11 Reasons to start an online business in 2018.
‘Sometimes you’ve got to run before you can walk’, as cool as it sounds, it helps rarely. In these times of quick assumptions with a habit of jumping to conclusions, It’s really crucial to know the nature of the business your’e getting yourselves into. What I mean is, before we enlighten you about what online business is. Let us first take a look at what “business” truly is.
It’s the common fact that, it’s based on a fair concept of selling products or providing services in exchange for each other or money. But that’s not all what business is, is it? It’s the art of understanding the demand of your product, talent in a certain market space, meeting & beating the standard, thus generating revenue. The past decade has been marked with the fastest technological growth in history of mankind with startups mushrooming everywhere and it goes without saying that the word business is not bound to a definition or two, infact it’s used to address the very essence of all economic activities in market.
I mean, just look at the history of newspapers, radio, television they proved to to be one of the greatest tools for aggrandizement of a business, whether it’s advertisement, awareness, creating strong goodwill or putting out a social message. Now the the internet is doing the same, only amplifying it further.
What do they all got in common??
The potential to reach to an audience so vast that a conventional business could never grasp on its own. It was only natural for the entrepreneurs of this era to bring out the elements of internet that would work for organisation’s benifit.
This brings me to the part for which you’re here for “Online Business”.
ONLINE STARTUPS
In simpler words, any business conducting its economic activities on internet can be refered as an online business. A web or a mobile application is something that every online business organization have, through which their customers explore & reach them. These apps are usually developed by a Digital product developing Company or an In-house tech team.
Online startups can differ in respect to the nature of their activities, few of the most common startups domain are :-
- E-commerce -The common online vendorship
- Service based online platforms
- Aggregator platforms
- E-commerce-the common online vendorship
This is a business framework which provides it’s customers a web or mobile application through which they can reach to them and experience their service or buy their products. They can either trade with their own manufactured products or they can rely on a third party for them. While shipping and dropping off the product can either be entrusted to a separate professional “Drop-Ship” Company (for cost saving and reducing risk purpose) or it can be handled In-house.
Examples :- Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, freshlane & any local business fulfilling the above requirements.
2. Service based Online platforms
Some business do not deal in physical products but rather provide their digital products or services through the internet. Let’s say you specialize in some particular skill set like website coding, graphic designing, or you’re a freelancer. Your clients can find and hire you through your web or mobile applications.
Example :- Facebook, CodeNicely, AccuLegal, Gimbooks etc.
With time some certain features of this platform evolved and created a market share for themselves. These are:
- Software as a service (or SaaS)
A method of providing applications as a service through the Internet. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you can simply access it via Internet, leaving the complex software and hardware management to the service provider.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
As the name suggests, these provide you computing platforms that usually includes operating system, programming language execution environment, etc.
3. Aggregator platforms
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that that these organizations are those middleman who present the customer with options of service providers to chooses from while also creating work opportunities for the service providers. Being a medium between customer who needs a service and service provider who needs a work opportunity, they earn their share of profit by charging commissions to those service providers who register themselves on their platform.
Examples :- Ola, Zomato, Trivago, Netflix, etc.
Now that you’re familiar with what online business is, you must have a question.
WHY an ONLINE BUSINESS? a million-dollar debate!
Think of your business as a roller coaster ride. It has its ups and downs and it often happens that when we come across an opportunity that might seem like a breakthrough at first but ends up being a total money drainer, and the most common reason majority of startups fail is their inablility to create scalability i.e. The ability of a startup to work efficiently and sustain their profitability as their sale increases, a problem whose chances are reduced by going online. Because then it does not have to deal with the traditional obstacles that most new startups face.
11 reasons why your startup should be online.
- Immense freedom
Freedom is yet another perk of online startups that draws an entrepreneurs to them. The tools of online business are portable, technological evolution was the gift that let us use our computers on our palms. Next time you spot person with his laptop at a coffee shop, 80% chances are, they’d be working on their, if not a startup then their daily office work that wasn’t possible even a decade and half ago. Online business eliminated the grind of those 9 to 5 jobs that basically sucks the life out of an employee. But if not valued this freedom can be destructive too. An successful entrepreneur values his freedom and works accordingly.
2. New economy
A tsunami that internet is, has brought a whole new economy for the world. Generating countless business opportunities for vendors and manufacturers on internet. It started as a small technology becoming the largest example of omnipresence human kind has achieved yet.
3. Amazing scalability
Online business provides ideal conditions to achive immense scalability because unlike traditional startups they don’t face the burden of maintaining daily books and front shop counters or waste time in demonstrating their products or services resulting in better efficiency and increased profitability.
4. Low cost
Online business eliminates the huge money consuming factors of the business like an expensive office, long term lease commitments, virtual billing and banking, thus reducing the paperwork saving both time and money and with advantage of sharing crucial details of business on just fingertips throughout the organization resulting in reduction of operating cost and increased profit. By switching to online mode a business can save upto 5% of operating expenses, which can often turn into huge profit if invested somewhere else.
5. Perfect venue
The main purpose of a startup is to make a well known brand out of it’s name and internet is the place which has got the attention of almost whole world. With the presence of people of almost every age this is the best place to be,acting as market for every kind of product which makes it an incredible tool for entrepreneurs to reach their target customer.
6. Global presence of your brand
Best brand development is when your brand has its own presence in the market. It would be an understatement to say that internet is miraculous. With a 24/7 working capability and worldwide access for customers to your brand you have a perfect tool to strike a home run.
7. Complete and easily available information
Whenever you launch a new product letting your previous as well as new costumers know about it is, if not hectic, then time and money consuming without the internet. Not even a decade ago this process of informing the consumers about your product was a difficult job with a lot of money sucking schemes, but an online startup doesn’t face these problems and covers a larger number of consumers in its radar with relatively less expenses and allocating very less time.
8. Better customer support
Customer satisfaction is the key to success of every startup, online or not. Acquiring and keeping the customer’s interest in the organization is the most important goal of any startup. With internet, reacting and solving the problems of the customer has become more effective due to direct feedback and better engagement.
“The secret to success is customer’s satisfaction“
9. Startup’s image
In this world of rapidly changing technologies some involvement of internet in any business is crucial. There is no escaping it. If your business doesn’t even have a website, it’s not even taken seriously and it affects the image of the business.
10. Ability to do business 24/7
A normal offline business cannot work more than 8–9 hours a day with one batch of workers but in case of an online business, it can keep it’s web portals open for business worldwide and conduct business at any time of the day and any day of the week.
If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep,
you will work until you die.
— Warren Buffett
11. Future opportunities
The future of online business is brighter than any other sector, not because it’s time and money saving but because it “IS” the future market. A market where almost whole world is present and keeps coming back.
After reviewing all the reasons I provided you with I hope you can decide the right direction for your business. Make sure you keep in mind the nature of your business while analysing all the factors and how will they affect your business’s performance. And this concludes my dicussion of why you should choose an online business. I really hope it helped those who were in dilemma that whether they need to take their startup online or not and those who are planning to start an online business.
YOUR’E IN LUCK!!
By now you must have realised how crucial it is for your business to have a website or an mobile application, we at Codenicely.in can be your your life changing desicion. we develop and design web and mobile application for your startup. Do like us on facebook to stay connected and hit the clap icon on your way out if this was helpful to you, your feedback means a lot to us and helps us get better.
Source: CodeNicely Blog