean that small businesses cannot use it. There are several beautifully designed templates that you can use for your small business website and attract your customers.
- Yola: Yola is an ideal website builder for small businesses that wish to have the simplest possible experience. A powerful and robust website can be made with Yola without any code line or tech skills.
If you don’t want to take any pain in building the web store for your small business and you still are interested in the service, you can get in touch with any local Magento Website Development Company in your area. They will guide you and take care of your needs for your online business.
Read Top Reasons to Why Your Magento 2 store shouldn’t be similar to your competitors’ site