Would you like your retail business to flourish and grow? If your answer is a ‘Yes’, selling simply in your physical store would not be enough. To get the complete benefits of selling goods and services, you need to sell online as well as offline. Both, offline selling and online selling complement each other with their differences, making it the best way to earn higher profits with an omnichannel presence. Well, that’s your choice whether to use both the modes of selling; but, definitely, solely selling in a physical store is not helping you enjoy the comprehensive potential of selling.
In this digital era, finding a product or service has become as easy as drinking water; thanks to the Internet. The broad array of opportunities for online sellers has given rise to newly emerging entrepreneurs in different business niches, every day, around the globe. Today, a homemaker who enjoys making handicrafts can sell their products online to customers from any city or country by creating an online ecommerce store. You might have come across people exclaiming that creating an ecommerce store is a difficult task. Well, it is true, starting a business from scratch could be a challenging task –be it online or offline. However, there is an efficient solution to this problem as well! Leading ecommerce platforms such as Builderfly is equipped with predefined themes and templates that are designed by professionals for you to easily start selling online in a jiffy.
The impacts of ecommerce and online selling on the sellers and online shoppers cannot be ignored. The first thing that comes to the mind of the person wanting to purchase anything is whether to go shopping online or offline. Not only the shoppers, but also the sellers come across this dilemma whether to selling offline, online, or both. Taking into account the business size, budget, anticipated margin of profits, and ROI, the seller needs to choose whether to sell online or offline. In this blog, we will be covering the key differences, consequences, and results of selling offline and selling online.
What are the Key Differences between Offline and Online Selling?
In both, online and offline selling of goods and services, there are a few decisions you need to take, business plans you have to make, and business strategies you got to form for the success of your business. As you are now well aware, there are two different yet necessary worlds of selling products and services – the online world and the offline world. As a business owner, it comes upon you to choose which one is a better place to be. Here are the key differences between offline and online selling to help you in getting a clear picture and making a wise decision:
Round the Clock Business Presence
While traditional brick and mortar store has a fixed time and days of operations, an online selling store can be operated 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, without any limitations. In fact, once opened, the online store need not be closed, at all. Basically, with an online store, you would be earning money even when you are sleeping peacefully. Well, you need to know the fact that selling online also demands round the clock customer support which is a crucial deciding factor in shoppers purchasing from your online store. If you lack manpower for this, there are many more ways to provide the best services to your customers using online tools for automating the process. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and such technologies, many online, ready-to-use software are available that can be simply integrated to the online store and keep your customers efficiently engaged when there is no manpower handling the customers in the odd hours. The significant upside of selling online is that you have a lot more opportunity to sell as compared to a physical store.
Initial Setup
Opening a brick and mortar stores means to find the right location with more visibility to the local public. And for that, you’ll need quite a sum of money for rent, overheads, salaries for staff, marketing costs for the area, and so on. All these can cost an online seller a hefty amount. On the other hand, starting an online business frees the seller from all these hassles. Everything is on a computer, laptop, or other devices and therefore, there are hardly any costs for the initial setup of the business. There is no need for stocking up inventories or hiring countless staffs for running your ecommerce business. Moreover, you can market and promote your online business for free using social media platforms and reach the majority of the customers in the digital world. The target audience for online selling is teenagers and adults who spend most of their time on social media platforms and other online shopping platforms.
Although, selling online also calls for the right place to get the complete benefits of running a successful online business. You can now create an online selling store for your business easily using one of the leading ecommerce platforms, Builderfly, that lets you create a stunning online store as well as a native mobile app for iOS and Android. The best part is, you can customize the store using templates and themes of your choice and give a personalized touch by connecting your existing domain to the store. Talking about the setup costs, there are four different pricing plans for businesses of all kinds, out of which the Startup Plan only requires a one-time minimal investment to create a strong online presence.
Building Trustworthiness
Online sellers are complete in the dark when it comes to knowing their customers and similarly, online customers are always reluctant to trust new businesses. The fact is, there are many fraudulent websites, wherein people are getting cheated by evasive online sellers. Due to such reasons, genuine online sellers need to establish trustworthiness among the online public and for that, there must be some serious investments – be it monetary, be it efforts. The things that make online customers sceptical include getting delivered with low-quality products, charging fraudulently, unrealistic business marketing, the suitability of the products to their needs, and the list goes on. These are the things that are not to be worried when purchasing from offline stores. In order to establish your brand’s trustworthiness, you can consider showcasing the registration information of your business, provide complete contact details including the address, any form of approval from the government officials via certificates or other documents (if any), the story of your business journey right from its inception, etc. You can also build strong connections by creating business pages on prominent Social Media Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Potential to Attract Customers
When selling goods and services, all business markets are getting customers up to their limitations. However, every seller looks forward to flourishing and grow their business every other day and that can be done only by attracting newer customers to their store apart from providing a quality experience to the already existing ones. It is understood without saying that online businesses get access to more customers as compared to offline brick and mortar stores. Although there is a whopping increase in the number of online shoppers globally, offline shops are still valued considerably in the market. There exist people who believe in purchasing products only after getting to see the product, feel its quality, and getting to try the product before using, which is not been achieved so far by the online sellers. However, online shopping facilitates in returning the products within a stipulated time, if the customers are not happy with the products or the services.
The perk of selling online is that you can provide a gamut of options even for the tiniest of products you sell online which is otherwise limited in a physical store. When you create an online store using Builderfly, you get the opportunity to list unlimited products on your online store which is a significant way to attract customers to your online store. The offline stores have limited visibility to the area of the shops. On the flip side, the world is the audience for an online store. It depends on the seller’s smart business strategies that decide the rate of conversion, and revenue for their ecommerce business.
Bottom Line
Selling offline, although are dependable, shall give you limited exposure to the right market as compare to the online market. The online selling market has loads of potential to build a successful business. However, looking into the ocean of benefits it offers, there are innumerable online sellers today, significantly contributing to raising the bar of competition for newer online sellers. Therefore, if you have decided to start selling, you must surely consider the above differences, explanation, and make a sound decision accordingly. Also, you can consider selling online as well as offline to get the best of both worlds. Lastly, explore the extensive features you get to enjoy by signing up for the 14-days free trial offered by Builderfly.
