9 Reasons for Starting an E-Commerce Store

If you’re starting a business or already have a traditional brick and mortar store, you may be wondering what the benefits are of selling online in Australia, commonly known as e-commerce.

Key takeaways

• E-commerce lets you sell 24/7, so customers can buy outside business hours and from any location.
• Startup costs can be lower than physical retail, especially if you begin with a lean product range and simple fulfilment.
• You can reach a wider market beyond your local area and test new audiences more easily than offline channels.
• E-commerce is measurable: you can track traffic, conversion rate, AOV, CAC, and ROAS to improve profitability over time.
• Scaling is easier: once systems are set up (payments, shipping, inventory), growth is often more efficient than adding physical locations.
• A strong store supports your brand by building trust, social proof, and an owned channel you control (not just marketplaces or social platforms).

What Is the Definition of eCommerce

eCommerce stands for electronic commerce, it refers to the activity of buying and selling goods and services electronically, usually over the internet. It generally involves a transfer of funds between the buyer and seller. eCommerce transactions can occur between various entities, for example; business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business. This gives ample opportunities for many to participate in e-commerce.

If you prefer videos, watch the video below from our Facebook live series regarding the benefits of E-Commerce in Australia:

1. Low Start-Up Costs

One of the biggest advantages of setting up an online store is the low cost involved. Starting a new business used to mean having to find and set up retail, office, and warehouse spaces, outfitting them to specifications to accommodate design, plumbing, electricity, telephone and internet connectivity, installing storefront and signage, etc. That’s quite a lot of costs before you even sell anything, not to mention the ongoing costs.

Setting up an e-commerce website generally involves website set up and design, adding products, a monthly fee, and depending on what you’re selling, you may need a warehouse space. After that, it’s advisable to engage in some form digital marketing such as SEO or SEM to ensure your products are visible to search engines and to maximise sales.

2. Analytics & Targeted Marketing

Often, one of the benefits of going online or digital is the amount of data you can receive from various analytics tools. Things like where your visitors are geographically located, what pages they looked at the most, whether they came from Facebook or Google and much more. As you can imagine, this information is super helpful for knowing what products people are searching for and how to align marketing campaigns towards them.  

3. Customer Reach

With an online store, you have the potential to reach customers worldwide (depending on how far you want to deliver to of course). Anyone with an internet capable device, such as a smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC, has the ability to view your store and make a purchase. As we know, the popularity of mobile devices continues to rise, which means having an online store is like putting a virtual shop in a significant number of pockets. This eliminates the need to travel to a physical store, making it much more convenient for shoppers and in turn boost sales.

4. Quick and Easy Updates

Once your store is set up, it’s easy to log in and manage products. This gives you the flexibility to add, remove, and update products as needed.

5. Easy Communication with Customers

You might be wondering how you might answer any customer questions if you’re not meeting them face to face in a store. Typically, you’ll list your business phone number and have a contact form on your website to allow visitors to get in touch with you. It’s also good practice to be active on social media and answer any enquiries that come in through those channels. There’s also ‘Live Chat’ plugins that can work extremely well to solve customer problems and get them to complete the purchase without waiting for a response.

6. Online Retail is Growing Faster than Brick and Mortar

A poll in the U.S. by The Wall Street Journal showed that shoppers are changing their habits by preferring to shop online versus going to a brick and mortar store, with the exception of groceries. The poll showed that brick and mortar sales dropped by 20% and that these purchases only accounted for 22% of their shopping. One thing’s for sure, online retail is on the rise, and it doesn’t look like it will be slowing down anytime soon. In Australia, online shopping continues to grow each year. In fact, in 2017, we broke the world record for the most consecutive quarters of growth – 104 quarters without a recession. For more information about the growth of e-commerce in Australia, see Inside Australian Online Shopping 2017 by Australia Post.

7. Save on Warehousing & Storage

Another advantage of an online store is the ability to ship directly from your supplier to your customer. Depending on your supplier, you may need to add a few days to the delivery time, but that’s still better than losing the sale altogether. If a customer walks into a brick and mortar store and the item they want is out of stock, it’s likely they’ll go elsewhere. This means that brick and mortar stores need to hold more varieties to prevent the loss of sales, which leads to increased warehouse and storage costs.

8. Scalability – Easily Expand your Business Horizontally & Vertically

As an e-retailer, the choice is yours whether to employ the one-stop shop model and sell a variety of products (horizontal marketing), such as Amazon or focus on specific categories such as JB Hi-Fi (vertical marketing). With online marketing tools, you can promote it how you like and even have multiple web shops, some for horizontal marketing and some for vertical marketing.

9. Safe & Secure Shopping

One of the biggest concerns around online shopping is security, and whether it’s safe to enter credit card information online. Here at e-CBD, we use Shopify as our e-commerce platform of choice, and one of the reasons for this is the security measures included. All Shopify stores use end-to-end encryption using SSL certificates, meaning any information that a user inputs such as credit card details or an email address is protected and cannot be seen by anyone.

Another advantage of the Shopify platform is the choice of payment gateways (idea for another article), there’s PayPal, ePay, eWay, WorldPay, and many more (https://www.shopify.com.au/payment-gateways/australia). These payment gateways allow customers to check out with their credit or debit card directly from your online store or take you to another secure website to complete the payment, for example, using a PayPal account.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the biggest reason that online stores are so effective is the convenience they provide to customers and the relatively low cost of start-up vs a traditional brick and mortar store. You’ll save on fit out and the ongoing costs of having a retail store while maximising exposure on the internet.

To discuss getting your online store up and running, give us a call on 07 5531 3810 or send an enquiry from our contact page.

FAQs

1) How much does it cost to start an e-commerce store?

Costs vary based on platform, design requirements, number of products, and fulfilment. Many businesses start lean with a template-based build,
a small product range, and basic apps/plugins—then invest more as revenue grows.

2) What’s the best platform to start with?

The “best” platform depends on your products, budget, and internal resources. Shopify is popular for speed and simplicity, while WooCommerce can be
flexible if you’re already on WordPress and want more customisation.

3) Do I need a physical store if I sell online?

No. Many e-commerce businesses operate without a physical storefront, using home-based fulfilment, third-party logistics (3PL),
or dropshipping models depending on the product type.

4) How do I get customers to my online store?

Common channels include SEO, Google Shopping/Paid Search, social ads, email marketing, influencer partnerships, and marketplaces.
A balanced strategy typically combines paid traffic for speed with SEO/content for long-term growth.

5) What are the biggest mistakes new e-commerce stores make?

Launching without clear positioning, weak product pages, poor tracking, slow website performance, unclear shipping/returns,
and relying on a single traffic channel are common issues. Focus on basics first: product-market fit, trust, and smooth checkout.

6) How long does it take to become profitable?

It depends on margins, product demand, competition, and your marketing costs. Some stores can become profitable quickly with strong demand and good margins,
while others take longer as they refine ads, SEO, and customer retention (email/SMS, repeat purchases).