Entrepreneur Insider is your all-access pass to the skills, experts, and network you need to get your business off the ground—or take it to the next level. However, it means the loss of the human interaction from the buying and selling of goods. In the U.S. alone, ecommerce growth is anticipated to be somewhere between 11.6 and 16.5 percent from 2013 to 2018. Whether you're a bootstrapper or an investor with a bit of extra money to start a new enterprise, ecommerce is a great field to get into, especially today. Not only does e-commerce help you to understand your individual customer, but it gives you a much clearer insight into your market as a whole. Corporations like Amazon can swallow the losses, which will be at worst an eighth of a percentage point, whereas smaller companies straddle the line between profit or loss. Content marketing is another effective way to sell down the line. Sign up below to get the latest from ITProPortal, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! On a smaller scale, would you rather have a shop in the centre of a busy shopping mall, or in a run-down backstreet of town that rarely gets visited? The magnitude of online retail not only makes it important to business owners, but at times daunting too, and some companies go to lengths to avoid becoming part of the e-commerce world. The key as an ecommerce business owner is to establish trust and credibility with leads and customers. It can make a huge difference in terms of visibility and sales. There is a whole world out there, and global trade is in full swing, so why limit yourself so extremely by only reaching those who happen to walk by your single high street location? My business has been going for thirty-five years now, and throughout the course of its lifetime, there have been plenty of new trends and standards that I have had to adjust to, with perhaps the most significant one being the emergence of e-commerce. Even as a beginner in ecommerce, the tools and resources are all laid out for you. Visit our corporate site. Critic is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA).