Are You Considering E-Commerce?

08 Dec 2015

E-commerce means doing business online.
Put simply, it’s using the internet to promote and sell your products or services. Some businesses can survive without a strong online presence, but for everyone else, being online is essential. It’s a necessity if you want to reach the widest possible audience.

Doing business online is different to doing it face-to-face. Things tend to happen faster online, for a start and unless you get your systems aligned it does not take long for things to go off the rails and customers to become dis-illusioned. Before you begin you'll need to be aware of the differences, and prepare for them. For example:

• You could receive sales enquiries at all hours of the day and night – so you need to ensure that you have a responsive system in place to keep customers engaged.
• You might have questions from people in different countries and in different languages – so be clear about the languages that you can support.
• You will have to find cost-effective shipping methods – and ensure that this is incorporated in the sales process automatically.
• Positive reviews of your business can spread quickly – but so can negative ones – so you need to monitor social media.
• Inventory management could be a vital part of your business (except for 'drop-ship' sales) – so get this right early.
• You'll need to learn how to deal with returns and fraudulent purchases.

Doing business online means you might be selling into different countries which can make tax calculations tricky, especially sales taxes, which can vary a lot from one place to another. It is important to understand all your obligations when it comes to taxes because the legal penalties can be high.   Each of these problems can be overcome with good advice and preparation. For most businesses the problems are easily by the potential benefits of having an effective ecommerce business.

If you are considering ecommerce - book a complimentary (free) client review talk to one of the PKF Carr & Stanton team to help you get started, point you towards great providers and ensure that you have good quality accounting systems in place to process the numbers.

Click here to have one of our team call you to discuss the options.