I recently read an article written in the “Small Business Cron” by Filonia LeChat:

The Advantages of Web Presence and/or Online Stores for Store Owners:

A quick Internet search on a product or service shows that there are probably quite a few businesses competing to sell that product or service to you. When your business is ready to hang out its virtual shingle online, you’ll enjoy several online-only benefits to becoming a Web retailer. Even if you decide to maintain a bricks-and-mortar location to hawk your wares, the advantages of online stores will have you welcoming the wave of Web surfing shoppers.

Bigger Customer Pool
You may already dedicate some of your business budget to reaching new customers, such as placing ads in local papers or buying spots on the radio or television in your market. One advantage to an online store is that you can reach more customers than would ever be able to simply walk through your doors. An online shop removes the blockades of travel, parking and getting lost en route that can drive some customers away. While you can certainly continue to market to your local client base, online you have the option to catering to fans of your product or service that are miles — or even continents — away. Online shops’ boundaries are only items such as shipping rates, overseas taxes and the wait a customer may have until his order reaches his door. You may even find your product popular in a place you never would have had bricks-and-mortar access to.

Supply on Demand
Your online store is your outpost on the Internet, but it’s a virtual one. In a physical store, customers expect to be able to leave with the sweater they’ve just bought, but in an online store, a period of waiting is expected. You don’t have to undertake the risk of purchasing 300 of an item to have in stock in case there’s a pre-weekend rush in the store. Instead, you can show one picture of an item and task your employees with keeping an eye on inventory. Software programs can alert you to what you’re running low on or whether you’re experiencing an uptick in demand for a certain item. Whether you make the items you sell on site or purchase from another vendor, you’ll be able to keep up with demand because you’ll know exactly what the demand is.

Spacing Out
Almost anything can be a store these days, from someone’s garage to a kiosk in a mall to a massive warehouse. But each one of those places comes with associated costs such as rent, insurance, security and decor. Online stores may have their own associated costs, such as your Web hosting and domain fees, graphic design and whether you employ people to do your photographs, or copy and design work, but you’re able to spread out as far and wide as your servers allow. You don’t feel constrained, for example, of having to mix your winter and summer specials together in one corner of a shop; instead, create a separate — or several — Web pages for each. Customers won’t need maps, elevators or moving walkways to explore your store. They can click through its spaciousness with their keyboards and mice.

Open and Available
Unless your store is a gas station, convenience store or massive retail mass merchandise shop, its property governance is going to require it to close, whether it be overnight or on certain holidays. Store owners who operate entirely online are free of these constraints. The lights are on, and the shop is open even when you’re asleep or your employees have gone home for the day. Prospective customers can shop in their pajamas while they wait for their children to go to sleep, or in between commercials as they watch television. Online store owners don’t even have to worry about overtime pay or round-the-clock electrical bills, but instead get to enjoy the fact that their store’s doors never close.