technology plays a major role in small businesses and Global Brands keeping
on top of new developments in technology is an essential part of business in this video
we're going to look at four different types of technology used by businesses
the First Technology we're going to look at is e-commerce e-commerce seems like it's been
around forever which really accelerated over the past 10 years e-commerce stands for electronic
Commerce and it's buying and selling Goods over the internet today the vast majority of businesses
have an e-commerce site where you can purchase goods online but why are so many businesses moving
to an e-commerce model well to be honest there's a few advantages the first is that it's accessible
24 7. whatever time of night and day you can go online and purchase goods from a business there's
also the benefit of having reduced costs for the business if a business is solely online a lot of
the time this is much cheaper than starting a bricks and mortar store where the business
has to pay for a premises equipment Furnishing the building basically it's a lot cheaper to
get started in e-commerce than it is owning a physical store another benefit is it can sell
globally to an audience that wants the convenience of shopping online people just find e-com most
convenient the items are delivered directly to your door you don't even have to leave your own
home obviously there are negatives of e-commerce the first being everyone's competing globally if
I can sell my goods globally so can everyone else and this raises the level of competition
whereas if you're on a High Street everyone around you eat competition but really people
in China or Australia aren't competing with your local store another negative is processing times
sometimes people don't want to wait to receive the goods this is the case with e-commerce we replace
an order online and you've got to wait two three days up to a week or even longer for your package
to arrive obviously there's Amazon that do a good job of getting Prime members their goods
within a day but that's not always the case for e-commerce the next technology was bad business
is social media social media seems like it's been around forever but it hasn't and in terms of sales
and selling on social media platform forms it's really accelerated over the past three to four
years we can now purchase Goods directly from Facebook Instagram and even Tick Tock but here
are some basic benefits of using social media as a technology so social media is a necessity
in today's business world if you're not on Tick Tock Instagram Twitter Facebook then your Brand's
not visible because you can reach millions of people in one Post in terms of sales you can use
stories or posts that then link to your website that then create a sale for example Nike could
have a new running shoe and they could put that in their Instagram story with a link through to
that on the website people see that link through to the website and make a purchase from that post
influencer marketing is also a massive part of social media influencers have the trust of Their
audience and if they're selling a product or using a product from a business this can really
convert to sales for the business if a runner on YouTube is using a certain type of trainer
and they link that trainer in the description of the YouTube video some of that runner's audience
are likely to click the link in the description that goes through to that product which then
again converts to a sale for the business with the influencer getting a small commission social
media is a great tool for marketing and for sales but it's also good for communication 33
of customers state that they use social media to communicate with businesses the benefit of this to
a business is that they can have a team of people who quickly respond to questions on social media
the business can utilize this communication and put out positive posts of how well the business
is doing with its customers and how well the products being received this brings us to our
third type of Technology that's used and it's digital communication when we talk about digital
communication we're talking about email text messaging instant messaging social media websites
digital communication is really beneficial because it can be analyzed so for example with email the
business can analyze how many people opened the email how many people reported it as spam how
many people clicked the links in the email and how many people actually purchased from clicking that
email these are all massively beneficial as you can see Trends you can see what works and what
doesn't work and then repeat what works in order to get more sales and better communication with
customers the final piece of technology that's really enhanced online business is Payment Systems
so now you can pay online with credit debit card things like PayPal Apple pay or even crypto so
online payment methods have really accelerated e-commerce if customers weren't able to pay online
e-commerce would basically be impossible but because there's so many options now e-commerce
thriving even small businesses can now accept card payments as these services such as stripe
that allow businesses to take online payments advances in payment technology has meant that
payments are now more convenient they can be made 24 7 but again a big one for businesses
is that you can analyze the data it gives you you can look at Trends you can look at which products
are selling best you can look at what time of day most sales are made all this is available because
of the payment systems that can be used online if you want to know more about the benefits of social
media to a business then watch this video here thanks for watching the video to the end and don't
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