eCommerce is going to grow from $2.4 trillion in 2017 to $4.89 trillion by 2021, and although most of that is going to come from popular marketplaces, there is no lack of potential for your own owned online store. In 2022, the outcome will be around 9 trillion across the world.


At the very minimum, having your own ecommerce website diversifies your online presence and protects your own brand from being at the mercy of any single marketplace, and their changing rules. At best, a ecommerce website is an owned channel that allows eCommerce sellers to increase profit margins and conversions in sales.


Your business store can earn trust on large marketplaces with huge customer bases, but once you’ve grown to a certain stage, it’s time to create your own ecommerce website.


1. Customer Convenience


Small or Mid size business owners know, their focus cannot only rest on money and income. Another major reason to have an online eCommerce websit will be, website will do wonders for your customer experience. There’s incredible convenience afforded by a eCommerce website.


Customers can check necessary information like your store hours, product details, product description, warranty details, product images, product videos, variety of product features, phone number, address, which helps drive in-person sales.


Customer can purchase your products from his comfort sofa without long waiting for your reply to get information about the product details, price and payment details. Seamless shopping experience can be achieved with online payment. 


Additionally, if customers are too busy or too far from your store, move away or can’t get out to your store for another reason, the website provides the customer convenience of being able to shop from anywhere.


2. Increase Hours Of Operation To 24/7


Your eCommerce store website also allows customers to buy your products at any time. Order any time, Unless you’re staffed around the clock, your brick & mortar can’t offer this coverage.


With an beautiful online store, customers can browse your products, check if a particular item is back in stock yet, and perform many other consumer operation processes, even when your store doors are closed or the lights are off at the end of the night or your staffs went to sleep for the day. With the global internet, you’re always open for business at any time! 


You might sleep for 6 to 8 hours, but your website (and therefore your business) never will. Always available for Customers by 24*7.


3. New Market Acquisitions


When you take your store or business online, its reach expands. Yeah ofcourse, from a locality people to global people. If you own a store in a state of India, but your customers will be somewhere around the world like USA, UK, UAE etc to order your products. From few thousands customers to billion customers when you expose your business online. 


Your products can be seen and purchased by people all over the world, while with a old traditional physical location, you are limited by time and space. 


Basically, an perfect eCommerce website creates endless possibilities and expandable markets to explore, and cultivate, for increase new sales and revenue opportunities.


If you think your products are a hit in your hometown, why not bring those experiences to people in other places?


4. Speedup Business Operations


Right now, the most successfully businesses are able to combine both the physical and the virtual online shopping worlds into omni channel experience.


For instance, a customer orders a product online, to be picked up in-store experience.


Thus, when customers arrive at the store, their product is ready, they’ve already paid online, and they are out the door for delivery. This can help keep queue times down and require less employee effort to complete the quick sale.


If you doesn’t want to provide an in-store pick-up as a feature of your online store, your online business will still benefit from speedier operations. Customers will be able to research products online from website, which means only fewer questions that your employees will have to answer in person customers. 


The benefits of in-store pick up are even great for restaurants and hotels. Offering an online ordering system, with both take-out and delivery options, increases your business sales by saving potential customers their most valuable commodity and time.


5. Increase Brand Awareness

Moving a step away from selling as a third-party seller on Amazon or Flipkar or eBay means taking more control of your own brand as you spread to new multivendor platforms. When you solidify that own brand on your own ecommerce website, you’re telling your customers that they are buying from branded website, not an any eCommerce platform. This gives you more opportunities to drive and increase brand loyalty because you direct the sale, and therefore you got direct customers.


When you make a sale through your own website, the customer is buying directly from you and they know your website and brand. However, when they purchase from your store on Amazon or eBay or Walmart or Flipkart, you can also brand your products, drive customers to your original website, and stay in control as the brand behind the sale.


-> Brand your products and product boxes wherever it doesn’t conflict with Terms of Service to drive customers to your own website.

-> Add your ecommerce website URL to your pages and logo wherever possible when it doesn’t conflict with platform ToS.

-> Connect with customers as your brand name rather than as an individual.


Branding your business store allows you to mulitply the customer base of people who know and trust you, who expect certain levels of improved service or quality from you, and who will tell their friends and family about you, will get more referrals. Having your own website makes branding easier and more reliable because you have a strong concrete, well-defined, and focused online presence to good direct customers to.


6. Make Money Online

In all kind of business, money is math. The more places you offer you products, the more chances you have to make sales to get more revenue. That’s is pretty straightforward. Creating an online store opens up a whole new opportunity to generate more revenue. 


Not only will you have the sales that your physical store business creates, but you’ll also have this new big area of your business that will be generating additional sales online.


Who shops online? Big Commerce studies show:


-> Millennials and Gen X. This generation accounts for 50% more time shopping online each week (six hours) than the older generation (four hours). 

