You may have seen many success stories from many online stores around you,
Then you ask yourself, what is e-commerce?
Is it significantly different from traditional trade?
Or is the only difference between the two businesses the creation of a website?
Can anyone start e-commerce?
Or is it only limited to large traders and large investors?
And other questions that I answer you in this article
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce refers to the transactions of buying and selling over the Internet for a certain amount of money that is often transferred through digital platforms. The concept of e-commerce is broad and includes all sales of digital and tangible products and services, but the term we often used it for selling tangible products.
The difference between e-commerce and traditional commerce
E-commerce and traditional commerce agree to sell the same products and services, except that they differ in the method of payment and delivery.
In e-commerce, we do completely the process through digital platforms (starting from browsing the products, selecting the desired product until completing the payment, and delivering the product). They deal no human element with between the seller and the buyer, but we completed the entire purchase process online.
As for the traditional trade, it mainly depends on the face-to-face interview, so the buyer himself goes to meet the seller and browses the products and examine them well, then choose the product and give the merchant the price of the product hand in hand. The process often takes place through the interview in this way if the seller cannot meet the buyer to offer the product and receive the money, and he cannot complete the sale.
The importance of e-commerce
In fact, I cannot tell you that the future of business is currently moving towards e-commerce. Perhaps this saying was true 5 or 6 years ago ... But now we are in the future and e-commerce has become the lion's share in the buying and selling process
Let me tell you some statistics that illustrate the importance of e-commerce in the current era, and the need for all commercial activities of all sizes to be digitized.
The volume of online purchases
Currently, the largest stores selling on the Internet are electronic stores, the most famous of which is the Amazon store, whose sales exceeded $75.5 billion in the first quarter of 2020, and in 2019 Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) surpassed the world's richest people. Worldwide e-commerce sales have been estimated at $3.53 trillion, according to Statista.
I do not need to mention more statistics to you. Perhaps you look around and see the rapid growth of e-stores in the Gulf (Amazon, Noon, and others), and look at the size of the purchase that your friends make, and you will know the validity of these numbers.
E-commerce in crises
In the recent crisis that passed (the Corona epidemic), it affected many sectors due to the tendency of most people to quarantine home, and this was a strong reason for millions of users to buy online, as they want to complete the purchase without leaving the house and electronic stores helped them in that. The electronic stores were the most benefiting from this event.
It is also expected that if there is any crisis that prevents people from leaving their homes, then buying from electronic stores will be the best alternative for them.
Of course, we do not like to go up on the shoulders of crises and ask God for safety for everyone, but this gives you an idea of the importance of e-commerce in that it actually helps people in light of these crises, so imagine if such crises occurred and there are no electronic stores to buy? Users will face extreme hardship in making purchases.
The upshot is that e-commerce makes it easier for people to live their daily lives and healthy habits and preserve their time, whether in light of crises or other than these crises.
The future of e-commerce
When you look at the e-commerce index since its inception in the nineties, it is rising and increasing very quickly year after year, especially because of what I have shown you in facilitating the purchase processes and having many advantages if we compare it with traditional commerce, in addition to directing all business sectors to the world of digitization and artificial intelligence, it is natural This would contribute to a bigger boom in e-commerce.
But in order to tell you about the future of e-commerce itself and the expected developments, God willing, let me tell you some predictions that some experts mention, and some statistics from the United States:
E-commerce is expected to reach $ 29 billion by 2023, an increase of 4.5%.
Increase sales quotas for stores selling third-party products (Private label).
The percentage of mobile purchases reached 53.9% of total purchases.
Increasing automation processes (relying on automated systems) in electronic stores to be able to expand to a larger segment of customers.
E-stores are keen to increase the speed of delivery of products and reduce the cost of shipping.
Use Voice Recognition Purchases
Types of electronic commerce
We also said that e-commerce in its comprehensive concept includes all online buying and selling, but until you have a broader idea of the types of electronic stores that you can start with
Note: B stands for Business and C stands for Customer.
Retail Merchant Selling (B2C)
It is the most popular type of e-commerce, where the target customer for the purchase is private individuals (such as selling food and consumer products to consumers in the form). This includes all products sold in the retail sector and the target customers in it are ordinary individuals in the community.
Merchant selling to merchant (B2B)
In this case, the target customer to buy the product is another company represented in the company's management. Such as selling accounting software, in this case the director of accounts or purchases or the executive director of the company are the people targeted to buy the product, and not anyone in the community will buy such products.
Selling to Individuals (C2C)
In this case, the seller is a normal person in the community (not a merchant or a manufacturer) and the buyer is also a private individual, and he enters into this intermediary platform in which users exchange the sale of products. (Like selling your old home furniture on Haraj)
Selling Individuals to Dealers (C2B)
In the fourth case, the seller is a private individual and the buyer is a merchant. This includes companies that offer to purchase certain products or services from private individuals. Like a photographer who sells his creative photos to companies for the right to commercial use.
In these four areas, the sale can take place in different forms, whether selling a tangible product or a digital product directly between the merchant and the buyer, or through a third party or through an intermediary, or selling a digital service or a service on the ground for an agreed-upon amount or for a subscription. Monthly or prepaid.
Whatever the buying and selling method, it is applicable through e-commerce.
How to get started in e-commerce
The simple equation is: Get products + Create an online store + Marketing campaigns = A successful online store.
This simple equation includes the basic elements of building an online store, but let me talk to you about these elements more:
Market selection
You need to choose the market first: will the store specialize in selling clothes, electronics, or what? Specialized stores compete with large stores, because we distinguished specialized stores in what they offer more than others, as in the
HM store.
How to choose Niche
Choose products
You need to determine the valuable products that the users get, whether you are the one who manufactures these products or you import them from abroad, you need to take care of every product of your store and make sure that it is the best product on the market.
I do not mean by this to have superstitious features in the product that are unparalleled, but I mean to ensure the quality of the products before they are presented to consumers, and that they are truly distinctive products if you compare them with most of the competitors.
Storage and shipping
You need to set up an integrated shipping system that starts from importing the products and receiving them in your warehouse and then supplying these products from your warehouse to the customer's place of residence as soon as possible.
Despite the obviousness of the process, some friends were facing problems at the time of receiving the products from the supplier and in the product storage system, especially some products that need a special storage system (such as food products), and also at the time of product delivery, the customer gets angry if the product arrives late, especially with many Shipping problems in Arab countries.
Create an online store
There are many methods that you can rely on to build your store, but the best thing I advise you to start with is low cost and high performance is to rely on Shopify and if you want to be strong and in control of everything, start with woocommerce on wordprees
Create marketing campaigns
If you perform all the previous steps professionally, you will still need to create marketing campaigns on various platforms in order to reach these ads to your potential customers and buy from your store.
There are many methods that you can rely on to promote your store, but I will list some of these methods for you:
Paid Ads PPC
Search engine marketing
Social media marketing
Video Marketing
Content Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Email marketing
Business partnerships
For more on methods of promoting your online store, I recommend you read this article that fully explains digital marketing.
These methods and other methods help you reach potential customers, and your role continues to gain customer confidence and provide an integrated service and an excellent online buying experience until they come back to buy from you again and express their friends to buy from you.
At the beginning of launching your online store, I will not think that you achieve all these factors 100%, and it is expected that you will experience some failures in some aspects, but if you consider these factors as much as possible, they will impact the success of your online store on the first day.
Comments