Editorial Team
6 min read
These days, there are more options than ever to sell products and services to your customers. Small businesses can conduct commerce out of brick-and-mortar stores, websites, social media, or some combination of all three all while managing the backend of their business exclusively online.
If you’re interested in moving part or all of your business online, you’ve probably already heard terms like eBusiness, eCommerce, and social commerce. These terms are used to describe similar yet different experiences for you and your customers. Understanding them can help you make an informed decision about the online aspect of your business.
Join us as we explore what they are as well as their differences so you can better distinguish between them and understand how they can help grow your small business.
What is eBusiness?
While “commerce” refers to the trade or exchange of money, goods, and/or services – “business” is an umbrella term that applies to all the activities and processes companies engage in throughout the day – including commerce.
More specifically, eBusiness refers to all business activities and processes conducted through the internet or other electronic channels. Ad campaigns, email marketing, and research and development all fall under the category of eBusiness.
These activities often generate expenses that business owners may be able to deduct from their taxes. Companies take on these costs if doing so allows them to become more efficient, productive, or profitable.
What is eCommerce?
eCommerce refers to any purchases made online – including the capture and transmission of payment details via the internet. This short definition captures the core difference between electronic commerce and electronic business.
eCommerce is also the term used to describe traditional online shopping. It involves going to a store-specific website or mobile app, browsing through items, adding them to your cart, and completing your purchase using a variety of payment methods. Businesses can get an eCommerce site up and running by either designing a website on their own, or utilizing the eCommerce functionality integrated with your POS system.
It is important to note that the main difference between eCommerce and social commerce is simply the platform. It’s the difference between putting your entire store on a specific webpage for folks to browse through vs. using social media to sell and market products and services in dedicated posts or longer marketing campaigns.
What is social commerce?
Social commerce, or social shopping, is the use of social media platforms for buying and selling your products and services. This means buying and selling directly through a social media app, such as Instagram Shopping or TikTok Shop, with payments accepted directly through the app.
It can also refer to your business’ social media presence more generally, especially if you use social media platforms like Pinterest or Facebook to showcase specific products and market them directly to customers. Collaborating with popular social media influencers as part of your affiliate marketing strategy is also considered social commerce.
Businesses can set up social commerce functionality easily by making a business account on their platform, curating the page, and accepting payments through the app. They can also use social media strictly as a marketing tool and link their customers back to a more traditional eCommerce site in order to make their purchase.
What are the benefits of eBusiness?
eBusiness can use software integrations and internet connectivity to automate, scale, or speed up many time-consuming processes that used to be done manually. For example:
- Cloud-based storage removes the need to physically organize and store paper-based records. It also enables you to access files from anywhere, anytime, while helping to protect your data from being destroyed or damaged by fires, floods, or theft.
- Email has emerged as a cost-efficient and faster way to correspond with colleagues and customers – replacing many slower methods such as snail mail, phone calls, and fax.
Many brick-and-mortar companies rely on a range of digital tools, including inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM), or accounting software. As such, they all qualify as eBusinesses to varying degrees.
What are the benefits of eCommerce?
With eCommerce, merchants use the internet to connect their products and services with customers around the world. Just as with an eBusiness, managing an eCommerce store can be done entirely from any PC or smart device. As an online retailer, however, there is no requirement that your operations be 100% digital. For example:
● An artisan carpenter might produce goods in their workshop – but sell finished products through an online marketplace.
● Many brick-and-mortar restaurants offer online ordering and curbside pickup.
What are the benefits of social commerce?
While eCommerce sites rely on traditional online marketing tactics like SEO and paid advertising to drive traffic, social commerce has the ability to leverage social media algorithms, user-generated content, and direct marketing to reach potential customers.
Thanks to the inherently social nature of social media apps, social commerce can also offer a more personalized and interactive shopping experience than traditional eCommerce with things like live chats and personalized product recommendations.
On the flip side, traditional eCommerce offers your customers an experience that is much closer to shopping in a store, which can increase cart value, while allowing you to accept payments through your established retail POS system instead of through the app. This makes it important to consider the potential of using your social commerce strategy to drive customers to complete their purchases via eCommerce to elevate their experience in tandem with streamlining your overall operations.
Pros and cons of moving your business online
There are many reasons why eBusiness, eCommerce, and social commerce are on the rise worldwide. They leverage internet technology and computational processing power to help you:
- Scale business operations
- Reach more stakeholders
- Reduce operating costs
- Communicate faster
- Sell your products
- Increase average order value
What used to take hours by hand can now be performed in mere seconds by computers. This has helped lower the barrier to entry, allowing startups to compete with more established businesses. Before moving your sales funnel or entire operations to the cloud, it’s important to understand some of the potential challenges involved.
- Regardless of the differences between eBusiness, eCommerce, and social commerce, succeeding in either can require having sufficient in-house IT expertise. Fortunately, this is changing as more user-friendly solutions emerge. For example, designing a website from scratch no longer requires learning PHP and HTML. Thanks to drag-and-drop content management systems, anyone can build an attractive website in just a few hours.
- Because digital technology has lowered the barrier to entry, businesses of all sizes now face greater competition than ever. Long-term growth favors those who can adapt quickly to today’s rapidly changing digital landscape.
- The internet has made communication faster and more cost-efficient. Yet, it has also introduced more vulnerabilities – such as cyberattacks and data breaches. Although many fraudulent attacks target payment data (e.g., consumer credit cards), criminals don’t distinguish between eBusiness, eCommerce, and social commerce victims. They’ll happily steal any information, including social media account logins, email passwords, and other sensitive information.
Grow your business online with Clover
Whether you’re looking to manage more of your business in the cloud, are ready to start selling your products and services online, or want to maximize selling to your community using social commerce, Clover has the tools to help your organization grow.
Why wait? Elevate your business and get started with Clover POS systems today.
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