ONLINE SHOP
Buying something online was once unimaginable. I remember the early days of the internet in Poland, when we first started using modems connected to the telephone network, dialing up the number 0202122, waiting for a connection with the accompaniment of a buzzing modem and those breathtaking speeds of 56 kb/s – what were these speeds? Then came the launch of constant connections in an abonnement called SDI (stable access to the internet) with astonishing speeds of 115 kb/s. At that time, no one thought of buying anything online because there simply weren’t any Polish online stores and e-commerce didn’t exist.
Today, online sales are a vital part of the economy and e-commerce has made it possible for almost anyone to engage in online sales. The first choice is usually online sales through Allegro, a natural consequence and a step forward is building your own online store once you feel that something sells well. Then comes the question: do I really need to pay a commission to an auction site?
We’re becoming more comfortable all the time. The idea of going to a shopping mall no longer sends shivers down our spines, especially for men who would gladly swap hours spent browsing in boutiques and chain stores with their wives for hours watching a good film on TV.
[Image: online sales]An online store is a solution born out of the comfort of this part of society. The retail industry has noticed that further expansion and dynamic sales growth in the real world are becoming increasingly costly (rent, warehouses, personnel, etc.). Someone came up with the idea that the internet has become such a mature medium that we can no longer imagine life without it. It’s time to use this unexploited space.
Thanks to online sales being significantly cheaper than traditional sales, we can now buy almost anything in the internet, including food products.
Let’s calculate the costs of a small traditional store in a shopping mall:
* Rental of a pavilion: from 1,000 zł per month upwards
* Media costs: 300-700 zł per month depending on the season (gas heating, water, electricity)
* Employee salary: assuming there is only one salesperson, it will be at least 2,000 zł per month (plus social security and taxes) upwards
The costs of a small store like this can reach 4-5 thousand zł per month.
How much does an online store cost?
* Building an online store: from 2,500 zł upwards (one-time cost)
* Annual subscription for domain and hosting: around 500 zł per year
* Employee: not necessary, the store operates automatically. You only need to check account status and change order status, and send goods if you can do it yourself/yourself. An employee is not needed as you can run such a store from home (on a small scale)
* Media costs: assuming you run it from home, only the cost of electricity consumed by your laptop/computer
Monthly costs for an online store are limited to around 41 zł per month plus the initial investment in building an online store that will work without any additional costs for many years.
Looking at this simplified comparison, long-term fixed costs for an online store are just a few dozen zł per month, while running a traditional store can cost at least 4-5 thousand zł per month (unless you deduct employee salary and take on the role of salesperson yourself, but even then it will be around 2,000 zł per month assuming you live in a small town where you rent a shop at a low price).
The difference in costs is staggering.
Another significant advantage of online sales is its reach. Assuming you live in a town with up to 50 thousand inhabitants and you sell clothing, for example, you have the potential to reach 50 thousand customers. By launching online sales, you gain access to 40 million potential customers in Poland alone – is there any difference?
Let’s calculate other costs: how much would you spend on advertising your traditional store? Flyers, radio ads, billboards somewhere in town? 500-600-700-1,000 zł per month?
And what effect does this have?
You reach only 1/10 or 1/20 of the population in your town.
For online sales with a budget of 1,000 zł per month, you gain access to 40 million potential customers immediately. With a budget of 1,000 zł per month, your store will be visible in every corner of this country, in every small and large town, in every home where someone searches for keywords related to the products you sell online – do you feel this potential?
Do you think it’s worth considering traditional sales at all?
Renting a shop is a long-term commitment that requires paying a deposit and signing a long-term contract with possible termination (dependent on the owner). If you don’t sell anything, if the store doesn’t succeed, what will you pay for rent, employee salary, media costs?
This is a significant risk. With online sales, the only risk is the initial cost of building an online store, which is a one-time expense. The store belongs to you and the only recurring monthly cost (annual) is renewing your domain and hosting at around 41 zł per month. There’s a significant difference in favor of online sales compared to traditional stores – don’t you think?
Online sales have another advantage: depending on the size of your product range, you can count on free advertising. Yes, free advertising. Not everyone will tell you this because this knowledge costs money, but Google, the largest search engine in the world, rewards online stores for a certain simple action that as an owner of an online store you need to perform anyway. You need to know how to do it and how your store should be built so it works, but it’s a simple task.
You need to add products to your store anyway, so it’s worth doing it once and benefiting from this without any additional advertising costs – except if you want to multiply your sales several times, in which case you can invest a few hundred zł per month. Isn’t that nothing compared to the potential increase in sales?
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