Boise City Blog|Your Blog About Boise City
Aug
13
Samuel Bryant asked:
There are good reasons to consider online retail as your store location rather than a brick and mortar set up and I see these reasons getting more pronounced over the coming decades. As physical rental space goes up in price, web hosting and ecommerce solutions are going down in price. In some situations a person can open up an online retail shop for next to nothing.
It is easier to offer lower prices online than at physical stores because of theft, rent, showroom utilities, and customer insurance. Consumer theft is nearly impossible online and nobody can sue you for slipping on your showroom floor. Rent can even be shared with your residence if your home can handle the freight traffic. Utilities such as electricity, plumbing and cleaning are usually necessities in walk-in retail stores. Online, the customer is using their own equipment and environment to peruse the store.
You might not think that gas prices would be a factor, however, UPS has a more efficient routing system and they don’t take left turns, which is more efficient than our personal trips to the store. More people are telecommuting and have fewer chances to drive by store fronts. Telecommuters spend much more time online and are more likely to visit stores there instead.
Online stores can be open 24 hours a day and can offer geographic-specific products from the other side of the country. For example, a Monopoly store in Miami with nearly every university theme represented would never be able to sell a Boise State University board in Florida. An online Monopoly store would not be constrained to the customers in a single city.
People are becoming more and more information-driven in their shopping behaviors. If you’re shopping online you can easily check ratings and details about a prospective product. The ability to find the best price is another attraction of the web. The web can offer a more specialized niche product line.
If you want to expand your business by opening another store it is significantly cheaper to do so online. You can easily increase your number of online stores ten-fold for a mere fraction of the cost it would be to do the same with brick and mortar. Also, you have the option to devote a smaller amount of time to the online business while building your customer base because hosting and related costs are pretty small and you don’t have to repay your investors back.
The prices right now related to building an ecommerce site is cheaper than ever before. A domain will cost $10 a year (sometimes cheaper if purchased with hosting) while hosting is around $7 a month for a significant amount of space. The shopping cart software has a pretty large price range. I use Zen-Cart (at BeyondClothes.com, SharkSplash.com, and IndoorLamps.com), which is free but you’ll likely want a nicely designed template for about $150. The merchant account will cost anywhere from $20 to $55 a month so you can accept credit cards and the SSL certificate is about $30 a year. Not including labor this is a pretty cheap way to start a business.
FARREL
There are good reasons to consider online retail as your store location rather than a brick and mortar set up and I see these reasons getting more pronounced over the coming decades. As physical rental space goes up in price, web hosting and ecommerce solutions are going down in price. In some situations a person can open up an online retail shop for next to nothing.
It is easier to offer lower prices online than at physical stores because of theft, rent, showroom utilities, and customer insurance. Consumer theft is nearly impossible online and nobody can sue you for slipping on your showroom floor. Rent can even be shared with your residence if your home can handle the freight traffic. Utilities such as electricity, plumbing and cleaning are usually necessities in walk-in retail stores. Online, the customer is using their own equipment and environment to peruse the store.
You might not think that gas prices would be a factor, however, UPS has a more efficient routing system and they don’t take left turns, which is more efficient than our personal trips to the store. More people are telecommuting and have fewer chances to drive by store fronts. Telecommuters spend much more time online and are more likely to visit stores there instead.
Online stores can be open 24 hours a day and can offer geographic-specific products from the other side of the country. For example, a Monopoly store in Miami with nearly every university theme represented would never be able to sell a Boise State University board in Florida. An online Monopoly store would not be constrained to the customers in a single city.
People are becoming more and more information-driven in their shopping behaviors. If you’re shopping online you can easily check ratings and details about a prospective product. The ability to find the best price is another attraction of the web. The web can offer a more specialized niche product line.
If you want to expand your business by opening another store it is significantly cheaper to do so online. You can easily increase your number of online stores ten-fold for a mere fraction of the cost it would be to do the same with brick and mortar. Also, you have the option to devote a smaller amount of time to the online business while building your customer base because hosting and related costs are pretty small and you don’t have to repay your investors back.
The prices right now related to building an ecommerce site is cheaper than ever before. A domain will cost $10 a year (sometimes cheaper if purchased with hosting) while hosting is around $7 a month for a significant amount of space. The shopping cart software has a pretty large price range. I use Zen-Cart (at BeyondClothes.com, SharkSplash.com, and IndoorLamps.com), which is free but you’ll likely want a nicely designed template for about $150. The merchant account will cost anywhere from $20 to $55 a month so you can accept credit cards and the SSL certificate is about $30 a year. Not including labor this is a pretty cheap way to start a business.
FARREL
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