It has often been said that fortune of a small firm can have a direct effect of e-commerce, which opens up a world of unlimited business opportunities, creating a level playing field for all and eliminating most of the real-world barriers of market entry. However, despite these potential benefits, many small business owners often complain about making little success from this platform. As a result, the distrust feeling appears.

Why this happens? I think it's because e-commerce, while removing a good deal of barriers we face in the brick-and-mortar world, does come with a new set of barriers. For example, there are seemingly unlimited customers, but they are chased by seemingly unlimited sellers; you can sell a product very quickly, but customers have to take the purchasing decision without touching or feeling your product; no sales staff is required, but there's no chance of up-selling.

So when you enter into the world of e-commerce, you may need to follow a whole new set of principles.

E-commerce is not about just putting up a website, displaying the offers and adding plans for people to buy. Firstly, you have to decide on how to make the website compelling and user-friendly, what you want the site to do for you, what essential features and tools there must be, and similar strategic and technical aspects of e-commerce functions, processes and interactions.

Secondly, you have to constantly monitor different performance metrics, such as new visitor and return visitor conversion rates, landing page bounce and load rates, traffic sources, orders per customer per year, etc. And also, you must not breed your impatience. Patience is a virtue when it comes to e-commerce, which takes a lot of time and dedication to become a rewarding enterprise. Space doesn't allow me to elaborate these points here, but I believe one can go a long way with some preparedness before jumping into the e-commerce world.

For retail exporters, the e-commerce challenges may multiply as languages, restrictions and licensings, quality and quarantine requirements, weights and measures, currencies, etc. usually vary country to country. With no intermediary, it's not an easy task for a retailer to be aware of all these things, and sometimes this may get one into legal hot water. So again, preparedness can be the key here.

The barriers are there, but there's a lot to learn. Success will come to those who will and dare. E-commerce has the potential to transform how you work, reshape your business, and increase both the level and growth of productivity.