Advantages and Disadvantages of e-Commerce

e-commerce (also called as electronic commerce) is the selling and buying of goods or services over the Internet. Online purchasing is one of the most popular activities in the Internet people which do. There are many advantages and disadvantages with the e-commerce. Now we will see some of them.

• Advantages:
• With a website, the local store can maintain an international customer database.
• Enables faster selling or buying.
• It saves cost of physical staff to maintain the store. And other costs like water, electricity, rent, gas, etc.
• Online store with e-commerce website is open 24/7. It helps customers get service round the clock.
• The people worldwide with Internet connection can access to the store without any middle process.
• Even the products have a small and rarely moving market can sell in the Internet as niche products.
• Once the site was established properly in the server, the maintenance is easy because of low-cost.
• Editing, reporting, error detection, documents preparation are easy.
• It allows customers to search many products within a few minutes.
• The customers do not need to come to the store.
• There will be no need to physical display of goods or products.
• Price comparison is easy.
• Allows customers to choose their preferred payment gateway.
• Provides the facility to cross sell.
• Social networking, blogs, and online advertising will help to easy promote the website by just one click.
• Customers need not stand in the queues.
• Every transaction including customer’s data are recorded.

• Disadvantages:
• The competition is global wide.
• Consumers may not prefer to buy products from which they did not heard.
• If the customer is half away on the earth, the shipping will take a lot of time. If the goods is perishable may not sent to him.
• If the consumer is at a far distance, the shipping costs are high.
• Customers may have doubts about the stores as reliable or not.
• If the site affected by malicious codes, it sends to the customers devices.
• Product quality guarantee might be nothing.
• The code errors in the websites can cause unpredictable effects on the total process.
• Customer loyalty might be very less than the direct interaction.

E-commerce websites provide a great business opportunity. Survival in the field will be a great deal and have to put a lot of effort than the traditional direct business. In case of small businesses, delivery of goods or services is very difficult if the customer is at a long distance. So it is always better to communicate through website. To avoid this problem, many companies are giving the option like a drop down for their limited area of service.