Will Online Businesses Take Over Physical Businesses in the Future? by @steemtopus | 20% of the reward to steemkindness.

Online businesses have existed for quite some time now, and many of us regularly buy and sell items online, or use services like Netflix to watch movies or get groceries delivered to our homes instead of running errands to the store in person. But what about replacing physical retail stores with digital versions? Is that possible in the future? Is it something we should even strive towards? That’s what we’ll discuss in this blog post on whether online businesses will take over physical business in the future. Let's start with the advantages of online businesses.

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The first advantage🥲

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Online business is a more convenient way of doing business. Online shopping allows you to buy from your own home and saves on gas costs, time and waiting around. With online shopping, you can also find information about products which may not be as easily accessible from physical stores. You can also order products and services 24 hours a day! Shopping online also offers a wider variety of product ranges, cheaper prices and free shipping for many items. In addition, if you are looking for something that is not available locally, an online store will usually have it at a better price than if you go out to get it yourself or having someone else get it for you.

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The second advantage🥲

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Customer experience - Online businesses give customers more freedom. They don't have to go to a particular store at a certain time, wait in line and deal with traffic. Online businesses make shopping easier, more convenient and more flexible for shoppers. In addition, online stores are open 24/7, while physical stores often have limited hours or are closed on weekends. Customers can order whenever they want, and receive items sooner (or even immediately) than going to a brick-and-mortar location. That convenience is hard to beat!

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The third advantage🥲

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It’s global: This is perhaps one of e-commerce’s most powerful advantages. Unlike physical retail businesses, online businesses are not limited by geography. With tools like Fulfillment by Amazon and ShipWire, you can sell products globally at low costs. Of course, depending on your product and customers, there may be certain regulations you have to abide by that differ from country to country—and sometimes from state to state. But overall e-commerce businesses have fewer geographical restrictions than brick-and-mortar stores do. (That said, if you plan to sell internationally, make sure you check out my interview with two experts who discuss tips for selling online across borders.)
So how will online businesses take over physical business in the future? Online business has already taken over many aspects of our lives (social media and Google being prime examples). We spend more time on our phones than we do watching TV or even sleeping. And people are getting used to doing everything digitally; even ordering food for delivery instead of picking it up.

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The fourth advantage🥲

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Speed & efficiency: Compared with physical business, online businesses operate faster and more efficiently. Online businesses can provide services more quickly than their physical counterparts because they don’t need to be concerned with daily business hours, customers needing to make appointments or driving a distance to get to them. They also tend to be cheaper than physical businesses, which helps a lot when you’re starting out and trying to save money. The most common examples of online businesses are e-commerce stores such as Amazon and eBay, but it doesn’t have to stop there; there are many other types of online business models. Online businesses are becoming increasingly popular among entrepreneurs looking for low startup costs and quick growth potential. In fact, online business is one of today’s fastest growing industries. If you want to start an online business, then now is a great time! There are plenty of resources available for new entrepreneurs who want to learn how to start an online business from scratch using tools like Shopify.

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Pros and cons of both online and physical businesses.

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In today’s market, both online and physical businesses are thriving. However, there are certain pros and cons to each type of business. Online businesses do not require any overhead costs other than paying for a domain name and web hosting. Online stores can also be located anywhere with internet access, making it easier to be globalized. All a physical business needs is an operating location (or locations) and employees to staff these locations. If you have an online business that does well, however, it may make sense to consider opening a physical store based on your clientele in order to increase sales further. This is one way online businesses take over physical ones. Another pro of online businesses is how easy they are to start. Anyone can create an online business without having to invest thousands of dollars upfront or go through years of training like traditional brick-and-mortar companies might require. An online company could start out as a side hustle while still working full time at another job and become profitable quickly enough that they could quit their day job all together if they wanted. This makes starting an online business much more appealing than starting a traditional brick-and-mortar one, especially when considering how many people would love to be their own boss but cannot afford it financially or logistically due to having families or mortgages already set up. A con of online businesses is that they are often considered less trustworthy than physical ones. It’s hard to get a feel for what an online business looks like from just visiting its website and reading about it online. You can’t see how clean it is, what kind of products or services it offers, or who works there. Online reviews help to solve some of these problems by allowing customers to review products and services before purchasing them, but even then you don't know who's writing them unless you read them yourself which takes time away from doing something else productive instead. To summarize, online businesses are very popular right now because they're cheaper to run than traditional brick-and-mortar businesses which means anyone can start one easily if they want to.

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Why physical businesses will never be replaced

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Although online business has taken off over recent years, physical businesses will never be replaced. One reason for why physical businesses will always exist is because face-to-face communication cannot be replaced by technology. Customers are more likely to purchase products at a store when they are able to communicate with someone face-to-face, rather than just looking at pictures of products on a website. In addition, customers want to see what they are buying before they buy it, which is not possible with an online business. For example, if you were going to buy a car online you would have no idea how comfortable or reliable it was until you actually drove it. Another reason why physical businesses will always exist is because many people enjoy shopping in stores and socializing with other people while shopping. People enjoy being able to touch and feel products that they are thinking about purchasing, as well as being able to talk about their purchases with other people who may have similar interests. For example, if you were going out on a date and wanted new clothes, you would probably go shopping at your favorite clothing store instead of ordering everything online so that you could try things on and talk about them with your friends later. A final reason why physical businesses will always exist is because online businesses are unable to provide certain services that physical businesses can provide. Many online companies do not offer personalized customer service, meaning that there is no one available to help answer questions or solve problems. This can make online companies seem impersonal and unhelpful compared to physical stores where there are usually employees available to help customers. In conclusion, although online business has become very popular recently, it will never replace physical business due to its inability to provide certain services and its inability to replace face-to-face communication between employees and customers.

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Conclusions

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Online business has been around for a long time, and many entrepreneurs have made their fortune through online ventures. However, online businesses are not without their drawbacks. Although it may seem like online businesses are taking over at times, there is still no doubt that physical establishments will always be here to stay. Online shopping is convenient, but nothing can beat being able to physically walk into a store and feel its products firsthand—and actually speak with a live salesperson. While online businesses do give consumers an opportunity to shop at anytime, physical stores provide an experience that you can’t get from an online purchase; hence why they will never completely replace traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. I am sure there will always be room for both.

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My name is Akanbi-Muhammad Saheed, a final year student of University of Ilorin. I am an affiliate and information marketer. For the past few months now I've been learning about crypto, getting to know valuable people on steemit, creating contents, supporting and helping this community to grow bigger. It is my ultimate plan to build a solid reach and engagement on Steemit.