Creating and maintaining a website is less expensive than running a traditional brick-and-mortar store. You can start an ecommerce business channel without leasing retail space, hiring a team of employees, or having a large warehouse.

All of these advantages add up to low overhead. You don’t need to pay rent or worry about building maintenance. Once online, your store is open 24 hours a day—without the need to be monitored or staffed like a physical store.

You can use website building tools and services to establish your own ecommerce store quickly, or you can forgo building a website and launch your brand on social media or a store like Amazon. Many businesses sell on numerous online channels.

Face-to-face interaction is necessary for some businesses and transactions. Depending on your product, service, or sales style, it may be challenging to bring the full force of your personality into an online space.

While there is no magic solution, keeping your brand story at the fore of all you do can help you maintain authenticity online. Alternatively, if you prefer communicating with customers via email or phone, this drawback might be a huge plus!

Challenges related to technology can negatively impact sales. Just as a hiccup in your supply chain can prevent timely delivery of products, internet issues, or a hard drive failure can cost you time and money.

Remember, for every technical issue that may arise, there’s likely a solution or a preventative measure you can take. Be sure to back up your data regularly. Using a store like Amazon can help mitigate these risks with an established, trusted technical infrastructure.

Customers care about how information is stored and shared. Build customer trust by giving details on your privacy policy. Doing so demonstrates transparency and reassures customers that you will safeguard their personally identifiable information.

Amazon has worked for decades to create a secure shopping experience, and businesses that sell on Amazon benefit from long-standing customer trust. When you host an ecommerce store on your own domain, you need to find a secure payment processing service and take reasonable measures to avoid putting customer data at risk.

It may be easy to pack and ship orders from your garage or spare room when you’re starting out in ecommerce. But as your business grows, order fulfillment becomes a much more time-consuming process. Sudden increases in orders can leave you scrambling to fulfill orders. Using a service like Fulfillment by Amazon can help reduce the strain on your business and keep customers satisfied.

Learn how to choose the right ecommerce fulfillment service to grow your business.