Online Retailing: Trends and its growing importance

Over the past few years, we have seen businesses adopting many different ways to boost their online visibility through websites. The online retailing sales as a percentage of total retail sales worldwide, has increased from 2.5% in June 2005 to 8.6% in 2016, and estimated to grow to 12.8% by 2019. Today online retail purchases account for more than $1 trillion in value. In fact traditional retail businesses are losing their market share as many customers are preferring to make purchases through online websites. The websites have become important tools to advertise products and services and directly stay connected with the potential customers. No matter how small the business might be, it could still look large and successful by adopting the right online presence. Even traditional brick and mortar retail businesses like Walmart and others have realized the importance of online presence and are successfully generating more revenues from web. Same is the case with other business segments like real estate, clothing, grocery, book stores etc.

Growing importance of online sales for businesses

In past, when people think about starting a new business, first they would launch company's physical presence. But today many new ventures are establishing their online presence first, in order to explore the wealth of opportunities that they could build through their websites. The reason is either they are inspired by the stories of other successful online businesses or they understand the dynamics and benefits of using web better than anybody else. Whatever the reason might be, web has given the opportunity for all types of businesses to compete on equal footing and ceased the competitive advantage that only large companies used to enjoy previously.

Increase in online market share and its impact on traditional business

Even traditional businesses have realized the need to put some mechanism in place for doing business online, otherwise they will be losing out to smaller competitors. It is not easy for traditional companies to make the transition from conventional to operating an e-business. They need to develop new skills and methodologies in-house and have a new outlook or attitude to do well in e-commerce. Most importantly, they have to decide what works best for their particular situation. Sometimes an abrupt break from the old methodology may not be the best option for their business. At times, technology may be daunting for them to use, but if they are bold enough to take a leap towards online presence through websites, they could get substantial monetary rewards.

Importance of having a website for your business

Thanks to Internet technology that people are able to grow their businesses quite profitably through their websites. Website has become powerful tool for business because it gives owners the opportunity to promote their products and services with less investment. A good website enhances reputation of the business especially if it has useful informational content for target customers. However, just merely having a website and being visible online is not enough to gain the customer credibility. There is a marked difference between a low performing average website with frequent downtimes and an effective website that rarely goes offline.

Monitor continuous availability of website

Unless every key component of the site works correctly, there is little possibility of making a positive impact on the user experience. If the site is unavailable or poor performing, it will only make the customers frustrated and disappointed with the business. Especially for e-commerce websites, frequent downtime issues can take a big toll on their online sales & profits. Being online means, keeping websites continuously available to the users, which implies there is a need for an efficient site monitoring service that can promptly keep a check on availability and performance. In fact, site monitoring has become as much important as having a website, to make sure there is no interruption in the online business.