Ecommerce
Why Having Your Own Ecommerce Website is Important
- Written by Clare Dyckhoff
It is hard to imagine a world where the internet did not exist. Where searching for information was more manual than typing a few sentences and finding the latest product relied on what was in stock in stores instead of finding more distributors online. Yet somehow, we survived!
Thankfully, for customers and businesses alike, there are easier ways to find information, learn more about the brands we do and don’t know much about, and find more reasons to part with our hard earned cash.
Making the most of the connected world we live in is key for efficiency, reach, and growth for businesses of all sizes. And with good reason - retail e-commerce sales are estimated to exceed 6.3 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide in 2024 and this figure is expected to reach even newer heights in the coming years.
With digital solutions existing to help analyze and forecast more accurately or to automate shipping, looking into having an ecommerce website is important for businesses looking to increase their presence and open up greater chances of customer acquisition and increase market share.
Some of the benefits to having your own ecommerce website include:
Greater credibility and authenticity
Brand strength
More control over communication
Increased lead generation
Organic traffic opportunities
Costing less than other alternatives
You may have already nailed how to fund you business as you scale, or found the best shipping software for your business, but if you are with us we can safely assume you are looking for more information on why having your own Ecommerce business can help.
So look no further, let’s dive straight into some of the benefits.
1. Credibility and authenticity - more trust
Whether you sell products for the every day or more special occasions, having a website when talking to customers helps establish the credibility and authenticity of your brand.
When customers are assessing the brands available, it is common to search the company to find more information on the website.
Without this, it limits your options of being considered by a prospective customer compared to your competitors.
An ecommerce website can be a great asset to use for a portfolio when speaking to customers and can be the core place digital marketing efforts can drive traffic to and awareness of.
Customers expect websites to load fast, run smoothly, have accessible pages, a clear user journey, to encourage a positive user experience.
And not only is it clear for customers looking for more information on your business, having a website that runs smoothly, is accessible, looks good and feels professional and efficient - encouraging the customer to part with their money with your business vs another.
Layering on the opportunity to not only find more information about the product but to buy them on the store could be the difference between a customer parting with their money on your website, vs another.
2. Brand strength - comms, any updates and news/PR
When it comes to visiting a website, first impressions happen very quickly and can not be easily changed once formed.
From a brand perspective, having an ecommerce website means you have a go-to place to upload and update reliable information you want your customers to know.
For example, if your customer service department is constantly being contacted to resolve an issue that could easily have been addressed with an FAQ on the website, you can create an FAQ hub to give solutions to common pain points.
If you want to provide more information on a product launch, your website is the best place to go to reflect that in the communications as well as any other digital campaigns and efforts.
The beauty of having your own website is that you can control the narrative and the storytelling. You have the freedom to create any company news and updates in a place where current or prospective customers might go to look.
Got any products that are doing exceedingly well? Encourage customers to leave ratings and reviews on your website.
This will strengthen the case for when a customer who is not as familiar with your products comes looking.
Having a clear brand helps users know what they are buying and who they are buying from, so that they will keep coming back time and time again.
3. More control
With more businesses entering the market, the demand to keep customers happy and attract new ones is more important than ever for growing companies.
With this, customers expect websites that are up to date to show that the content is accurate, the company is still operating, and that time and effort is being invested into it.
Imagine you see two websites selling a product you like. One has fresh content and guides to help you use your product in more situations and has up-to-date product stock information. The other looks like it has not been updated in 5 years. Which would you trust more?
Having an ecommerce website also means you have more control of your product imagery, copy, and can add a blog to share the message you want to share with your customers.
You can look to add a small image that lets customers know your product is a TikTok favorite, or how many were recently purchased.
4. Lead generation
Whether a business is B2B or B2C, an ecommerce website lets you do it all when it comes to selling to new and existing customers.
In addition to reputation building and instilling trust in prospective and current customers, it can also generate new leads across the world as well as local markets.
To increase lead generation, content marketing and social media are clear ways to help raise brand awareness. Having a website to hinge the campaigns on and have consistent information on is key for generating new leads.
