Updated On: 25th October 2024
By 2027, it is expected that one out of every 4 products will be sold via online channels, making eCommerce a US $ 7.9 T economy. Considering that established legacy retailers with years of experience and brand equity are also included in this stat, this is a phenomenal projection ― especially for newer businesses trying to enter the market.
Walmart is a case in point. With half a century of retail experience, the brand decided to go all in with a robust eCommerce strategy. The result: from risking a slide in fortunes, it is now the US’ second most popular eCommerce marketplace platform. Given the proliferation of the internet and technology, these developments have been on expected lines. Also with the same drivers in place, the future will only be better for online retailers.
While it does not mean that offline retail is entering a final phase, it means that consumer buying behaviors are necessitating a fundamental shift in retailers’ sales strategy. Given the distinct advantages of eCommerce over traditional retail, retailers can no longer afford to ignore or delay their progression into online sales channels So eCommerce vs brick and mortar retail: which is right for you? For new businesses, it is an impeccable money-making strategy. And for brick-and-mortar businesses, it is future-proofing sales. Read our blog to find out more about this
Why Traditional Commerce Retailers should Embrace Ecommerce?
According to Statista, e-commerce website sales have been rising steadily every year. With a whopping 6.4 T USD in 2021, retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach 7.9 T USD by 2027.
With accelerated digital transformation across retail verticals, an increasing number of consumers spread across demographics now look to source all their needs via online channels. Retailers in the modern digital era, can’t let go of this opportunity―as they look for viable online sales channels.
However, starting with their eCommerce store can come with its own responsibilities, which many businesses may find difficult to accommodate. Hence the role of multi vendor marketplace platforms. On such platforms, the business is responsible for operations, so the sellers can concentrate on just sales.
Likewise, the businesses that own these online marketplaces have the opportunity to operate in the eCommerce industry without actually maintaining any inventory of their own.
Launch a Multi Vendor Marketplace
What are the Advantages of E-commerce over Traditional Commerce or Retail?
By enabling the customer to make a particular purchase in just a few clicks, an e-commerce website or app is an effective and affordable option that empowers you to augment your business. Let’s dive deeper into the 10 advantages of e-commerce website over traditional commerce.
1) No geographical limitation
When it comes to traditional commerce, you can only do business where you have set up your physical store. This is not the case with e-commerce websites. For them, the whole world is their playground if planned strategically. eCommerce businesses like Alibaba have successfully facilitated commerce across international borders, making eCommerce a global transaction facilitator.
2) Gain a number of customers with effective SEO strategy
Traditional retail shops depend mostly on branding and relations to drive more customers to their shop but on the other hand, e-commerce websites are not restricted to a physical site. They have the opportunity to drive traffic from the internet. Over 30% of e-commerce traffic comes from organic searches on search engines. This is just the traffic from organic searches and then we have advertisements, social media traffic, and more.
3) Lower investment requirements
When you compare eCommerce vs Brick and Mortar, a top reason to start an eCommerce business over a physical store is lower investment requirements. Also, the manpower and property required to get the business up and running is much less as compared to a physical store.
4) Opportunities to Optimize investments
When you are about to open a physical store, the location will play a key role. The location of your shop will impact the fortunes of the business. Things are different in eCommerce. There are multiple ways you can build an eCommerce marketplace platform without impacting the platform quality So there are further ways to optimize investment costs in starting with an eCommerce business.
5) Round the Clock Sales
When you compare eCommerce vs Brick and Mortar stores, another key factor is the timing. To run the physical store round the clock you will need manpower for all shift plus excess security requirements for the night shifts. However, eCommerce marketplaces naturally run 24X7.
6) More ease of access for consumers
Despite efforts of organizing a physical store, customers have to go through the multiple aisles to get to the desired products, adding time and inconvenience to the shopping experience. However, in a well-built eCommerce marketplace, consumers simply have to search for the desired products or navigate through the website, which is a much simpler process.
