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09 May 2020

Benefits of eCommerce compared to Traditional Retail

Now with the new POSitive eCommerce Integration Module and Hosted Online Store obtain these benefits:

  1. Gain New Customers with Search Engine Visibility
  2. Physical retail is driven by branding and relationships. In addition to these two drivers, online retail is also driven by traffic from search engines. It is not unusual for customers to follow a link in a search engine results and land on an eCommerce website that they have never heard of. This additional source of traffic can be the tipping point for some eCommerce businesses.
  3. Locate the Product Quicker
    It is no longer about pushing a shopping cart to the correct aisle or scouting for the desired product. On an eCommerce website, customers can click through intuitive navigation or use a search box to narrow down their product search immediately.
  4. Eliminate Travel Time and Cost
    It is not unusual for customers to travel long distances to reach their preferred physical store. eCommerce allows them to visit the same store virtually, with just a few mouse clicks.
  5. Provide Abundant Information
    There are limitations to the amount of information that can be displayed in a physical store. It is difficult to equip employees to respond to customers who require information across product lines. eCommerce websites can make additional information easily available to customers. Most of this information is provided by vendors and does not cost anything to create or maintain.
  6. Remain Open All the Time
    Store timings are now 24/7/365. eCommerce websites can run all the time. From the merchant's point of view, this increases the number of orders they receive. From the customer's point of view, an "always open" store is more convenient. Your business can also save money on rent, utilities, maintenance, and other costs associated with physical stores. Your eCommerce store can essentially remain open 24/7 without hiring employees to watch over the store and protect items. Since you aren't confined to a set amount of shelf space, there is no limit to the number of items that can be sold online, and your store's stock can expand exponentially. Physical products will still have to be stored somewhere, but storage spaces are often cheaper than retail spaces, and you won't have to worry about factors like foot traffic and parking spaces.
  7. Create Markets for Niche Products
    Buyers and sellers of niche products can find it difficult to locate each other in the physical world. Online, it is only a matter of the customer searching for the product in a search engine. One example could be the purchase of obsolete parts. Instead of trashing older equipment for lack of spares, today we can locate parts online with great ease.
  8. Shoppers Start Online
    The use of digital channels keeps increasing. 87% of shoppers begin product searches on digital channels, up from 71% last year. Even if they end up buying from a physical store, shoppers are more likely to start their search online. Shoppers research online for a variety of reasons to compare prices, compare brands, search customer reviews, check inventory levels, and more. The only way to ensure potential shoppers find your products is to have an online presence. Even if it’s just to check store hours or locations, it’s important that customers find the information they’re looking for. You always want to be where your first customers are shopping, and evidence points to online.
  9. Convenience & Easiness
    For many people in the world, eCommerce becomes one of the preferred ways of shopping as they enjoy their online because of its easiness and convenience. They are allowed to buy products or services from their home at any time of day or night. The best thing about it is buying options that are quick, convenient and user-friendly with the ability to transfer funds online. Because of its convenience, consumers can save lots of time as well as money by searching their products easily and making purchasing online.
  10. Offer Product Datasheets
    Consumers can also get description and details from an online product catalogue. For your customers, it is very important to get information about the product no matter whether the time of day and day of the week. Through information, your customers and prospects are making decision to purchase your products or not.
  11. Attract New Customers with Search Engine Visibility
    As we all know that physical retail is driven by branding and relationships. However, online retail is driven by traffic that comes from search engines. For customers, it is not so common to follow a link in the search engine results and land up on an eCommerce website that they never heard of.
  12. Warranty Information
    No matter whether you are choosing to include warranty information with your product descriptions and datasheets or providing it within an eCommerce shopping cart, you need to make sure that customers must be aware of important terms and conditions that are associated with their purchase.
  13. Keep Eye on Consumers’ Buying Habit
    The best thing is eCommerce retailers can easily keep a constant eye on consumers’ buying habits and interests to tailor their offer suit to consumers’ requirements. By satisfying their needs constantly, you can improve your ongoing relationship with them and build long-lasting relationships.
