Beforehand, at the beginning of trade and exchange of goods and services, people travel miles and kilometers, both far and near to various storefronts, to get desired goods and valuable services. This has always been the standard old method. But as the world is going technology savvy, so also shopping experience has gotten better.
eCommerce, also known as electronic commerce, uses the internet to buy or exchange goods and services. It could be from business to business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer, business to government, etc., in retails and wholesales. Using technology in modern-day business has led to merchants' migration to e-commerce online shopping because it is an effective way to expand the business and increase profits.
You don't need a storefront and a salesperson for an eCommerce website, as product samples are shown on images and video clips. You need to pay a less expensive space for e-commerce, as you need to own a store to keep your goods.
How to boost profitability of eCommerce over the storefront
Storefronts are not opened on a 24-hour basis, unlike e-commerce, where the business is opened round the clock. There have been many controversies on whether eCommerce will bring more profits to the owners than storefronts. The simple truth about the monetization and profitability of eCommerce over the storefront is explained in the following points.
Increased sales
An average human spends at least 3 hours browsing the internet, making the internet a fast medium of creating awareness to the public about the goods and services you render. Therefore, there is an increase in your lead as you can get across to everyone with internet access.
The seller gets to sell goods and make transactions at the convenience of their homes, and customers have the chance of enjoying a home delivery. And because eCommerce saves time, is hassle-free, and shop-convenient, many people have opted for shopping online at different eCommerce websites. The more people know about what goods and services you render, the higher chance you will make profits.
Unlike having a storefront where you depend on passer-by to patronize your store, e-commerce can reach out to many prospective customers through social media and other forms. A successful and profitable eCommerce website goes beyond choosing a theme for your website and proceeding to offer goods and services.
A poorly designed website will create the wrong first impression. For a user to continually use your website, it must be well organized, easy to use, attractive, and sufficiently designed to create a positive initial impression.
Traffic and Revenue
Besides making sales of goods and services on your e-commerce website, you can also generate traffic and revenue from incoming visitors. When your eCommerce website generates high traffic, enough potential customers are visiting your store to view your products.
If you sell outstanding commodities for a reasonable price, more traffic will hit your website, and you generate revenues. Generating the right traffic comprises strategies and schemes that will tremendously improve your eCommerce traffic.
One of the effective ways of increasing traffic to your eCommerce store is building lists. This could be a broadcast list on WhatsApp, Facebook messenger list, or email lists.
Influencer marketing is another means of increasing traffic to your eCommerce store, where you get to leverage influencers in your target market.
Blogging is a fantastic way of generating traffic and solidify authority on topics connected to your business. When you create content related to your business, you make many opportunities for visitors to either buy from you or subscribe to your updates.
Fixed Subscription and Commission
A fixed subscription is a form of monthly or annual subscription paid by registered sellers to the eCommerce company to host their product on their platform. The registered seller agrees with the eCommerce company to display their goods and services for a particular time for which they pay. And in other cases, a certain percentage commission on the product sold (depending on the product category) is being charged by the eCommerce company to its registered seller.
Each eCommerce portal has its commission chunks for selling products at its platform. This is an excellent way of making profits from your website.
Advertisement
Advertisement is used in the marketing and advertising campaign as a communication method to improve the awareness of a particular product and services to customers. eCommerce company makes money from their website by allowing the advertisement of products and services on their website.
Traditionally, adverts are disseminated impersonally in most channels, which provides similar content to all consumers. But recently, brands have adjusted messages to the audience they target. So, adverts are placed on eCommerce websites with high traffic to draw attention towards a specific product, educate the consumer, increase sales, and introduce new products to the market.
eCommerce makes profits from their website by selling ad space, pay-per-click adverts with Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, donation marketing, and so on.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is a media post or content that a brand sponsor. It could be a video, an article, a photo, carousel ad, sponsored tweet, listicle, sponsored pins, infographic, podcast episode or series, Instagram TV episode, Snapchat story, Facebook story, YouTube video. When you run a sponsored content, businesses pay you to create content and publish it on your website.
It is a collaboration between you (a publisher) and the brand you wish to partner with. Factors such as the amount of online influence you have, the brand value, the number of sponsored contents with your client are crucial before taking up a sponsored content for a brand.
Sponsored content can get a company in the right place and at the front of its target audience. You can efficiently generate income through sponsored content on your e-commerce website, but transparency is vital to all your content.