Want your business and sales to flourish and grow?
Then you can’t just sell your products or service offline (in a physical store
You need to sell both offline and online in order to bring your business to greater heights because both these different platforms complement each other very well through their differences – giving you an omnichannel business.
Here are 3 biggest differences between selling offline and selling online:
1. Online stores are open all the time
While a physical store has a certain amount of operating hours and days, an online store can stay open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You can basically generate sales in your sleep if you have an online store.
But don’t celebrate just yet, there is one con to running an online store, especially if you’re a small business with fewer manpower.
With an online store, customers will expect you to always be there to help them. So you’ll either need to work extra hours, or spend money to hire someone to help reply your customers when you’re unavailable.
2. Physical stores are trusted more than online stores
You don’t really have to worry about losing customers due to lack of trust if you have a brick-and-mortar business.
People tend to trust a physical store more than an online store.
A physical store’s products are tangible. You can actually see the products in real-life, touch them, and try them out. But that’s not the case for online store products.
So if you’re running an online store, you want to gain your customers’ trust put an emphasis on your customer support and return policy. This helps show your customers that you want to genuine help them and give them the best shopping experience possible.
Another thing that will help is displaying customer testimonials on your website and social media accounts. You should also allow people to review your products.
3. Security threats
Security threats differ for physical and online stores.
Physical stores are prone to shoplifting and vandalism to the property. So you will need to spend money on insurance to protect your business in the case where there is burglary or property damages.
Online stores, on the other hand, can’t be physically harmed because they are run on the Internet.
A major security threat to online stores is hacking. Protect your online store by using:
- secure payment gateways like iPay88
- https instead of http for url (e.g.: https://storehub.com)
- a well-configured firewall
- data encryption for sensitive information
What are the other differences between selling in-store vs. selling online? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!
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