Small businesses and e-commerce are a match made in heaven. Not only is it the perfect way to save money and expand your reach, but it is also arguably the best way to sell your goods. Here are a few reasons why small businesses should pivot into e-commerce.
It’s Cost-Effective
Firstly, whether you are selling beauty products or packaging, an e-commerce platform is substantially more cost-effective than opening up a brick-and-mortar store. Your overheads are minimal, you don’t have to worry about location, and it also comes with much less risk. 
Additionally, the things you need to spend money on offer huge benefits while being fairly affordable. In short, e-commerce is a more affordable option across the board.
Allows for Spending Elsewhere
A subsequent benefit of saving money is that you can spend it elsewhere. This means you are able to spend more on your website, product range, packaging, marketing, or anything else you choose.
This early reinvestment opportunity allows you to get further in your e-commerce journey quicker than you may think.
Wider Product Offerings
One limitation of a brick-and-mortar store is that you can only offer a certain amount of products, and products of a certain size. This is simply because you most likely rent or buy a building that isn’t the biggest, especially while you are still a small business.
You don’t have these same limitations when operating an e-commerce store, and if you combine this with something like dropshipping, you can offer products of various shapes, sizes, and weights to customers worldwide.
Access to the Global Market
Speaking of a worldwide customer base, brick-and-mortar stores can’t come close to the reach e-commerce platforms offer. The Internet is accessible almost everywhere in the world, meaning every person with an internet connection can find and buy from your store.
Having robust and effective shipping options also means you can ship across the world, allowing your products to reach every corner of the globe.
Business Expansion
Another massive benefit of pivoting to e-commerce is the opportunity to expand. Unlike a brick-and-mortar operation where expansion means opening new locations, e-commerce expansion means offering more products, shipping to new destinations, etc.
E-commerce platforms also make handling increased demand and operational efficiency much easier, allowing you to offer more, faster.
Improved Customer Experience
In this day and age, customers highly value speed and convenience. One of the main reasons Amazon, for example, is so popular is that they offer a wide range of goods and deliver them within 24 hours or at least close to, no matter where you live.
Even if you are a small business, you are also able to offer this kind of efficiency, allowing your customers to have a superior experience, and keep them coming back.
Tailored Shopping
An e-commerce platform also allows you to tailor your offerings to individuals. A small example of this is something you often see on Amazon, where there will be other products that typically bought together advertised on the page of the product a customer is buying.
A tailored customer experience also means your buyers are seeing other products in your range, which can lead to more sales.
Customer Relationships
An e-commerce platform also allows you to build better customer relationships through multiple channels. The first is a chat option, allowing customers to contact you directly with their queries.
Secondly, e-commerce sites make sending out mass emails with updates, sales, or discounts incredibly easy. This means your customers will always have a reason to come back to your site, whether they are buying something or recommending it to someone else.
Expanded Marketing Opportunities
Using SEO, social media marketing, and emailing, e-commerce offers exceptionally effective and affordable marketing opportunities. While this is still possible for small brick-and-mortar businesses, the money you make by being an e-commerce business means you can take advantage of these marketing opportunities even more. 
It is also easier to track your marketing metrics, allowing you to further target your audience, see if you are reaching the right customers, and also see where you can make changes and improvements.
Analytics
Arguably one of the most important benefits of e-commerce, is your access to analytics. The competitive advantage having access to analytics gets you can not be understated, and they have the power to make or break your business depending on how you use them.
While you can get access to analytics for a regular store, e-commerce analytics offers far more, and in real-time, allowing you to adjust your marketing strategy, product buying, sales, etc, on the go.
Competitive Edge
Finally, while being on the internet may feel like being a very small fish in a massive pond, this isn’t always the case. If you compare it to a brick-and-mortar store, there is always a chance for customers to find you.
You can also make your website and customer experience unique and recognizable, once again, without spending a lot of money.
