RiteCart multi channel marketing, ecommerce site uk, ecommerce solution uk, ecommerce software uk, point of sale system uk, point of sale systems uk, epos system uk, ecommerce and epos company, multi channel ebay, www.palindromesoftware.com

Until recently ecommerce was seen by SME's as only "a to do thing" of large enterprises.

But this thinking has been driven more by the ignorance of the fact rather then the pure fact itself.

In a survey of 250 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) conducted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), it was found that 72 per cent of ecommerce sites claimed that they were profitable since the past 12 months.

In 2008, UK business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sales (including digital downloads and tickets for travel and events) will total £59.8 billion ($116.6 billion), up more than 28% over 2007.

eMarketer expects that online sales will continue to rise steadily and help maintain buoyancy in the UK B2C market overall during the next two years.

While the retail sales have actually gone down, ecommerce sales have gone up 28% during the same period.

SME businesses have started to realize that selling online is simple and more profitable for them.

What prevented them in getting online was their fear of unknown- fear of internet world, a place less known to them then their traditional environment of retail sales and marketing.

Infact online sales gets more interesting for the SME's because it levels the ground for them with their large enterprise counterparts.

With Online business, now they have got an opportunity to have an equal customer reach which was once always a luxury of large enterprises. Infact in online business SME's have more advantage then their large counterparts mainly because of size of organization.

On Selling Online, SME's can change their policies, their approach, their promotions aggressively based on customer behavior, customer reaction, customer trend which large enterprises cannot do mainly because of the size of organization and because of their bureaucracy.

Finally at a growth rate of more then 20% year on year, Online market, wont replace retail sales but is going to become a sizeable chunk of overall sales over the next decade.

Company's presence and behavior online will probably also effect their Retail Sales.

Verdict - Online business is not only profitable but will very soon become essential for businesses.