Within a decade, the importance of e-commerce sites has increased 10-fold. Hectic life, tight schedule, restless lifestyle, lack of commodity management and declining unemployment have actually cast a spell on this sudden increase. Do people have less time to shop and window shop? Who has the time? Everyone runs out of money and once you return home exhausted at night, you turn on your desktop, PC, tablet or mobile device and order something from the eCommerce store.
Is this somehow the daily routine of all busy people? It is not like this?
Well, the luxurious deals that e-marts promote to seduce us in the festive seasons are quite lucrative and unavoidable. Plus, the discounts they give us just help us pick up some amazing products at a much cheaper price, and that really works! E-commerce has really mobilized business and given it a new look from both the customers’ and sellers’ point of view.
What is an eCommerce site?
E-commerce sites simply mean shopping over the Internet. The history of online shopping goes back some two decades, in 1991, when commercial use was allowed on the Internet. At first, the term was used only for the implementation of electronic business transactions through EFT and EDI. Later, the coinage was changed into the currently used meaning, i.e., e-commerce websites or websites that deal with retailed products or services.
Brief history
All started like this. In the early 2000s, a large number of commercial organizations in the United States and Western Europe began to represent their businesses on the Internet. This led to a revolution and people started buying products directly online. Even at that time the term eCommerce development company did not exist.
The Internet was also new, time and the collapse of the dot coms had greatly damaged the international market. But one of the ‘Brick & Mortar’ retail companies held on irresistibly and used the profits of e-commerce ploys. Once the concept was established, the types of electronic commerce, such as the Business-to-Business or B2B model, the Business-to-Consumer or B2C model and other models, became closer.
income generation
A recent survey has revealed that in three months, global e-commerce sites generate more than $150,000 in monthly revenue and approximately $330,000 in annual revenue. It is estimated that after a few years the amount will rise to $1 million, which means that it will increase by 230% in a period of 3 years.
Some e-commerce sites
In the time span of 1971 or 1972, ARPANET was run to set up a cannabis sale between students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Stanford and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was an online seminar and is believed to be the world’s first e-commerce sales activity.
In today’s world, with the huge success of Amazon and Flipkart, eCommerce sites have started popping up like crazy. The importance and convenience of selling products and services through a single click has positively approached many entrepreneurs. So, as a consequence, thousands of eCommerce websites are springing up almost every day. But building an eCommerce site requires good management skill, marketing savvy, and a caliber of development that can optimize your site among the multitude of other online shopping sites.
So what to take care of? Let’s take a look-
web hosting service
Properly hosting your website on the Internet will help your customers easily access your website. Choosing a good hosting service is therefore very important for launching your eCommerce site. The best web hosting service increases the loading speed of your website, makes it secure and deteriorates the offline rate. Before choosing a suitable web hosting service, check its availability, reliability, adequate uptime, and authenticity. Jimdo, Weebly are some of the web hosting services that have the drag and drop feature that makes it easy to host ecommerce websites.
Select or not?
The term “affiliate marketing” represents the presence of a mediator between the seller and the customer. It prevents them from interacting and transacting directly with each other. The entire task is managed by the mediators, so they receive commissions for each transaction. But it is up to you, whether you want to keep a mediator between them or not. Many e-commerce sites work through a broker and sometimes entrepreneurs want to become a broker as it makes more profit than a direct sale.
There are some sites that directly sell the products or services without any middleman. Sites like e-bay, OLX interact with customers and sellers directly without any mediators.
call to action
Transforming your promotions into conversion to generate ROI requires a call-to-action strategy. The call to action is not just the button that end users click on to purchase. It represents the benefits that your customers get from you or want to get from you. Thus, the discounts or offers they get can also be the call-to-action strategy. The availability of the products and proper categorization also attracts the attention of the consumers.
e-commerce platform
Hiring an experienced eCommerce development company to create your own eCommerce site gives you benefits on all counts. But do you know that there are many eCommerce platforms online that give you the benefits of customizing your eCommerce site? Well, there are many to learn. Let’s take a look at them.
Shopify offers online e-commerce software for shops and retailers.
You can easily add eCommerce functionality into the wix.coma cloud-based web development platform that enables its clients to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites by using online drag and drop tools.
large trade build ecommerce software to enhance your business.
There are also some technical platforms.
WooCommerce is the best of them, which is basically an eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
Magento It is one of them. This open source eCommerce platform is written in PHP.
So if you’re looking to create your own eCommerce site, ask yourself a few questions. Determine the products or services you want to sell, the customer group you want to target and do a thorough market research and then try the tips above.