Ecommerce

Many merchants looking into adding an ecommerce channel to their retail business are experiencing sticker shock.  Various changes in the online space contribute to higher than expected costs of doing business online. While it is still considerably less expensive to set up and operate an ecommerce store than a physical retail space, it is helpful to look at the whole picture to get a sense of what the costs of ecommerce consists of and why they are such.

Building an ecommerce site has become remarkably trivial over the last five years.  The proliference of open source shopping carts and turn-key merchant processing means that retailer can now run a powerful retail Website.   This combination is intoxicating as smaller merchants have rushed to compete with Internet Goliths like Amazon.  The idea of a 24 hour sales machine can make the average small business owner salivate.