How ultrafast broadband can drive more business: the shift to e-commerce
According to Nasdaq research, by 2040 95% of purchases will be online. This may be a shock to small businesses. Luckily, we have about 18 years to adjust!
Now we can probably say we saw this coming, most of us can see the slow but sure shift to e-commerce where convenience and speed is a priority. This has only been catalysed by the pandemic where customers boosted amazon’s profits by 220%.
So, going digital now might just give you the edge you need against your competitors – don’t wait till 2040. The internet is inevitably going to open your business up to more customers and make your product/service accessible to all.
So how can my SME make the jump to digital?
Finding a platform
In a world so dominated by e-commerce, there’s going to be competition, but there will also be a larger customer base. You can choose to build this customer base through selling platforms such as Amazon, eBay or Etsy or you can create this customer base yourself by building your own selling platform and attracting audience through digital marketing.
Eventually, businesses making enough sales tend to migrate to their own site rather than using a selling platform anyway – this way they can cut out the high charges that these platforms tend to add so consider this when choosing your platform.
Examples of great platforms to create your own store include sites such as Wix, Shopify and Squarespacewhere you can build your store, add plugins and track progress.
Once you’ve found your preferred platform you can begin to build your store.
To maintain this store, you should of course consider the business connection you’re using – downtime can be bad for business and somebody needs to be available as much as possible to answer potential customer queries and track orders as 82% of consumers expect a response within 5 minutes via live online chats.
GigaFast Business Fibre is the perfect product for e-commerce – we can ensure your store stays online with our 99.95% SLA and next business day fix. The ROI (return on investment) is massive at just £99 per month for 1Gbps symmetrical speeds.
Digital Marketing
Now you have your platform and a reliable connection to keep it running you need to consider digital marketing if you haven’t already.
If you’re not in a position to employ a digital marketer to help you out, consider taking a free digital marketing course – like this one from Hubspot – to help you learn how to get your product/service out to the right people. You could also cut costs by finding a freelance marketer on sites such as Fiverr.
If you employ the right marketing strategy alongside a few well thought out ads, you will start to see revenue in no time.
So how does all of this relate to superfast broadband?
To make things easier to understand, imagine your (potential) e-commerce business is a plant. Broadband is like water. Ultrafast broadband, however, is like water infused with fertiliser and nutrients.
Ultrafast broadband, like GigaFast Business Fibre, is going to have everything you need to facilitate the growth of this e-commerce business, your options will be limitless and you won’t be held back by what you can get away with on a tiny bandwidth.
A fast and reliable service will inevitably feed straight into customer experience as well. If your customer service staff are struggling to respond to customer queries due to long loading times or your connection cutting out altogether, customers may not return.
Innovation opportunities are also limitless. Live streaming is a relatively new avenue in digital marketing which engages customers and communicates the value of products. Customers won’t get a good impression if the live stream is constantly buffering.
So, stay ahead of the times, don’t get left behind.
Make the shift to e-commerce today and switch to a Gigabit Business Fibre connection – we won’t let you down.