E-commerce
E-commerce is becoming a big hit in today’s way of life. People are using the internet to shop online more and more. This is has both positive and negative effects for both the customer and the business.
One of the main things that help a business when they are trying to get more customers from the web is the businesses web presence.
- Adverts: advertisement can really help to attract people to the business and it also helps to make people aware of the business. Advertisement can come in many forms and now via the internet that variety has become a lot wider. Some company’s use a virtual banner on a website to redirect you to their own website or even just to make you aware that they are there. Advertisement is becoming a rapidly evolving advantage to online businesses and offline business.
- Online catalogue: can be a great advantage or a great mistake. An online catalogue allows a company to catalogue all their products and display them on their website. If the catalogue is easy to use and is user friendly then the customer would automatically start to like this website or company. The company could achieve this by creating a search engine and sorting them out into alphabetical order. If a company’s online catalogue is unorganised and messy then it would takes ages for a customer to find what they were looking for this would make the customer dislike the website and the company.
- Transactional website: a transactional website is an online shop. This it a company’s main source for advertisement because they directly own the website and can advertise anything they want on it. A transactional website is highly likely to have an online catalogue so that the company can display what products they have in stock and how many of that item in stock. Transactional websites include a whole range of websites from banking to gambling or shopping to donating, any website that you can buy/ sell products or services on is classified as a transactional website.
- Brick vs. click: brick vs. click is an abbreviation. The click means online shopping and the brick means the actual shop made out of bricks and not pixels. There is a constant on going fight between brick and click both are fighting for control but it is still considered that everyday shopping beats online shopping by a long shot. Bricks and clicks is where an online shop also has an actual shop this is usually when a big company e.g. Tesco’s or HMV, have enough money to fund both shops.
What advantages or disadvantages are there to the customers and the business on an online website?
· Advantages for customer
- Easier to search: if a customer is specifically looking for one item, all he/she has to do on an online is type in the product he/she is looking for in a search engine and then click on the right product he/she wants. This is a much easier and time efficient method than walking around a shop looking for just one item.
- Wider choice: on an online website the stock of any product is not limited to what they have in that specific building like a shop is but an online website can store products in warehouses all over the country and dispatch them when a customer purchases that product.
- Saves time: an online website saves time because you don’t have to take time to walk or drive down to the shops all you need to do is sit down grab your laptop and go online and you can even get your shopping delivered straight to your door.
- Saves money: also you can save money on your petrol because you do have to leave the comfort of your own living room all you need is a computer and that’s your weekly shop done.
- Preferences: some websites will remember what you have bought previously and recommend certain items that you might like they achieve this by looking at other people who have bought the same items to you and see what else they bought and then show you what they think you might like.
- Reviews/ comments/ recommendations of both the product and of the shop: one off the best things about online shopping in my personal opinion is that other customers who have bought a product can comment on what they think about the quality of the product and give you an accurate idea of the positive and negative features of that particular product.
· Advantages for business
- Target advertising: a business can specifically advertise a certain product or feature on the website because they own the website they can advertise what they want and they usually advertise products or big events that the business will benefit from.
- Wider customer base: an online website can help increase how many customers shop at that business. The web can be accessed by almost anyone all over the world; this makes a lot more people available to become customers of that particular business, whereas high street shops are limited to a particular area and certain customers.
- Fewer workers: the business can employ fewer workers because they don’t need to higher certain people for certain jobs that you would need to do in a shop e.g. checkout, isle maintenance. This saves the company money because they don’t have to pay the workers.
- Less rent: the company would not have to pay rent on the shop each month/year all they would have to do is buy a warehouse and keep their stock there.
- Storage space: the business would have a lot more storage space for their products.
- Increase in customer satisfaction: the business could directly improve customer satisfaction by creating a comments page so that they can find out what problems customers are having and try to fix them.
· Disadvantages to the customer
- You can’t try the goods: the customers cannot test the goods and see if they are damaged or if it’s the right size i.e. clothes might not fit the customer or food might have gone bad.
- Waiting for delivery: the customer may be given a time to stay in so that they can collect the delivery or if they urgently need the products and the delivery might be delayed.
- Items are harder to return/ more effort: it takes more effort to return an online product because you have to post it back to a certain place and also the cost to post it back might be expensive. Another thing is that is takes a lot of time to return an online product whereas all you have to do is take back a product to the shop you bought it from with the receipt.
- Cost of shipping: in some cases the company makes you have to pay for shipping/ delivery charges.
- Fraud: if a customers credit card is stolen then the thief can commit online credit card fraud and charge the customer for buying the products which they never actually own.
- Security- https://: the customer might not know if the website is reliable and is safe to use. If a website has ‘https://’ the s means that the website is safe and can be trusted on some internet browsers the URL at the top of the screen changes colour to green.
· Disadvantages to the business
- Bad comments/ feedback: previous customers could leave negative feed back on a certain product that would discourage other customers. These comments could include faulty or broken products, late delivery or if it was food related ‘gone off’ or ‘mouldy’.
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