-> Everyone else. Seniors, Baby Boomers, and Gen X are ‘adding to cart,’ as well. 56% of Gen X prefer to search and purchase on eCommerce sites rather than in-store; 41% of baby boomers and even 28% of seniors prefer online to offline shopping.

-> All Geographies. While it may seem counterintuitive, urban citizen have greater proximity to physical stores, yet online shoppers in major metropolitan areas spend more money on eCommerce websites ($853) than suburban shoppers ($768), and even those isolated in rural areas ($684).

-> Men. Men reported spending 28% more online than women during the past year.


With data above like this, it will becomes clear that all businesses must have an online website.



7. Attract New Customers with Search


The immediate value-added of your website is attracting new potential customers. With own eCommerce websites, this is done through a process called search engine optimization(SEO).


Definition as simple, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results.


According to Business Insider, most shoppers are using search engine optimization strategies before they decide to buy. This means that if you are not showing up in search engine results you are closing yourself off from the primary way consumers shop in 2022. 


If you list on 1st page of google, then you will sell products more than others. Showing up in search results has incredible value for any type of online business, and having an eCommerce website is the first predominant step to get those results.


To appear in these results, you have to have an online address that should match the brand and relates to type of products you sale.


Once you have your ecommerce store up and running, there are many kinds of low-effort tactics you can implement to allow your website to rank highly for keywords and phrases associated with your business and its products.


Many SMBs see great results by focusing on small or mid business SEO to increase their sales in brick & mortar stores. 



8. Reduce cost per sale with your own store


Any marketplace like flipkart, amazon you sell on will charge a percentage as commission for the use of their platform. While building and managing your own online store is not that much expensive, you may quickly find that it reduces costs or pays for itself once you drive a higher volume of sales through it by neglecting the commision cost on your products.


If you can reach a customer directly through your own website, you’ll save on seller marketplace fees, and be able to reduce your average cost per sale across all channels.


9. Gain the freedom to sell where the customers are


Any eCommerce platform will have limitations, many restrictions, and often tough requirements that take too much time and money to meet. Your own ecommerce store gives you more tools to sell how and what you want.


A ecommerce website also enables you to sell wherever you want. You can drive more sales with popup stores or brick and mortar stores. You can offer loyal customers a store pick-up option, and you can actively get involved with customers in ways that eCommerce platforms would never allow or support.


Owning your store allows you to explore independent logistics options and maintain good consistency in shipping wherever you want to. In the competitive market, shipping quality and coverage plays a mighty and significant part in deciding the success of any good eCommerce seller.


Every eCommerce seller want to have their own website, even if they’re just resellers. With the good strategy in place and potential business for private label products in the future, you’ll be able to drive additional sales, improve your branding, and lower cost per sale.


Most importantly, profit from your ecommerce website won’t just be realized in sales. Your website will drive more trust and consumer awareness, encourage loyalty and retention, help customers make easy decisions, and will work to push sales across all your existing platforms.



10. Higher Margins & Better Cashflow


If your own business is involved and sells within the trade industry sector, then an eCommerce website will allow you to sell at higher margins. This will generate the profits you make on your products even higher quality. The shopping cart and checkout with payment options on these websites also mean you are gaining a 100% payment from the customer straight away without delay. This will improve your cash flow, particularly when customers normally provide you with payments in several instalments like EMI, no Cost EMI.


There are also several reliable payment systems you can have for your ecommerce website including; Paypal, Google Checkout, Sage Payment Solutions, WordPay, Cashfree and more. This will ensure all your payment transactions are processed successfully, so your business receives the payments efficiently.


11. Encourage loyalty and brand recognition


Recurring sales and Returning Customers are one of the primary major factors behind every eCommerce growth, simply because selling products to an existing customer is easier and approximately 20% more cost-efficient than going after new business with new customer base. Selling from your ecommerce website gives you more opportunities to create new customer touchpoints and repeat business, because you can establish your own store as the source of the customer’s satisfaction and customer value.


A Ecommerce store allows you to:


-> Sign customers up via email(newsletter) for repeat contact.

-> Drive customers to social media pages to continue engagement about products and features.

-> Connect with customers and offer value through content like video and blogs surrounding products.

-> Market a branded line of products which will hopefully drive the same consumer trust as your original product to encourage repeat sales and get referrals easy.

-> Use package inserts, discounts and coupons to drive return business or ordering accessories/refills


Each of above tactics can greatly increase your ability to drive more sales because studies indicate that about 65% of all brand sales come from direclty from repeat customers. However, customer contact often isn’t allowed on a platform like Amazon, Flipkart, Walmart where you’re not actually allowed to use branded package inserts or to send emails beyond what is necessary to offer a quality customer experience.