Why e-commerce matters?

E-commerce is becoming more and more popular throughout the entire world in present and lots of business owners believe in it. What more can I say, we are living in a world where people use mobile phones to make online purchases, pay bills and make lot more transactions. But when it comes to Sri Lanka, the concept of e-commerce is not so popular yet, most of the merchants would have a website for their business but hesitate to sell products through that website. The entire world is moving forward, but we are hesitant to keep up our speed with the rest of the world, may be this article will clear some doubts you have about having an e-commerce website.

Let me start with explaining what e-commerce does. E-commerce enables you to sell products online whenever, wherever. Think about that for a moment, imagine a potential customer who live in another country buying your product, how cool is that? Have you ever thought about your product reaching out into another country with this ease? Now imagine what would it be if you haven't had an online store? People want to buy your product will have to come to the store and make the purchase, this business conversion will take long and you may lose the client or the client will lose their interest during that time period. You don't want that to happen to your business. Buy and sell online is getting more and more popular throughout the world and it will soon dominate Sri Lankan consumers, matter of fact it is happening while you read this article. Who thought of having a smart phone and connect with each other 20 years back? And now at least 60% of the population in Sri Lanka is using a smart phone. In very near future you will see people buy their groceries using smart phones. So why not start now and be in front of the game.

In the past, having an online store may not be an easy task, but today we have plenty of options if you want to setup an online store; some only will take less than an hour to set up the store. Regardless of the size of the business, anyone can have their own website that sells. E-commerce opens up a lot of opportunities especially for the small businesses to grow up. For small businesses, putting up a physical store may be a really difficult task. Selecting a place, designing it, getting all the necessary approvals, etc. will not only cost you money, but it also time consuming. Putting an online store on the other hand is really easy, it will not break your wallet and it will not waste your valuable time unnecessarily. In Sri Lanka we have several successful e-commerce ventures, wow.lk, mydeal.lk and takas.lk are some of the popular E-commerce ventures in Sri Lanka, and they are growing fast. Being selected as the fastest growing startup in Sri Lanka, takas.lk further proves this. Takas is one of the popular online store that run strictly online and offer great deals on electronics and household items and they deliver it to your doorstep throughout the island. Their policy of being strictly online allowed them to cut their operational cost and that enabled them to sell items cheaper than the other retailers in the market. The same product for cheaper price? plus you also can enjoy the easy payment schemes they offer, so would you think the potential buyers will think twice about buying from them? In fact who wants to walk through the shelves of the stores? it is getting old school. Think about it.

So now you may be thinking does my business need E-Commerce? The answer is yes, regardless of the size of the business you need E-commerce and if you chose not to step forward now, there are many businesses behind you that will; and once those businesses fly pass you, you may not get a single chance to catch up again. There is no doubt that e-commerce is here to stay and it is marking its territory at a rapid speed, so why hesitate?

In saying about all the positive side of the story, let me walk you through the other side of it as well when running an online store in Sri Lanka. I rather say these are some of the barriers for the entrepreneurs in Sri lanka that keeps pulling our legs when we think about sell online.

• Cost of the payment gateways
• Building trust on people (Brand identity)
• Not having a good idea about online marketing

Cost of the payment gateways in our country is something that makes business owners think twice about going online. Since PayPal money receiving is also not available in Sri Lanka, business owners hesitate to go online because of the doubts they have regarding how much they can make online. I agree it is a pain in your back and it keeps you swinging between what to do and what not to do, but all you need it a good marketing plan for your online store and you will be good to go. A good online marketing strategy will definitely make your online venture profitable and you no longer need to worry about the cost of the payment gateways. PayPal will also eventually make its way through to Sri Lanka really soon and I bet it will be a major turning point to Sri Lankan business ventures, it sure will bring more and more small businesses into the game making the retail stores to go online, are you going to wait till that happen?

Building trust on people is another key fact to consider because most of the Sri Lankans are not innovators when it comes to Product Adoption Life cycle, they are waiting for the other's response to try out the product. Also most of the people don't trust the merchant at once. I believe it comes with the culture in Sri Lanka and it's gradually changing for good with the technological advances. If you are smart enough to make the right move, you can easily gain the consumer's trust and convert the lead into a business. As explained before, if you have a strong online marketing strategy, this will not be a problem for you.

As my last point when running an online business, online marketing comes as the first priority to promote the business, I am sure you figured that out already after reading the above two paragraphs. When it comes to online selling, sometimes traditional marketing methods will work for you but most of the time online marketing will give you the best return for the money you spend. For this you will need to have a good understanding about how online marketing works, such as SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing. I wouldn't say this is really a hard job if you can get the basic concepts of it right at the first. The young entrepreneurs now a days are technologically advanced and find it really easy to learn how it works. The easiest way to learn this is to get outside the old box and think from outside. Believe me, online marketing will not cost you more than what it was for you before. If you still can't get it don't worry, you will find many resourceful people out there and all you have to do is just post an advertisement ONLINE.

Hope this helps you clear your doubts about E-commerce and please feel free to ask anything related to this and I would love to answer your questions.