7) Saves travel time for customers
One of the bigger leverage levers for eCommerce marketplaces is doorstep delivery. An eCommerce marketplace can deliver products to the customers right to the comfort of their homes, bypassing the need to travel to the brick and mortar stores.
8) Capability to offer higher value to the customer
The pivotal success mantra of the eCommerce marketplace has been the ability to higher value to consumers. By digitizing the middleman, eCommerce has been able to redefine supply chains, cutting costs, and offering customers better product prices. This value is hard to match by physical stores that function on legacy supply chains.
9) Allow buyers to make informed buying decisions
When you go to a shopping store, the only information you see is that written on the product and the price of the product. In an eCommerce marketplace with good features for Admin/sellers, detailed additional information can be added for the products. This helps in allowing the buyers to make informed purchase decisions, leading to overall consumer satisfaction.
10) In eCommerce you can offer convenient payment options
Think like a consumer, if you end up at your favorite physical store without taking your cards with you, or in a scenario you realize that your card has maxed out. The whole shopping endevor fails. In the eCommerce marketplace, you have the option of offering multiple payment options to the consumers. So consumers are not in the scenario where they have made the decision to buy the products but lack the payment option to complete the purchase.
11) eCommerce platforms facilitate customer interactions
A physical marketplace gives few opportunities for customers to interact with each other. However, the eCommerce marketplace allows customers to add reviews for their purchases. These have become pivotal to generating consumer trust and encouraging user interactions.
12) Social media interactions
Social media platforms have become an inseparable part of the lives of people. eCommerce, being a digital platform, can give buyers opportunities to share their purchases, etc. on social media platforms, driving user engagement.
13) Efficient Shopping experiences
There is very little a physical store can do to fasten the shopping experience. However, eCommerce marketplaces can be tailored to offer frictionless efficient buying experience. Moreover, features like adding products to wishlists, saving carts, buying products again, etc, offer quick and efficient shopping experiences to buyers that physical stores simply cannot match.
14) The opportunity to create specialized eCommerce marketplaces for niche products
Another important consideration when you are comparing eCommerce vs Brick and Mortar: while opening a physical marketplace, to maximize revenue, you may need help to narrow down to specific categories of products. However, eCommerce marketplaces can scale, so starting with a niche business idea is all the more viable and lucrative.
Create a niche eCommerce marketplace
15) Creates targeted communication opportunities
To create a targeted communication, the only thing you require is the email address and personal information/ habits of the potential customer. To gather this information, creating a registration page and enabling cookies on your website is important. Once you get a hold of the habits of the customers, you can send relevant messages. This information also helps in recommending products on the e-commerce website.
By leveraging the smart recommendations in the Yo!Kart, you can easily recommend products to your users based on the system weightage and send them personalized emails too.
16) Better opportunities to scale
If you have noticed how quickly popular eCommerce brands have become global phenomena, then you must be aware of the opportunities that multi vendor eCommerce presents. eCommerce marketplaces that establish traction with consumers, scale expeditiously. Moreover, scalability can be easily managed leveraging capabilities of right eCommerce platform solutions.
17) Better communication between various participants of the business
Another top reason why eCommerce is better than a traditional store is the benefit that a digital space brings. One such benefit is better communication. On an eCommerce marketplace platform, you can offer chat interactions easily, and also facilitate interactions between the Admin and the sellers and vice versa. Similarly communication between the buyers and the Admin and vice versa.
18) Faster business operations
A physical marketplace is let down by analog and traditional processes, as a major part of the work happens via traditional processes. However, a digital marketplace takes everything online. Modern eCommerce marketplace acts like a centralized hub, integrated with multiple business solutions that simplify and automate complex business functions like taxation, accounting, marketing, and more.
