1. Selling online is a place decision, because a website or an app is another channel of distribution: the customer reaches the product through a screen instead of a shop.
2. M-commerce is the part of e-commerce that happens on a phone, and it has grown fastest because the customer can buy on a bus or in a queue, in the moment they think of it, rather than waiting to get to a computer.
3. An app also holds the customer's card details and address, so buying takes two taps, and it can send a notification straight to the customer's pocket when there is an offer.
4. Both have grown year after year, so a business with no online channel now loses sales to rivals that have one. Next has closed high-street stores while its website has become the larger part of its business, and Tesco has grown its grocery deliveries alongside its aisles.

Reaching further, including international markets

1. A shop can only sell to people who walk through the door, so its market is the town around it. A website removes that limit, and the market becomes everyone who can find the site and receive a parcel.
2. The business can sell across the whole UK without opening a single extra branch, which means growth without the rent, fittings and staff that new shops would need.
3. International markets open up in the same way. A small UK business can take an order from Germany or Australia from one warehouse, which spreads its risk across several countries and lets a niche product find enough customers worldwide even though there are few in any one town.
   1. Selling abroad brings extra work, because the site may need other languages and currencies, and delivery over long distances costs more and takes longer.
4. The site is open at all hours, so orders arrive overnight and at weekends when every high-street rival is shut, and the business earns from those hours without paying anyone to stand behind a counter.

Lower costs and greater flexibility

1. There is no high-street rent, no business rates on a prime site, no shop fittings and no team of shop assistants, so the fixed costs the business must cover each month are far lower than a chain of stores would carry.
2. Stock sits in one warehouse instead of being spread across dozens of shops, so less has to be bought in the first place and less is left over to discount at the end of a season.
3. Prices, photographs and the whole range can be changed in minutes, and the site records what every visitor looked at, so promotion can be aimed at the customers most likely to buy.

The drawbacks of selling online

1. Delivery: every order has to be picked, packed and couriered, so postage and packaging are added to the cost of each sale, and a parcel that arrives late or damaged loses the customer even though the product was fine.
2. Returns: customers who cannot try before they buy order two sizes and send one back, and the business pays for the return postage, the checking and the repacking on a sale it never made.
3. A secure site: taking card details means paying to build and maintain a secure site, and a crash or a hack stops all sales at once and destroys the trust that made customers hand over their details.
4. Easy price comparison: a rival's price is one tab away, so a business selling online competes with the whole country rather than the other shops in its town, which pushes prices and profit margins down.
5. No physical browsing: customers cannot hold the product, smell the coffee or try the coat on, and there is no assistant to answer a question, so the site has to do that work with photographs, descriptions and reviews.

Whether the online channel suits a given business

1. The product has to survive the journey and be worth posting, so books, clothes and gym kit suit it while ice cream, a haircut and a fitted kitchen do not.
2. The customers have to be willing to buy on a screen, so a business whose customers are older or rarely online still needs a shop, a telephone line or a catalogue alongside the site.
3. Most established businesses now run both channels together. Currys lets customers order online and collect in store, and Tesco sells the same groceries in its aisles, on its website and through its app.