“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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