  14. Proficiency
    For effective business transactions, eCommerce is an efficient and proficient method. Setting-up cost is extremely low compared to expanding your business with more brick and mortar locations. Very few licenses and permits are required to start-up an online business compared to a physical store. You can save lots of money by using fewer employees to perform operations like billing customers, managing inventory and more.
  15. Allow Happy Customers to Sell Your Products
    With plenty of customer reviews and product ratings, you will increase your sales as new customers find that your products are useful and applicable. Make sure that you mention your clients’ testimonials, reviews and product ratings as these can assist your new customers to purchase your products.
  16. Selling Products Across the World
    If you are running a physical store, it will be limited by the geographical area that you can service, but with an eCommerce website, you can sell your products and services across the world. The entire world is your playground, where you can sell your complete range of products without any geographical limits. Moreover, the remaining limitation of geography has dissolved by eCommerce that is also known as mobile commerce.
  17. Economy
    You don’t have to invest a lot of money in a physical store, insurance and infrastructure as all you need is a brilliant idea, unique products and well-designed website to reach your valuable customers to buy your products and services. This makes eCommerce a lot more economical and reasonable.
  18. Boost Brand Awareness
    As an eCommerce business assists B2C organizations to grow their customer base, it will boost their brand awareness in the market. Developing pages that can be indexed by search engines’ crawlers is one of the best ways to enhance your website’ search engine optimization and improve the target audience on your site.
  19. Decrease Costs
    One of the biggest advantages of eCommerce is that you will decrease the costs of your business. Below are some of the costs that you will reduce by opting for eCommerce:
    • Advertising & Marketing Cost: When you opt for eCommerce, you don’t have to spend your money on expensive advertising and marketing. Rather, organic search engine traffic, social media traffic and pay-perclick are some of the more cost-effective advertising channels.
    • Personnel: A complete automation of check-out, billing, inventory management, payments and other type of operational costs lower the total number of employees that you require to run your eCommerce business.
    • Eliminate Travel Cost: Your customers do not have to travel long distances to reach their desired stores as eCommerce allows them to visit the online store anytime without traveling. With a few mouse clicks, customers can make their purchase and have a delightful shopping experience with professional delivery.
  20. Offer Substantial Information
    The greatest benefit of eCommerce for customers is the substantial information, which is not possible in a physical store. We all know how difficult it is to equip employees to respond suitably to customers who are looking for information on different product lines. Your eCommerce online store will offer the correct additional information to your customers. All the required information is already provided by your vendors.
  21. Analytics
    Through eCommerce, organizations can easily calculate and evaluate sales effectiveness, customer effectiveness, marketing campaigns, product mix, customer engagement and more.
  22. Expand Market for Niche Products
    It is difficult for buyers and sellers to find each other in the physical world, but it becomes very easy for them with the inception of eCommerce. Customers can search their required products on the web and can purchase it from any corner of the world. No matter what kind of product customers are looking for, they can find all types of products without any hassle.
  23. Scalability
    With an effective eCommerce solution, you and your organization grow and scale easily to meet market demand as well as customer requirements by introducing different sales channels and reaching market segments.

05 May 2020

COVID-19 brings you POSitive eCommerce online store

With COVID-19 every retailer will have to rethink the way they do business. We at POSitive POS SA are proud to announce the launch of POSitive Point of Sale eCommerce integration. You will be reading a lot more about this on our Facebook page in the next few weeks, but to summarise, you will be able to deploy your free WooCommerce Word Press online shop and with the POSitive eCommerce integration module all your products will be pushed to your online store. Then the orders you receive will be integrated into your POSitive Point of Sale and all you need to do is the delivery of the goods.

We are excited to also announce that the first ten customers to use our online store will get free lifelong hosting with POSitive POS SA as well as free setup of your WooCommerce online shop.

To learn more send an email to pos@positive-sa.co.za and request more information.

Customer Testimonial - Molowethu Eastern Cape

e'Molowethu Liquor Store and  Molowethu Cash & Carry  Background: In 2008  Paulo Agriao started using POSitive Point of Sale from th...