What Will The Future Of Ecommerce Look Like?
For anyone who invested with technology companies in the 1990’s, the new world of ecommerce as championed by online retailers like Amazon.com was supposed to obliterate the brick and mortar store. Indeed many traditional store owners raced to sell their products on their own websites by advertising, “Now Available Online”, to as many of their customers as possible. Global barriers were meant to be a thing of the past, as were shopping malls. While the great recession has certainly put a damper on plans to build more shopping malls, brick and mortar stores still prosper and the world of ecommerce is being dominated on the business to customer level by a couple of big players, such as Amazon and Ebay.
No longer do business owners need to hire a web-designer to maintain their own website, although many do, but it is easier to sell through an established online seller like Ebay which enjoys a large amount of internet traffic. Has the world of ecommerce gone through a period of evolution will only a dozen or so big players have survived?
The answer is: Not yet. There are still amazing opportunities for vendors to open a small to medium sized ecommerce sites to sell niche items which need a national basis to be productive, such as selling unicycles or specialty lava lamps. Many such retailers also have a virtual store on a site like Ebay. In addition, the world of business to business ecommerce is set for growth in the coming decade, which may exceed the more visible business to customer ecommerce.