Although there are many pros of E-commerce, however, you will also see some disadvantages of E-commerce. The idea of online shopping and online stores is exciting and difficult. Ten of the disadvantages have been discussed below:
Content
- Security
- Site Crash
- No Possibility of Tried and Tested Product
- Late Delivery
- Some Products are Difficult to Buy Online
- Lack of Privacy
- Legal Issues
- Huge Technical Cost
- Shipping Problems
- High Labour Cost
- Conclusion
Security
Security and safety have been the chief drawbacks of e-commerce stores. Hackers and cybercriminals are out there who make E-commerce vulnerable and unsafe at times. They pose a potential threat to your online accounts, and they can extract all the money from your account if you commit minor negligence. To stay protected, you should remain highly proactive and wakeful.
Site Crash
E-commerce business relies on the internet. Therefore, another disadvantage of e-commerce sites is site crash, which significantly hinders buying and purchasing activities. Even a tiny site crash can pause the whole business within no time.
No Possibility of Tried and Tested Product
The customers must wait to test and try the product beforehand. We are habitual in buying the products from stores after checking, touching, testing, and trying them quite a few times. Hence, it requires a lot of confidence and guts to shift attention from physical stores to e-commerce platforms. Moreover, customers always need more time to buy products online. They are suspicious about the quality of the product and remain hesitant before purchasing it online.
Late Delivery
One more disadvantage of e-commerce websites is the delay in delivery. We usually see the delivery time will be seven days. However, it exceeds seven days in most cases. The customers keep on endlessly waiting for the products. In some instances, the products never get delivered.
There are also some cases in which the customers have to wait for several minutes/hours outside their houses to receive the parcels. This happens when the courier company needs to give a specific time for delivery.
Some Products are Difficult to Buy Online
Although we can buy a lot of stuff online, we may prefer to buy only some things online. For instance, customers don’t want to buy gold, silver, diamond, spectacle, ice-creams, etc., online, even if they have the option to buy such products online. We almost always need sureties – physically see, touch, check, and test such products before purchasing. We don’t want to risk our money on such expensive products by getting an online shopping experience, even if the seller gives dozens of sureties.
Lack of Privacy
One more disadvantage of e-commerce is the lack of privacy. Whenever we make online transactions, we give our names, phone numbers, email ids, addresses, card details, etc. This information contains sensitive information and can pierce our privacy. It gets hard to trust online retailers. Some sites do not facilitate the users with effective encrypted technology; hence the information, if leaked, can be illegitimately used.
Legal Issues
Many laws have been introduced for the protection of both sellers and buyers for online purchases. To create any website and smoothly conduct activities, it is necessary to go through both local and cyber laws. One of the problems regarding laws arises when people don’t focus on both cyber and local laws. Paying attention to one law and ignoring the other does not make our business successful.
Huge Technical Cost
Online presence has another significant disadvantage of huge technical costs. It needs well-organized and effective platforms to ameliorate its performance. The proper technical tuning is hugely expensive and requires a lot of investment. It also needs continuous upgradation to stay up to date with time. However, the massive cost of technical issues is a disadvantage of e-commerce. When any network, software, and/or domain disturbances occur, e-commerce doesn’t work smoothly.
Shipping Problems
E-commerce has the advantage of selling and buying products without going outside of stores. It can buy and sell any product anywhere, ship it everywhere, and ease the customer’s shopping journey. Usually, the customers buy any product from stores and leave the stores with the products in their hands; but in e-commerce, they have to wait for the shipment at their houses. If the infrastructure is unclear, it will seriously disadvantage e-commerce.
High Labour Cost
E-commerce involves marketing efforts, messages, and strategies that need technically good, qualified, talented, and well-trained staff, which is the cause of high labour costs. Only a competent and talented team can engage with the transactions well. However, colossal labour cost is yet another disadvantage of e-commerce.
CONCLUSION
The popularity of eCommerce has made many people shift to online business, but this is a complex task. An eCommerce store owner needs to keep all the cons of an eCommerce business before delving into it. There are a lot of challenges that one can face.
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