What is a virtual business?
In a nutshell, a virtual business is the complete opposite to your traditional bricks-and-mortar business, which relies heavily on face-to-face transactions with customers, a physical workspace for you and your employees, and the retention of physical records and data. A virtual business operates mostly online. Important documents are stored in the cloud; interaction is via email or telepresence,
giving business owners and their customers the flexibility to conduct business from virtually anywhere.
How is virtual better?
You’ll reduce overheads. Whether you’re starting your business from scratch or looking to expand, you can save significant costs if you operate completely virtually. Think about it. One of the biggest expenses in operating a bricks and mortar is the actual shopfront itself. Unless your business is
home-based, which accounted for 27 million Americans in 2016, a chunk of your overhead costs will go toward leasing or renting a shopfront or office in a location that is conducive for drawing in
customers or attracting the right talent. And you’ll pay dearly for that perfect location – annual costs for offices in creative districts around the world can get as high as $62,000 in a bustling city like Brooklyn, NY.
You’ll work the way you want, from wherever you want
Having a virtual business means you can work from anywhere at any time using your connected mobile devices to power your workforce. With the emergence of collaboration software like Slack and Zoom, the need for in-person meetings has decreased and real-time sharing of ideas and documents is a lot easier. In fact, 32% of Slack users report a 20%-40% increase in how they perceive their teams’ productivity since adopting the software.
You’ll keep up with your competition
The latest research shows 70% of consumers around the world research purchases online before they buy in-store, and 32% browse in-store but ultimately purchase online. If you don’t have a website, you could be giving away business to your competitors who are prepared to take online business.
Here are some tips to help you in this new virtual world
- Learn to do simple tasks on your website
- Become familiar with digital marketing
- Examine the new digital creativity characteristics that work for your business
- Become aware of the security issues that could affect your business
- Find the right solution and path to achieving success in the digital world.
- Be prepared to add a lot of new words to your vocabulary, like blog, SEO, keywords and adsense
