E Commerce Barriers and Opportunities
E Commerce Opportunities
E Commerce has given the producers of goods and services the ability to market their goods to a global consumer base irrespective of the geographic location of their business.
No matter the size of the business, e commerce has almost provided equal market access to all the players big or small. What is required to be successful in e commerce is to have a consumer and search engine focused website that is backed by a reliable host and an equally reliable and trustworthy customer service strategy.
In e commerce your website is the gateway through which customers visit to look for information about your company and the products or services you sell. It is vital you have a website attractive both to your target audience as well as for the search engines. Search engines will recognise and index sites that have an easy in-site navigation system, which will ensure easy access for the crawlers to the information pages inside. Search engines will also look for content that will best match the search criteria of the person who does the search when they rank a website. E Commerce websites should be properly search engine optimised and should always be tuned to the dynamics of consumer behaviour to be found by your audience.
E Commerce websites should also be user-friendly and designed with the needs of the target audience in mind. The e commerce website should have the most sought after information buy the consumers of the products or services sold by that website. The content should be descriptive, informative and should be able to win the confidence of the potential buyers.
E commerce has also benefited the consumers by providing a better choice, access to a greater volume of product information and competitive pricing at the click of a mouse.
E Commerce Barriers
1. E commerce Infrastructure
E Commerce cannot operate without the required backup services and hardware. Not all the nations have the necessary infrastructure in place to fully benefit from e commerce. High connectivity costs will minimise the use of the Internet (the e commerce super highway) by a nations population, thus will effectively keep a large segment of its citizens permanently blind to e commerce.
Governments together with the private sector should invest in e commerce infrastructure facilities. Action should be taken to maximize Internet usage among the citizens through increased computer literacy and investment on e commerce research and development. Both the government and the private sector should also take measures to ensure the safety and reliability of information infrastructures - especially as a means of reducing transaction costs for users and suppliers. Not having equal access opportunity for all countries will hinder the expansion of the e commerce market.
2. Trust and Reliability
Measures should be taken to enhance the people’s trust on e commerce by implementing secured payment systems, guaranteeing confidentiality of personal information, and providing protection from intellectual property rights violations etc.
3. Existence of a Regulatory Environment
Governments by shutting down access to citizens of other countries and by imposing duties and taxes during the physical delivery stage of the e commerce process can effectively retard the flow of e commerce activities to and from a country.