Advantages & Disadvantages of E-commerce

 

Advantages of e-commerce

The benefits of e-commerce include its availability, accessibility, speed of access, selection of goods and services and international reach.

• Around-the-clock availability. Aside from outages and scheduled maintenance, e-commerce sites are available 24/7, enabling visitors to browse and shop at any time. Brick-and-mortar businesses tend to open for a fixed number of hours and even close entirely on certain days.
• Speed of access. While shoppers in a physical store can be slowed by crowds, e-commerce sites run quickly, depending on compute and bandwidth considerations of both the consumer device and the e-commerce site. Product, shopping cart and checkout pages load in a few seconds or less. A typical e-commerce transaction requires a few clicks and takes less than five minutes.
• Wide selection. Amazon's first slogan was "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." It could make this claim because it was an e-commerce site and not a physical store that had to stock each book on its shelves. E-commerce enables brands to make an array of products available, which are then shipped from a warehouse or various warehouses after a purchase is made. Customers are likely to have more success finding what they want.
• Easy accessibility. Customers shopping in a physical store might have difficulty locating a particular product. Website visitors can browse product category pages in real time and use the site's search feature to find the product quickly.
• International reach. Brick-and-mortar businesses sell to customers who physically visit their stores. With e-commerce, businesses can sell to anyone who can access the web. E-commerce has the potential to extend a business's customer base.
• Lower cost. Pure play e-commerce businesses avoid the costs of running physical stores, such as rent, inventory and cashiers. They might incur shipping and warehouse costs, however.
• Personalization and product recommendations. E-commerce sites can track a visitor's browsing, search and purchase histories. They can use this data to present personalized product recommendations and obtain insights about target markets. Examples of how such insights are used include the sections of Amazon product pages labelled "Frequently bought together" and "Customers who viewed this item also viewed."

  Disadvantages of e-commerce

The perceived disadvantages of e-commerce include sometimes limited customer service, consumers not being able to see or touch a product before purchase and the wait time for product shipping. Security issues can also be a problem.

• Limited customer service. If customers have a question or issue in a physical store, they talk to a clerk, cashier or store manager for help. In an e-commerce store, customer service can be limited. The site might only provide support during certain hours and its online service options might be difficult to navigate or not able to answer specific questions.
• Limited product experience. Viewing images on a webpage can provide a good sense of a product, but it's different from experiencing the product directly, such as playing a guitar, assessing the picture quality of a television or trying on a shirt or dress. E-commerce consumers can end up buying products that differ from their expectations and have to be returned. In some cases, the customer must pay to ship a returned item back to the retailer. Augmented reality is expected to improve customers' ability to examine and test e-commerce products.
• Wait time. In a store, customers pay for a product and go home with it. With e-commerce, customers must wait for the product to be shipped to them. Although shipping windows are decreasing as next-day and even same-day delivery becomes common, it's not instantaneous.
• Security. Skilled hackers can create authentic-looking websites that claim to sell well-known products. Instead, the site sends customers fake or imitation versions of those products -- or simply steals credit card information. Legitimate e-commerce sites also carry risks, especially when customers store their credit card information with the retailer to make future purchases easier. If the retailer's site is hacked, threat actors may steal that credit card information. A data breach can damage a retailer's reputation.