Why is E-commerce so Important for Small Businesses?
Unless enterprises have enabled their customers to conduct business online within a fully integrated digital platform, they are operating less efficiently than e-commerce-enabled competitors and ignoring massive signals that this is how customers want to conduct business. The amount of online activity is increasing at a mind-blowing pace, and a significant part of this online activity is shopping. Everybody is looking to save time, whether it's a business and all the employees that makeup that business or individual end users. E-commerce is a way consumers and businesses have found they can save time. This trend will not reverse - it's more likely to continue to accelerate. Companies that have not established e-commerce platforms and already started the process to drive traffic to their websites are running out of time.
Redefining the value chain in the eyes of the customer
E-commerce is far more than a mere shopping cart for facilitating online transactions - the coach is no more than the final component of a fully integrated digital system.
So - What's the Problem?
Almost every business enterprise knows e-commerce is essential, but not all businesses understand e-commerce is more than just a shopping cart. Even those who understand and have deployed fully integrated digital systems will fail to leverage their investment fully unless they have developed a sophisticated strategy to drive traffic to their website. Nearly one billion websites are already established on the internet, and simply deploying a shopping cart on a website will not succeed because no one will ever find it.
Developing traffic to a site and then getting that traffic to conduct business is not easy and is the fundamental challenge that small businesses face. E-commerce and website traffic go hand-in-hand; one without the other is not e-commerce.
A fully integrated digital platform enables a business to be more competitive while meeting consumer needs. Suppose companies choose not to deploy these capabilities. In that case, it is only a matter of time before they leave business - firstly because they are less efficient than the competition and secondly, because they are not providing the platform to do business that customers are increasingly adopting.