Task 2 - Benefitsand Risks of online business

Project Extension Task 2


I will write about the possible benefits to the business and customer in developing an online business. I will list some the ideas down.

There are different benefits for an online business for the owner and clients, they are:

• Saving money (less expenses)
  
  - You do not have to pay same amount of money if you have just warehouse (gas, electricity, water, council tax)
  - The start up costs will be low, because will need only a warehouse to keep the goods and will need to buy products
  - You do not need to rent/buy a premises to make it a shop
  - No decoration needed
  - Need fewer staff, even they can work at home front of the PC (depends on how busy is the business)
  
  - The producs online are cheaper than the producs in the shops (same product).
  - Can find offers/discounts
• Time saving
  
  - All you have to do a create a web site, that will take few hours only
  - You have to just send the purchases which will take a minutes
  - Your business will work 24/7
  
  - Flexibility - You can run your business online,even while you are in holiday (same for customers, they can make shopping and they will have the product at the billing address
  
  - The customers can buy the product at any time
  - They do not have to waste their time on the way to go to the shop
  - Just order and will come to your house without wasting time
• More options for shopping
  
  - You can offer to the customers all colou/size of the products
  - You can see what products people prefer
  - Different type of deliveries (1st class/2nd class/Economic way)
  - You can compare the items easily
  - Different methods to pay (Debit card/Credit card/Voucher/PayPal)
  - Better description of the product
  - Buying some old or unused producs cheap
  - Different brands (different choices)
  - Privacy, some people prefer to have some privacy for privat items

There are many benefits of a business to be managed online, even you don't need an office for it. Saves you lots of money, save you time and etc. As aslways something have good and bad points, that type of controlling have risk as well.

There are different risks like:

Legality: One of the biggest risks is that in some places the product you sell might be not illegal to use and that can make you lots of troubles. Shipping to these areas without knowking is legal or not will be one of the biggest mistakes you will do in your life. Some of areas require collection of sales tax on internet sales, that is for legality as well.

Fraud: Another big risk of Internet business is fraud and deception.There are few different way to verify the person who pays by credit card or bank account, you must check the person is it the owner of the bank account.You could send out a product to find you have been given false information, that can be bad and end up of both money and the item.

Startup Costs: While you are designing your website for yourself, many organisations spend lots of money to have a professional website designed by professionals and pay for copywriters to provide them with web copy. You have to pay for domain name and website hosting as well, if your business is not browsed to often or the competition is big or is not in the 1st few pages the chance to visit it is less then the 1st placed ones.

Internet Security: You need to know the potential security risks as well, because if your business needs to collect payment information, customer data your website could be in a risk of targetting by hackers or authors of malicious software.You need to make sure that you online business is safe if you need a security for it, you can protect with secure server and firewall in place