Online shopping is very popular now, instead of having to go to the brick and mortar store; we can choose and buy products quickly through the Internet. That is the great convenience that ecommerce provides.

However, it was surprising that still have 26 percent of small businesses who don’t have a website, 9 percent have plans to build a website in the near future, and 10 percent say they’re unlikely to go online anytime soon (According to Clutch survey). It seems many businesses still have not realized the potential of ecommerce. So, why the businesses today should invest in ecommerce and going online right today? Here are some reasons:

Customers are Shopping Online

The number of customers who shopping online is increasing day by day, in the last holiday shopping season in U.S, the number of online shoppers has increased 14% more than the year before. The Americans shoppers are likely to buy items from online store more than from brick-and-mortar stores.

The Nielsen survey shows that over 25% of consumers in the world buy their groceries online for home delivery, and more than half of them said they would continue to buy groceries online in the future.

Moreover, the Mintel’s Online Shopping US 2015 Report also announced that 2/3 of Americans shopping online at least once a month and there are 1/3 do that every week.

The above statistics confirmed that e commerce is indispensable for today. Start creating an online store right now or stay there and see your customers going to your competition’s stores.

Online inventory management saves storage & shipping cost

This is a huge advantage of ecommerce, by using online inventory software you can handle stock more efficiently while saving storage and shipping costs. Amazon is a great example, by leveraging the power of online inventory management, they have now surpassed the market value of Walmart and they are expected to surpass Macy’s as the America’s largest apparel retailer by 2017.

The online inventory management has the ability to speed up inventory processing by feeding bar code scans directly into the computer, the ability to automatically update inventory-related accounting records instead of entering them manually, and reduced costs due to less time wasted and fewer data entry mistakes.

Online inventory can reduce time and costs associated with restocking and shipping merchandise. We can take TireBuyer as an example; customers can shop from more than three million tires online and also give them the option to shipping their tires to a local installer or to their home. It helps them avoiding the need to constantly restock local warehouses in order to keep up with sales.

Offering online solutions improves your customer service

Once online shoppers have the problems, they prefer to contact customer service via online communication tools more than over the phone. There are 91% of customers in a survey by customer experience software provider Amdocs responded that they will use an online knowledge base to solve the customer service issues if one is available.

For example, 16% of dental customers aged 35 to 54 like to book appointments via the Internet or a text rather than over the phone. So, by offering online customer services, you can improve your customer satisfaction and also save a lot of time for answering customer inquiries.

Selling online multiplies your revenue

Selling online multiplies the amount your customers spend per order. 48% of online shoppers said they often purchase more extra items in order to take the free shipping.

With the help of online sales tools such as social media and email marketing, you can easier to get the repeat customers. The Bain & Company research shows that the repeat customers spend 67 percent more per purchase than first-time buyers. So, using online tools will help you get more revenue.