What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of an Online Store?

Suba

Moderator
Staff member
Before you realize your business idea to open an online store, it would be nice to have studied the advantages and disadvantages of an online store. Let's discuss it together. Advantages of Online Store
1. Small Principal
Capital The basic capital needed to build an online store is relatively small compared to building an offline store, we only need a capital of at least $100 to be able to operate an online store.
2. Merchandise does not have to be self-owned
you first open an online store, you can use a reseller or dropshipper system if you don't have sufficient capital.
3. Save Operational Costs
Operational costs are costs incurred to carry out daily business activities, such as transportation costs, depreciation, employee salaries, shop building rentals, etc.,
4. Only Need Few Employees
In fact, many online stores were started by not having employees, all activities and transactions were run by the family, and after the online store had many customers and was famous, there was no harm in recruiting some employees.
5. Unaffected by time and place
You can control your online store anytime and anywhere, even if you are abroad you will still be able to access and control it.
6. Bigger profit
In theory, because online stores can save costs compared to offline stores, at the same level of sales, online stores will get greater profits.
Disadvantages of Online Stores
1. Need Expertise To Manage Online Store Site
To manage an online store we don't only need art and business skills but we need other skills such as S|EO and SEM, image management, and making item descriptions, using social media etc. We also have to consider the number of visitors, templates, features, hosting, eCommerce plugins, logos, SSL certificates etc. But you don't have to worry that skills can be learned gradually.
2. The Power of Internet
Access Without the support of strong and stable internet access, online stores cannot run smoothly.
3. Remote Areas Hard to Reach
Because online stores require courier delivery services, courier vehicles often cannot go through steep roads and remote areas, so the delivery process will be late.
4. The price of goods is more expensive
Although on the basis of the cost of merchandise products in online and offline stores are relatively the same or even the same. but because the postage is charged to the consumer the price becomes more expensive.
5. Strict Competition The number of online shops scattered on the internet will make the level of competition even stricter. Any online store that is at the top level in SEO will often be opened by potential customers.
 

Augusta

VIP Contributor
Having an online store is very good now as a lot of people get to buy online. Unlike the physical store that you might need a location that will suit your business and location which might come at a high cost this is not same with online stores when once you have your online store you can always drive traffic from anywhere.

The thing is just to have what people will need and it should be of high quality and be able to make want to buy Having an online store for me cost less because you will not need to employ many workers and you don't have issues of paying for utilities unlike offline stores that you need to pay for all of that.

The only thing that is a disadvantage to me when it comes to online store is the issue of scammers apart from that the advantages of having an online store out weight the disadvantages.
 

JasonCherry

Member
I am sure that the best advantage of online business is variety of clients, because customers can purchase items from the comfort of their own homes or workplace. The biggest demerit of online marketing is its time-consuming nature!
 

Jasmine

VIP Contributor
In a business point of view, I do not see any disadvantages of owning an online store. You don't need a lot of money t create an online store, even when you are using premium online store platform like shopify, you can create your online shop for less than $500. Your online store does not even need products, you can do dropshipping or print-on-demand both of these online business models do not require you to build an inventory. Even if you want to create an inventory based website, you do not have to manufacture a lot of products or buy a lot of products to sell. You can just create few products and start selling. Another benefit of online store is you can sell globally, the store location does not matter when to comes to sell online. Business running cost is also very low because you do not need a lot of people to work.
 

saoussen5765

Valued Contributor
Disadvantages of online store is that if you purchase from foreign country something then the VAT applied by state especially for electronic gadget is huge and you will find yourself if you pay this thing at a local retailler then you will find that you save money.
Like price of PC is 1000 $ and paying 50 % VAT price will be 1500 $ but if you buy from retailer price will be 1250 $ as he is purchasing a big quantity then VAT for electronic will be reduced than from that you make an alone purchase.
Another disadvantage is half of them doesn't accept crypto payments and are limited to Visa or Mastercard payments. I know that you could win Visa eReloadable Card from sites like ZoomBucks but will be hard process to have a Visa Card these days.
Their fees are excessive.
Another disadvantage is country limitation for most of the countries you couldn't find a buyer supporting your country as purchase is limited by a few number of countries.
An advantage is that you have large choice and even buy something that it is not produced locally because some things are available in other countries but unfortenally aren't available in your country.
 
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