Increased sales are obviously a major benefit for manufacturers using e-commerce, but this is only one perk. A successful e-commerce platform will also enable digital marketing efforts, integrate with other business solutions, and free up sales and customer service so that they can focus on more value-added tasks. In this article, we explore how e-commerce can benefit manufacturers beyond simply increasing sales.
Why Adopt e-Commerce?
Our world is increasingly digitised, and most importantly, consumers are increasingly shopping online. We now have constant access to the internet through smartphones, and each day we spend hours browsing on social media websites like Facebook and Instagram.
This means that manufacturers must think about how consumers access products. Since consumers spend so much time on their phones, it is vital that when creating a website for example, you ensure that it is mobile friendly. A website may be fine for consumers browsing on their tablets or laptops, but it must be mobile friendly as well. Buyers want to look online and call if they have questions. Click to dial is another must-have feature if you want to provide a seamless e-commerce experience.
The increased consumer traffic online means that businesses are increasingly adopting e-commerce platforms to get their products out there and increase sales. Small businesses looking to expand should follow suit to capitalise on the digitisation of our world.
Access to New Markets
Adopting a successful e-commerce platform will drastically improve your digital marketing efforts, and moreover, give you valuable access into overseas markets otherwise difficult to penetrate.
As your small business begins to experience some growth, you need to be thinking about getting access to markets beyond your local customer base to create more revenue opportunities. However, physically setting up manufacturing overseas or employing representatives elsewhere is costly and risky. A successful e-commerce platform will allow you to branch out on the world wide web right from where you are based. This is especially useful if you manufacture products which are dependent on seasonal demand – if it’s the wrong season where you’re based, somewhere in the world it will be the peak season for sales.
Customer Focus
e-Commerce is also great for improving customer satisfaction because it can allow customers to track the whereabouts of their orders. Using a digital tracking system means customers simply enter their tracking number to find out where their orders are, keeping them in the loop and most importantly, keeping them happy.
