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Ecommerce or electronic commerce is an internet market for buying and selling goods or services. Ecommerce is conducted on different scales and market types such as mobile ecommerce, banking and electronic fund transfers, stocks investing, etc.
Ecommerce is fastly replacing brick-and-mortar stores as more people are shifting to buying products and services from the comfort of their homes. However, there are some businesses that maintain both physical and online presence, which are more often large-scale retailers. Almost every product or service can be obtained through ecommerce which makes it an essential tool to transform businesses.
According to statistics, in FY 2021, ecommerce sales surpassed $5.2 trillion worldwide and it is only expected to increase in the coming years.
Ecommerce can be categorized into different business models depending on the audience it serves. Some popular types of ecommerce are:
B2C is the most common business model where the transaction of goods or services is between a business and a consumer. For example, you buy a smartphone from an online mobile retailer.
In the B2B ecommerce platform, the transaction happens between 2 businesses like manufacturers, retailers or wholesalers and it doesn’t involve a consumer. Usually, B2B transactions include large quantities of goods with or without recurring periods. For example, a furniture design company buys wood from a wholesale wood supplier.
Multivendor ecommerce marketplace platforms like eBay and Amazon allow consumers to sell their products or services to other consumers.
The C2B business model breaks the traditional ecommerce model and enables consumers to offer their products or services to businesses. It empowers consumers with the freedom to schedule and price their services. For example, freelancers provide services to businesses.
This is a recent model in ecommerce where businesses directly sell products to consumers without involving distributors or wholesalers. For example, Mamaearth is an Indian D2C brand.
With the adoption of ecommerce on different platforms, it is growing faster than ever and unprecedented usage of smartphones making it more accessible. According to statistics, the ecommerce market revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 11.58% with a market volume of $5.88 trillion by 2025.
Building an ecommerce website from scratch requires a lot of research and manual work to get your desired result. Learn the step-by-step process of building an ecommerce website here.
Gone are those days when it took months to create an ecommerce website, thanks to technology and readymade ecommerce website solutions for making it quick and easy. There are various ecommerce website builders that do the job, nevertheless, you need to understand and be clear about what your website needs and choose the right one for your business.
Choosing the right content management system can be a boon or bane for your ecommerce business. To make this process easy, list your budget, and the functionalities you need, and think about feasibility. In ecommerce platforms, there are 3 types that you need to know before you choose one for your business.
These platforms offer their source code to those who want to use it and they have the autonomy to personalise it. Though they are free to install, fair coding knowledge is required to use them, you need a qualified team to maintain the security of your website and there is no customer support for open-source platforms.
Headless commerce is hosted ecommerce platform with separate front-end and back-end functionality making it easier to make changes and giving you complete control over the website. But they can be challenging to install and like open-source platforms you do not get customer support.
Software as a service ecommerce platforms are subscription-based ecommerce. It comes with a lot of ecommerce-friendly built-in features and is the easiest platform to build, use and scale your ecommerce business. Yourstore’s simple, quick and easy ecommerce website builder with AI lets you create a website within seconds that ticks all the boxes.
Once you choose an ecommerce platform, go to their sign-up page, enter the details asked and create an account.
Haven’t chosen one? Don’t worry choose the best ecommerce platform in the market and create your account now!
Having a custom domain is an added advantage for your ecommerce business. Keep your domain name 6-14 characters and simple to spell to make it easy for your customers to remember.
Not all ecommerce platforms give you the option to get a domain name, with Yourstore you can get a domain name of your choice.
A logo will represent your brand so when creating an ecommerce website make sure you have a logo design to go on your website.
Yourstore allows you to create your logo with its instant free logo maker tool with thousands of customisable options.
Every business has a unique personality. So the next step is to customise your website to reflect your brand. ecommerce platforms have various themes and templates to choose from. Apply the one that best suits your products and services.
Yourstore’s intuitive AI website builder automatically chooses the right theme for your business in your brand’s logo colours which can be customised and you can also customise other features like home page layout, header navigation, chat configuration, footer configuration, etc.
The purpose of any ecommerce is to sell products or services. Before launching your website you need to list your products. Organize your products according to their categories which makes navigation easy for the users and management easy for you.
Yourstore makes it easy for you to add products, keep them organized and maintain inventory all from a single dashboard.
The key step in an ecommerce transaction is the checkout, it has to be simple and user-friendly. If you are integrating shipping with your ecommerce website, decide on your shipping policies. While deciding on the gateway, think about security as it involves the customers' sensitive data.
There are three types of payment gateways:
Redirects - Many retailers opt for third-party tools which take the customer to a separate site for payment processing.
Off-site payments - This method completes the check-out onsite but processes the payment off-site. You must ensure that the data is encrypted to be transferred to the payment processor.
On-site payments - As the name suggests the payments are processed on-site. They are most suitable if the volume of transactions is high eg. Amazon, since the transactions happen on your website, it needs to be secure.
Whichever method you choose ensure that it is PCI compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
As we spoke earlier, SaaS ecommerce platforms charge you to continue using their services. Select a plan that fulfils your business needs and you are ready to launch your website.
Yourstore has affordable plans for every business type, choose a plan that best fits your business.
Before launching your ecommerce website quality test whether all the features are working properly. Run tests for every clickable link and button on your site. Most importantly run a compatibility test on multiple devices and browsers. Once you complete the testing of all the functionalities of your website, you are ready to launch it.
Build hype on social media, advertise and announce the launch of your ecommerce store to attract customers and also give them a launch offer which gives you the momentum to scale your business.
Get started with Yourstore and create your ecommerce website within seconds and start selling online!
Read our other blogs to learn more about ecommerce and grow your online business globally.
Get in touch with us if you need more information, we’d be more than glad to help!
, Yourstore
26th October 2022