A e-commerce business is a big risk, there are many uncertainties with opening an online business which do not occur with a normal bricks and mortar business, and many business’s do not realise this. This blog will discuss these differences.

1. Foot Traffic: a well located business will build up a reputation as that new shop opening up next week, and a lot of initial foot traffic will occur when you finally turn the sign to open and you can expect this. whilst it will drop away you will most likely still receive foot traffic. This is where e-commerce is completely different. On the day you launch your website, for 99% of the web you will find unless you buy your traffic, you will get none. This means you may have gone through a 6-12 week web build process, eagerly anticipating the opening day to make no money.

2. Stock: Whilst in a retail environment you need to instantly purchase a lot of stock, perhaps upto 12-50 stock items per product, however on an e-commerce site you can manage with much lower stock quantities – saving you a large amount of cash in your initial cashflow

3. Setup costs: A shop setup can cost a large amount to setup, both in terms of stock – and fixtures. when yhou add this into your many costings it can be beneficial to start selling from what you already have, and spend the money on a website. A good e-commerce package can be themed to suit your products, company image etc for as listle as £700, however watch this space as we have a new and exciting product coming soon to reduce this cost