19)Leverage data-driven buying decisions
A pivotal way that digital sales have transformed retail is the availability of user data. When this data is organized, it provides deep insights into consumers, products, and shops on your eCommerce marketplace. These insights empower businesses to take data driven decisions, thus gaining a significant advantage over offline retail businesses.
20) Better Branding opportunities
Think of an eCommerce business like Amazon, it has a presence all over the world. Even in countries where the marketplace does not operate, the brand has a presence. Can you think of any leading US physical retail store that has a similar brand equity. This is simply the power of the digital space.
21) Execute unique business ideas
With eCommerce you have more freedom to execute unique business ideas. For instance, while Amazon is a regular B2B2C marketplace, platforms like Etsy and Depop are P2P eCommerce marketplace platforms that allow consumers to trade products amongst each other. Such business ideas are easier to execute with online marketplaces since risk is lower, and its easier to gain traction with the internet audience for such businesses.
What is the best way to launch an eCommerce marketplace platform?
With an aim to stay competitive and achieve unparalleled growth in the current retail scenario, many businesses are migrating to the world of e-commerce from their conventional methods of selling. While online retail is growing at a massive rate nowadays, moving to digital commerce is a great idea irrespective of your business sector. To offer exceptional convenience to the customers and empower your brand, here is a checklist to consider when moving to e-commerce.
- Market Research
The first step includes creating an effective strategic plan for your business. Based on the processes, competencies, and the area of services of your business, you can build an efficient strategy tailored to match your business requirements. Secondly, prioritizing your customer base can help you focus on a targeted market. - Analyzing Customer Behavior
Another crucial step is understanding the user behavior and their requirements from your business. By getting insights into the shopping patterns of the customers, you can easily position your products and services accordingly. This enables you to provide a personalized experience to your customers which further helps to empower your business. - Finalize the business model and revenue model
In this step, you would get down to understanding the date from the market research.There are different types of business models in eCommerce. Understand what sort of a business model works best for your business. Likewise, chalk out a revenue generation strategy.
- Setting Up the eCommerce marketplace platform
Once you finalize the strategic goals, select a niche product idea, analyze the target audience, and develop an in-depth understanding of the customer expectations, you are ready to set up an online marketplace for your business. If you are looking to build an online marketplace, choose a turnkey solution as it is cost effective and much faster than building your website from ground up. So, if you are looking to build a website like Amazon or Alibaba, where multiple sellers are selling their products under one-platform, you can choose the readymade eCommerce marketplace builder Yo!Kart. - Marketing the eCommerce marketplace platfrom
After the eCommerce marketplace is set up, an effective marketing strategy can help you drive traffic to your e-commerce website. To ensure a successful roadmap for marketing efforts you can leverage various forms of digital marketing like SEO, email marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing, and more.
How can Yo!Kart help in launching an eCommerce marketplace?
Planning to launch an e-commerce marketplace website for your business to cope with the growing market? Need help to migrate your traditional commerce store to a digital platform? Well, Yo!Kart, the multi vendor eCommerce platform can help you build an exceptional e-commerce marketplace website that guarantees more leads, better traffic, and high conversions. Be it a startup or a billion-dollar entity, its best-in-class e-commerce features can seamlessly deliver a smooth shopping experience to the customers while giving you robust tools to manage the eCommerce operations. So, what are you waiting for? Get ready to put your best foot forward in the ecommerce market with a unique e-commerce solution like Yo!Kart. Here’s what makes Yo!Kart special:
- Self-hosted eCommerce marketplace platform.
- Conversion-driven UI/UX
- Class-leading eCommerce features
- Customizable and scalable
- Secure, meets GDPR compliance
- Detailed reporting and analytics
- SEO and marketing features including an Affiliate module.
- Pre-integrated business APIs for and payment gateways
- Free up to 1 year of tech support
- One-time payment lifetime license acquisition price packages are available.
- 5500+ global eCommerce marketplace platforms powered by Yo!Kart.
- In-house teams for after-sales and any customization requirements.
