Why Start an ECommerce Business?

ECommerce is a business model that has been growing rapidly, and it’s no wonder why. With its low overhead, small personnel requirements, and accessible website design tools, there are some great reasons to start an eCommerce business. Run well and marketing strategically, an eCommerce business can be very lucrative.

Top Reasons to Start an eCommerce Business:

Low Overhead
Can Be Run By a Small Team
Accessible Website Design Tools

Low Overhead

The simplest form of eCommerce, drop shipping, is a model where an eCommerce website is simply a retailer that sells but never physically has products in their possession. The eCommerce website is set up for customers to browse products and make a purchase that the eCommerce website owner processes. Then, the website owner pays the manufacturer for the product and provides the contact information of their customer for the items to be sent directly to. With this model overhead is very minimal, but the margins often are not as large since the manufacturer still has to do all of the shipping work for you, and you likely are not buying in bulk.

The more profitable eCommerce model, with slightly higher overhead, is to warehouse the items you sell on your eCommerce website. Although you will now need to pay for space to store and ship products, you can now buy from manufacturers in bulk at a much lower price point. You also have more control over the distribution process and can ensure that your branding is on all items, they ship in a timely manner, and products are packed well. While this type of eCommerce does a little more time, effort, and overhead, the margins are usually worth it. You can even hire an eCommerce SEO agency to assist with inbound traffic.

Can Be Run By a Small Team

At its very smallest, an eCommerce business can be run by one single person! This person would have to manage the website, pack shipments, and answer customer questions, but many eCommerce companies start out this way. As eCommerce companies grow you will often have a handful of office staff to manage the website, provide customer service, and answer customer questions. Then you will often have a few warehouse staff to pack and ship orders. With a team of 10 or less you can move hundreds of products a day! It is remarkable how much you can do with so little when it comes to eCommerce.

Accessible Ecommerce Website Design

With the ease of use of eCommerce website builders like Woocommerce and Shopify, just about anyone could learn and build an eCommerce website with some spare time and a lot of patience. This is a big contrast to just 8-9 years ago when creating and managing an eCommerce website required a high level of expertise and experience. For things like eCommerce SEO services, that can also be outsourced to an agency.

The most basic types of eCommerce websites simply list products that are for sale, provide basic information about them, and then allow the items to be added to a shopping cart and purchased. Then the customer gets an emailed receipt and a tracking notification when it ships. It’s really just about as simple as that! Today most of these features come pre-packaged and can be set up with a couple of clicks through an eCommerce website.