Starting a new business can be intimidating, especially when you look at the sea of competitors waiting to reach the top. You know you have relevant products for your customers, but reaching them first and making them believe in your value proposition is where selling online can help you start and scale sustainably. Read on to know why you should consider taking your small business online.

9 reasons why you should take your business online

Creating your own eCommerce store to go from local to global in minutes. Unlike developing an eCommerce website from scratch, the SmartBiz app provides amazing features that lets you sell the way you want to your customers online.

With SmartBiz, you can now create an online store for free within minutes, without any complex coding or technical knowledge.

Here are three steps to register your account with SmartBiz by Amazon:

1. Display your products easily

An online store allows you to showcase a plethora of products. Customers can easily navigate through your product catalogs and explore every product closely. You can choose to organize your products in a manner that is attractive, effective, and easy to navigate and understand. For example, you can group your products into bestsellers, new arrivals, by collections/themes, by styles, and even by promotional levers (get any 3 for flat 999). An online storefront takes your business to the next level by letting your customers read more about the brand and products in their own time.

2. Increase your reach nationally or even globally

One of the biggest advantages of e-commerce is that it can enable you to break down geographical barriers in an easy and cost-effective manner. With an online business, the world is your oyster. You can expand your reach immediately and easily expand to beyond your local circumference. With your own online web store, you can showcase your products and receive orders from customers all over India and even beyond.
3. work in your own time and on your own terms
With an online business, you can use your time the way you want. Unlike a time-bound 9-5 job, having an online store allows you the flexibility to work at your convenience and manage timelines without pressure. You can handle your business anytime, anywhere, and grow it online. What’s more, your business never has to stop! You can continue receiving orders for your products 24X7 and fulfill them the way you want.

4. Better margins due to reduced costs

Online businesses may not require a fund as huge as starting an offline store. Here, you’re saving on resources, labor, rent, and infrastructure, while gaining higher national or even global reach, thereby, helping you increase your profit margins. When all such costs are significantly reduced, you are sure to get more profit and expand your business.

5. Finding the right target audience made simple

When your business is online, you can use digital marketing to target precise audience segments based on their needs, demographics, likes, and interests, and build a niche for yourself. When you have a web-based business, you can reach out to relevant customer segments through content & SEO, social media, SEM, and display ads. You can also use mechanisms like retargeting ads and cart abandonment reminders to reach out to browsers who may be on the fence about trying out your products and convert them into paying customers through tailored offers, guidance, and promotions.

6. Use social media for growth

Sellers with an online store business can leverage social media extensively to their benefit. Being active on social media with regular ads and organic posts can grow your customer base broadly. Many small businesses have found a lot of success with engaging short-format videos such as reels and micro-influencer collaborations in their own niche to expand their reach. Customers can discover your products via social media and get redirected to your website for final order placement through links in bio.

7. Your transactions are easy

Online store builders offer integrated payment processing and order delivery and fulfillment partners to help you conduct business transactions smoothly. The e-commerce ecosystem in India has evolved with various mature players who can help you with any service that you may require at any stage of the business lifecycle so that your business is never interrupted. These include services, ranging from imaging and cataloging to warehousing to shipping & delivery to multi-channel order management, digital marketing and ad optimization to GST reporting and payment reconciliations, and much more.

8. Business insights to help you scale

With an online business, it becomes easier to manage your business data. You can easily maintain item, order, channel, customer, and promotion level sales data. You can analyze this data to get critical business insights that can help you optimize your operations by identifying areas to streamline or double down on.

9. Increase conversion and encourage repeat purchases

With an online business, you can experiment with a variety of promotional levers to encourage conversions. Depending on your business objectives, you can offer tailored promotions for your customers. For instance, if you want to encourage customer trials of a newly launched product, you can offer it as a ‘free gift on purchases over Rs XX’. To encourage first-time buyers, you can offer promotions like free shipping, flat X% off on your first order, and much more. You can also run limited time deals on special occasions or clearance sales on slow-moving inventory. The opportunities to create interesting promotions online are only limited by your imagination.
E-commerce makes it possible for businesses to operate without any boundaries that would otherwise restrict your customer reach. Online sellers can study their potential customers and their choices to improve and scale their businesses. Having your storefront at an early stage of your online business journey will offer more credibility and accessibility to your customers, thereby, boosting your sales.

We have launched SmartBiz by Amazon to help you begin your online journey easily. Powered by Amazon’s two decades of experience in shaping the e-commerce landscape around the world and in the process, helping millions of small businesses scale, you can be assured that SmartBiz will help you build a strong digital foundation for your business effectively.