“If your business is not on the Internet, then your business will be out of business.” These wise words of Bill Gates reflect the reality of carrying out business successfully in this day and age, where the use of the Internet has permeated all aspects of our day-to-day lives.
In this blog we shall elaborate on the benefits of having an online store by hosting your business site, over a physical store. How can you bring your business online? What are its distinct benefits? Moreover, how is it preferable to having a physical store? Continue reading to find out the answers to these questions, along with more relevant information.
How to Get Your
Business Online?
The Internet
provides us a great platform to bridge the geographical distances instantly and
sell our products, goods, services, and ideas to a global customer base. If you
want to increase the reach of your business and acquire global customers, then
the Internet provides you the perfect opportunity to attain that goal.
Now that you have
decided to create a site for your business to increase your reach and
subsequently succeeded in creating the site, how can you make it accessible to
online site visitors? In order to make your site accessible to online site
visitors, you need to avail the service of website hosting. This service is
provided by different web hosting companies, which are also referred to as web
hosts or as web hosting service providers. Every professional web hosting
service provider will offer various types of web hosting solutions, such as
Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, Reseller Hosting and WordPress
Hosting, through a wide range of web hosting plans that cater to different
hosting requirements and budgets.
When you avail a
certain web hosting plan, based on your site’s hosting requirements and your
budget, you become entitled to the allocated server space on the web server of
your service provider for storing the files of your website. It is on the web
server that your site’s files are processed and then delivered from there, over
the Internet, to the web browsers of the site visitors’ Internet-connected
devices to render your site accessible to them. All the services and
technologies that are needed for this purpose are included in your website
hosting plan. Some of the essential features that are provided in web hosting
plans by every reliable web hosting company are, high uptime, fast speed, SSD,
robust security, user-friendly control panels, data backup service,
round-the-clock technical support, etc.
When a site visitor
wants to visit your site, its web browser sends request for the same to the web
server hosting your site’s files. The web server responds to this incoming
request by locating the corresponding files and then processes those and
delivers the processed files to the web browser of the site visitor. This is
how your site becomes accessible to site visitors and this is why you need to
avail the service of web hosting in order to ensure the seamless availability
of your site.
Here it needs to be
mentioned, that if you want to derive the most benefit from bringing your
business online, by hosting your website, then you need to ensure that the
hosting service that you are availing is being provided by a reputed and
professional web hosting company that is offering a wide range of feature-rich
web hosting solutions to choose from. Additionally, you need to ensure that you
opt for the right hosting plan, after carefully considering the hosting
requirements of your site, so that your web hosting plan is able to fulfil your
site’s hosting requirements for its peak performance and seamless online
availability.
Benefits of
Online Store over Physical Store
The Internet has
proven to be instrumental in connecting people, like no other platform. When
you bring your business online by availing the service of website hosting and
make your online store accessible to customers from all over the world, you
benefit exponentially. It not only helps you acquire global customers easily
but also expands your customer base. Let us touch on the distinct advantages
that having an online store offers you, over having a physical store.
The investment
involved in building/purchasing and subsequently maintaining a physical store
and keeping it well-staffed, far exceeds that involved in creating an online
store and keeping it up and running. Moreover, the human resources involved in
efficiently running an online store are way less when compared to running a
physical store. The prices of real estate, especially in prime locations or
upscale market areas, is always high and keeps increasing steeply. In such a scenario,
online stores provide a less expensive and less investment-intensive option and
platform to sell your products and goods as well as services on. Moreover, when
you are running your business primarily from physical stores, without any
online presence, then in order to expand your business, you need to
build/purchase shops in the desired locations. This adds to your costs. The
more physical stores you open, the more you need to invest in acquiring
(renting/purchasing) the properties and in maintaining those. If you want to
have your business’ presence in various countries, then not only does it
significantly increase the costs involved but also adds to the cumbersome
paperwork and legal formalities. You can save yourself the trouble of all this
hassle by carrying out your business through your online store. All you need is
a single online store and it is enough for customers from all over the world to
access your products/goods/services from and buy those.
When you have an
online store, you do not need to invest your money or time or efforts in the
upkeep of single or multiple physical stores. It also saves you the money that
is required to hire, train as well as pay the salaries of the staff that has to
be present in the physical store/stores. Online stores not only help you save a
lot of money in terms of investment in the infrastructure and resources needed
in setting up a physical store but also make it effortlessly easy and time
saving to acquire customers from different parts of the world without having
any physical presence of your business in those locations.
Another benefit of
having an online store is that it does away with the operational timings that
are involved when business is being carried out from a physical store and which
restrict sales to those specific hours. A physical store has its fixed
operational timings, when it needs to open and shup up shop. Additionally,
public holidays and other circumstances, such as maintenance work or any mishap
impacts its operational timings. On the other hand, a fully-functional online
store can be accessed at any time, from anywhere, with an active Internet
connection. This ensures that an online store is always accessible for sales
and can generate revenue for the business 24*7. Moreover, an online store makes
it convenient for the customer to browse and purchase the products/services of
his/her choice at any time, without having to set aside time especially for
visiting a store. This convenience ensures that online stores are being
preferred more and more by customers, over visiting physical stores.
Online stores make
it much easier for your business to gain global visibility and reach, with less
investment and far more quickly, than having physical stores. Acquiring new
customers from any part of the world becomes easy as well, with the right
online marketing strategies. It helps you break the physical barrier of
distance by making your products, goods and services easily and quickly
accessible for purchase. An online store even makes the whole process of buying
any good or product or service very convenient and fast, by enabling the buyer
to shop at his/her time of convenience and from the comfort of his/her home or
office or any other place without having to drive to a physical store.
With so many advantages
to offer to both, the customer as well as the business owner, online stores are
rapidly becoming the shopping platform of choice for customers from every part
of the world, from where Internet can be easily accessed.
If you are planning
to reap the benefits of bringing your business online, by hosting your
e-commerce website, then HTS Hosting as a globally renowned website hosting
service provider, offers you a wide variety of affordably-priced, feature-rich
web hosting plans for the seamless availability of your online store and its
top-class performance. HTS Hosting
has been the most preferred web hosting company and is often referred to as the
best website hosting
company, owing to the outstanding service that it provides through
its budget-friendly hosting plans. High uptime, fast page loads, SSD, powerful
security, user-friendly control panels, 24*7 technical support and many more
features are part of our meticulously designed web hosting plans, which ensure
that your online store is always up and running and offering an excellent user
experience.
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