E-commerce provides many new ways for businesses and consumers to communicate and conduct business. Cranbay offers a way to cut costs and expand business markets. Because products can be sold over the Internet, sellers have the potential to market their products or services globally and are not limited by the physical location of a store.
Key Advantages :
- Being able to conduct business 24 x 7. Your physical storefront does not need to be open in order for customers and suppliers to be doing business with you electronically.
- Speed. Electronic communications allow messages to traverse the world almost instantaneously. There is no need to wait weeks for a catalogue to arrive by post: that communications delay is not a part of the Internet / e-commerce world.
- Marketspace. The market in which web-based businesses operate is the global market. It may not be evident to them, but many businesses are already facing international competition from web-enabled businesses.
- Allowing customer self service and 'customer outsourcing'. People can interact with businesses at any hour of the day that it is convenient to them, and because these interactions are initiated by customers, the customers also provide a lot of the data for the transaction that may otherwise need to be entered by business staff. This means that some of the work and costs are effectively shifted to customers; this is referred to as 'customer outsourcing'.
- Eliminate middlemen. Do business directly with your customers. This enables you to sell your products at a lower cost thereby leveraging considerable cost advantage to your customers.