Having an ecommerce website helps open up doors for customers interested in your products, whether that is learning more about them, checking out recent ratings, and all the way through to purchasing them.
Having a website where you can add exit-intent popups can be the difference between persuading a customer to get to the final stage of the user journey before exiting your site.
5. Opening up organic traffic opportunities
Three letters businesses often hear in digital marketing has a great deal of power when it comes to scaling customers and sales…SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the area of marketing that focuses on strategies that help businesses appear top of the search engine result page (or SERP as is otherwise known).
Having a clear, organized, efficient, fast, and reliable website can help your business’ chance to rank top of the SERP for relevant searches and queries potential customers type into their search engine.
Scrolling may be in the fabric of social media algorithms, e.g. TikTok and Instagram, but for search engines such as Google, a business that appears higher up organically in the SERP has the better chance to generate clicks to the website.
By being higher up, this generates more traffic through search queries that might not be brand related. E.g. If your company sells athleisure wear, you want to receive traffic from terms such as “workout tops” or “running trainers”.
This way, you open up the chance to be seen by customers who do not know of your brand just yet.
Outside of this, the beauty of organic traffic is that as long as your website does not have any down time or maintenance issues, traffic and sales can come through all hours of the day. Perhaps your customers in the UK are purchasing on their lunch breaks while you are just waking up.
There are many benefits to keeping the supply chain local and within the USA, for a business and in some scenarios staying local is best. But the power of generating traffic and sales outside of set time windows is a great reason to have an ecommerce website and invest in search engine opportunity strategies outside of the local market.
6. Plug and play platforms
Every business wants to have their own success story. For family-owned toy business eChapps, one of their successes was saving $15,000 a year with Veeqo.
The beauty of a plug-and-play ecommerce platform is that they are set up for users wanting to build and design without being a web developer or graphic designer. There are a number of ecommerce platforms you can choose from such as Shopify, Squarespace, and WooCommerce.
The do-it yourself tools and professional looking templates make it easy to add imagery, copy, and products all by yourself. It is easy to keep on track with inventory, stock levels and organizing products, as well as being able to promote on more sales channels, and having a clear and streamlined way of monitoring those sales.
Ecommerce platforms such as this create the feel of a proper online shop vs a website which has limited purchase functionality. And where so many businesses are investing in websites and ecommerce, having this positive experience is key to generating and maintaining your customers.
Integrating with Shopify, for example, is easier than ever and allows businesses to access a reliable and secure platform and apps, ideal for customer confidence, as well as being user-friendly and easy to use. Just a few reasons why some of the biggest brands are selling on Shopify Plus.
Further reading: Shopify Plus Demystified: A Complete Guide
As well as the ease of listing tools, there is less financial investment required for opening an ecommerce website than there would a bricks and mortar shop.
And the costs required to sell on your own website is often lower than selling on Ebay or Amazon - though of course you lose other benefits of these established platforms at the same time.
Further reading: 11 Reasons to Use Shopify Plus
If opting for WooComerce as your desired platform, you can customize the store and sell everything from physical products to downloads, and make use of extensions that enable you to take bookings or sell subscriptions (to name just a few).
It also prides itself on being an open source which means you own your store and data (instead of renting them from your ecommerce platform).
The benefits of both platforms are endless, so weighing up the important factors such as Shopify pricing, learning more about the WooCommerce products, or jumping right in to get started on Shopify could be the best next step for your business.
Weighing it all up
While it takes time and money to set up and maintain an ecommerce website, there are many benefits to having one.
Once it is set up, organic traffic can occur all hours of the day, over time. Customers can feel confident that your brand is trustworthy and credible, and the ROI and greater chances for return can be greater than selling on other marketplaces.
We have some other hand guides to help get you started, covering how to lower your ecommerce business costs all the way down to the specifics of white label vs private label, ecommerce retail guides to private label products.
With the opportunity to supercharge your business growth, when will your ecommerce site be open for business?
Sign-up to Veeqo to access a powerful suite of free multichannel shipping and inventory management tools.
