Online business are cheaper to start up and have fewer overhead costs than traditional physical retailers. A business owner can start an online business directly out of their home. All that is needed is a spare room, some computer equipment and products that online consumers want to buy. The online shopping sector has basically exploded in the last five years and there is still more room for business owners to jump in, even this late in the game.
Ten years ago online shopping was just beginning to find a place in the retail world. People were still leery about the prospect of placing their credit card information online and most still preferred to go to stores to see the product they were buying. This was not a good thing for the online sector and most small online businesses could not get off the ground, but times have changed significantly. According to Nielsen research the online shopping sector has seen significant growth for the last five years. Statistics from February of this year showed that online shopping grew 13% despite the troubled economy and the downward spiral of physical shopping sales.
In an economy when retail is looking grim the online sector is the silver lining and individuals looking to start up an online business have a pretty bright prognosis. Online shopping is obviously a huge part of the retail pie right now and it looks like it will continue to grow in years to come. People are comfortable with the internet and online shopping so those who are jumping into the sector as a business now have part of their work done for them already. While online retailers still need to work to gain the trust of consumers via good reviews and feedback the basic foundation of trust already exists.
Word of mouth also spreads more readily in the online sector. The Kelsey Group found that online shoppers are more likely than retail shoppers to shop based on the advice of online social networking communities. In 2008 there were some 82.5 million user generated content about online shopping sites and 116 million people searching for that information. While word of mouth has always been a basic principle of marketing the online sector opens that up significantly as people are taking the advice of relative strangers on the internet. If you do good business with one party the word of mouth can spread quickly and widely across internet users; the exact people you are trying to target.
If you need more prove of how easy the online market is to penetrate all you need to do is look at the companies that have flourished on the net. When Amazon began it’s rise to fame it was an online book retailer based out of a garage in Seattle, Washington. Ebay started as small auction site with a garage sale mentality. Ebay is now the number 1 auction website in the world and does millions of dollars worth of business every day.
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