A lot of businesses have entered the market these days to reach out to customer with different channels. While starting up your own business, it is important to understand the structure of operations that you want to use. Brick and Mortar, Brick and Click and E-commerce are the three kinds of structures of operations in order to commence business.
Let’s discuss each of them in detail in order to understand it in a best possible way:
Brick and Mortar: It is an offline business or the traditional way of doing business, where a business is commenced at a physical place where people come, see or browse through products and buy them as per their wish. People in Brick and Mortar business are able to provide better customer service than any other type of operation structure. An example of a brick and mortar is the local grocery store such as Harrods. This method can bring visibility and a sense of trust, however, it also brings a disadvantage of being too costly.
Advantages of Brick and Mortar or Offline business:
Offline business brings a sense of trust in customers as it shows that the owner of the business is financially stable enough to have a shop or a store. It also adds an element of professionalism making it quite popular amongst customers.
Customer would rather like to see and feel products before spending money on them. This is done usually when the product is Jewellery, electronic items, clothes etc.
Customers would simply walk in to the store if they like something being displayed on the showcase or if they have been told to go to a particular store due to its collection. Offline business increases the chances of customer walk-ins which ultimately lead to higher amount of sales.
Disadvantages of an Offline Business:
The only challenged faced by offline business is the cost involvement due to infrastructure facilities and human resources. It not just requires a lot of money but also requires continuous supervision. Any commercial space would cost a lot along with the salaries of the staff involved.
Online Business/ E-Commerce
A lot of people are making money through online businesses through various ways such as content based websites, product affiliation marketing and selling products. Today, there are great strategies in place and one of the most accredited one is the E-commerce strategy. Many people now understand the importance of doing business through web. With time, people have been able to build trust in online business and due to that, it has become the most amazing business practice invention. The online business is easy to start, however, it is difficult to succeed in a long run.
Advantages of Online Business:
Visibility is the most important advantage of Online Business as it is able to project itself globally and not just locally. It is visible to people all around the world once the website goes live.
It is cheaper and economical to start up the business online. The monthly costs are less than $25.00 per month along with whatever the marketing budget has been set. It can be anything from $25 to $100,000 per month. Many online businesses are spending millions every year in order to promote their websites.
It is easier to get customers to the website due to tools like SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The more visitors to the website, the more customers can be created into visitors through customer service etc.
Online business gives a lot of options for start ups. They can choose to create website on service based business, content based websites, selling affiliate products etc, selling books, clothes, electronics, scrap etc.
Online business is open 24 hours a day and sometimes it is even 24/7 welcoming income flow all through the year. It is an important advantage of an online business. Internet gives great opportunities to reduce costs and maximize profits and that’s the reason more and more companies are shutting down their offline businesses and getting into online businesses.
Disadvantages of an Online Business
There are many people who want to become rich quick and when it comes to starting up a business, online business comes to their mind. Millions of people have made a lot of money through online business but the essence of becoming rich is through hard work. The most successful internet entrepreneurs have two things in common, first, they are strategic in their work with analytical mind and second, they worked hard during the time of start up.
The other disadvantage of having an online business is too many distractions. It is easier to get lost in the options available to entrepreneurs. It is important to select something which is profitable and unique. It is advisable not to hop from one business to another.
Brick and Click
This kind of a business is a blend of Brick and Mortar and E-commerce where the successful business can be taken to an offline business or vice versa.
Advantages:
Through this modal, the brand gets solidified. For example, you started up your online store of books and once it became visible and created its name, you can then think of opening a store physically. This only expands your business and market share.
If you are not able to sell something online, you can sell it offline so that the customer is able to see and feel the product.