Advantages and disadvantages of E-Commerce

E-commerce provides many new ways for businesses and consumers to communicate and conduct business. E-commerce is considered as a powerful and legitimate platform that evokes opportunities for new businesses and consumers to build an encircle of trade effectively. Numerous tipping points help in evaluating the advantages as well as the disadvantages of setting up an e-commerce business setup and they’re as follows:

Major Advantages of E-Commerce:

1. Having The Liberty To Conduct Business:

The most interesting aspect behind settling our scores with ‘e-commerce’ is its remarkable flexibility to access and operate our business set up throughout the whole day as it’s online. Furthermore, the physical existence doesn’t matter and even if we’re not available on the desk, an e-commerce system has enough potential to track and record orders frequently. It’s the easiest and secure way of running a business setup.

2. Breaking Through The Global Market:

The Internet has turned the world into a global village where both high and low-profile companies have tended to earn a lucrative amount of profit by exchanging services. It’s possibly the only source in the world that allows us to join hands with online entrepreneurs and e-commerce gurus quite sensibly.

An online business doesn’t believe in giving up even if the customers are thousands of miles away, as it sails through each situation and becomes a top hit, which should be considered as another perk of running an e-commerce platform. Moreover, it has become easier to meet and greet the most relevant sponsors and vendors online to discuss business opportunities via video and audio calls.

3. No Interruptions/Intervals:

It should be in our best interest that an e-commerce business setup doesn’t exhibit interruptions or intervals, which include the communication scale that we would build with our fan base, allowing us to send and receive messages instantly. Unlike old age, where businessmen would patiently wait for transactions and catalogs to be sent through the post, the world of the internet has made it possible to communicate in the blink of an eye.

4. Huge Business Capacity:

E-commerce allows us to enter the global market of the world and the competition has already started amongst the most high-profile brands out there. Some organizations are locking horns with web-based companies worldwide since their existence has failed to meet up with what the internet has to offer to online platforms. There is a huge business capacity for entering the world of online entrepreneurs to unwrap our value-added services.

5. Cost Effectiveness:

It’s the most secured and reliable platform to purchase and sell products online, e-commerce provides cost-effectiveness in terms of the items that have steeper price tags at the outlets. Web gurus and online entrepreneurs have experienced the true charm of being on e-commerce by meeting up with high-profile brands and great manufacturers offering products with minimal rates. Likewise, we can find some cost-effective wholesalers and set up business associations with them to render our services accordingly.

6. Simple Internet Connection:

After the success of the internet, each household has a machine that does computer simulations and to mark our availability over ‘e-commerce’, there are no software/hardware advancements required. However, a stable network connection with a genuine operating system can help us do wonders with our business in a short period. E-commerce doesn’t let us spend a huge chunk of money as it benefits it us in numerous ways.

Major Disadvantages of E-Commerce:

In spite of noticeable benefits, some major disadvantages of e-commerce have been reportedly confirmed by its top-notch users and online entrepreneurs:

1. Delivery time for Physical Products:

It would be appropriate to state that ‘e-commerce’ is generally used for products that are not easily available in the stores. For example, we would enter a music store and instantly come out with musical instruments and CDs. However, when it comes to ‘e-commerce’ we attempt to order products that are rare and not easily reachable in the markets. The internet eventually asks us to maintain composure as products are shipped to doorsteps within an expected time frame. It should be in our best interest that for physical products, even ‘e-commerce’ can put customers on hold.

2. Uncertainty In Products and Their Deliverance:

It should be mentioned in the first place that customers can experience ‘uncertainty’ while purchasing products through e-commerce. The reason is simple: when we’re on the verge to buy something from the stores, we would examine and evaluate it with our bare hands, each customer ensures that everything is as per the requirement before the payment is made. Compared with e-commerce, the same situation is depending upon mutual trust and the kind of source we’ve chosen to purchase our products from. Since ‘Not all that glitters is gold’, there’s some serious possibility that we might not get what websites have showcased to engage customers.

3. Scams and Information Leakage:

Let’s understand the fact that ‘e-commerce’ deals with the most legitimate as well as the most fraudulent online businesses in the world, accordingly. It’s our job to evaluate and examine companies and proceed with our product’s purchase, keeping in mind that our credit card information can get leaked through a single mistake. It is recommended to confirm our vendors and sellers before paying them through cards to avoid any inconvenience later on. It’s a jungle of scammers and spammers who are willing to enter our pockets online and give us a lesson of a lifetime.

4. Returning The Purchased Goods:

There’s nothing more dreadful than to be not getting what we expected in the first place and since e-commerce might encounter its customers with such high-end problems, the ‘returning’ policy is just as baffling as the whole scenario. It gets complicated to return the delivered goods after examining them to the fullest. The question is: who is going to pay the extra expense for sending these items back to warehouses? According to some sources, it is genuinely important to choose the right product from the right source to rejoice later on. Indeed, some websites give us the freedom of getting the money back, which is our fate and a matter of choice in the end.

5. Defined services & the unexpected

E-commerce is an effective means for managing the transaction of known and established services, that is, everyday things. It is not suitable for dealing with the new or unexpected. For example, a transport company used to dealing with simple packages being asked if it can transport a hippopotamus, or a customer asking for a book order to be wrapped in blue and white polka dot paper with a bow. Such requests need human intervention to investigate and resolve.

6. Personal service

Although some human interaction can be facilitated via the web, e-commerce can not provide the richness of interaction provided by personal service. For most businesses, e-commerce methods provide the equivalent of an information-rich counter attendant rather than a salesperson. This also means that feedback about how people react to product and service offerings also tends to be more granular or perhaps lost using e-commerce approaches. If your only feedback is that people are (or are not) buying your products or services online, this is inadequate for evaluating how to change or improve your e-commerce strategies and/or product and service offerings. Successful business use of e-commerce typically involves strategies for gaining and applying customer feedback. This helps businesses to understand, anticipate, and meet changing online customer needs and preferences, which is critical because of the comparatively rapid rate of ongoing Internet-based change.

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