The Basics of eCommerce and How to Utilize It - It's Not as Difficult as You Think
The Internet is more popular today than ever before, with more than three billion users around the globe. In the early days of the world-wide-web, computers were exorbitantly expensive, and Internet connections were painfully slow. Today, computers are widely owned by people in the United States, along with Internet connections that broaden their potential uses. In 2015, more than 85 percent of American households contained a computer, even though it seems like everybody is constantly plugged into their smartphones or buried behind their laptops.
Because so many people use computers and the Internet today, businesses have begun to sell, advertise, market, and promote their offerings online. This is an excellent example of electric commerce or eCommerce. When utility companies accept payments online, when sporting teams sell their tickets online, and when people do personal banking online, it's all classified as eCommerce.
Let's peer into the basics of eCommerce and how businesses, website administrators, and bloggers alike can benefit from eCommerce, regardless of their technical skill level or computer literacy.
Why eCommerce? Why not more traditional means of commerce?
Source: eMarketer: Worldwide E-commerce sales growth forecast
Every American citizen with eyes and ears has heard about how many malls and department stores have closed in recent years. In the United States alone in 2017, 3,591 brick-and-mortar stores have already closed or will prior to year end. Businesses' actions to close in-person, traditional stores are all for good reason -- or, in their case, negative reasoning.
Creates possibility for successfully niche markets
Before the Internet, Americans purchased their products in physical stores or through mail-order catalogues. As many people preferred to simply shop in person, they got products and services near their homes or even drove miles away to nearby shopping malls and department stores. Everybody shops at grocery stores, but not everybody is a fan of collectable stamps. When stores serving the niche, markets opened, they usually didn't thrive for very long unless they were in large, metropolitan areas.
Today, because online retailers ship products through email couriers around the world, it's possible for niche markets to thrive online. There are actually several marketplaces that allow individuals to post their products for sale, providing power to ultra-niche sellers. This is just one of the many advantages to utilizing eCommerce.
It's cheaper
Operating traditional stores requires organizations to pay for electricity, heating, cooling, and water bills. They have to man their stores with employees to serve customers and circumvent theft. Businesses must purchase facilities or lease them for years at a time. All of these factors, among many others, cause eCommerce to be far cheaper than operating traditional stores.
Traditional stores require a maintenance. All the goods and services need to be represented properly which make a rise in the overall costing and affects the budget. However, in online store these become simple. The maintenance of the site is cheaper as compared to the brick and mortar shop. The products could be represented more diversely. Using good images for your products can also increase the sales,
Less risk
As discussed, opening and operating traditional stores is considerably expensive, resulting in potential risk in the event of underperformance of complete failure. Website domains usually aren't expensive to purchase. Online stores can't have items stolen from them by end-user consumers shopping for goods. Websites don't cost much, if anything, to host and be kept alive for visitors to browse. As such, less risk associated with eCommerce has dramatically increased the number of businesses and websites relying on the modern concept.
Ways to implement eCommerce in your business or website
Most business owners and website operators have heard "eCommerce" thrown around in business conversations and on forum posts and articles online. However, not everybody understands what exactly eCommerce is, how it works, and what it looks like. As you know by now, eCommerce isn't too complicated, although it's not to say that just anybody can hop right in and create a top-notch online store or marketplace. Here are a few ways to actually build an eCommerce store and experience success with it.
Perform market research prior to building a digital store
Businesses serve the needs of customers, rather than force products and service onto them. This concept can be explained by the fact appliance manufacturers create power cords' plugs to meet the wall sockets of the country they're sold in. They don't throw chunks of metal onto power supply cords and expect to strong-arm it into any wall socket or power source.
Similarly, organizations with eCommerce hubs need to thoroughly understand the demographics and interests of customers interested in their offerings. Consider finding market research documents online, or hiring a digital marketing agency for customized market research for your upcoming online store. This will help guide the website's design, how it's branded, and save money when advertising it online. There's no sense in developing something for people that might not use it, right?
Find an online payment processor
Very few people pay for online purchases using cash sent through the mail, cash on delivery collections by postal workers, money orders, or checks. Debit and credit cards make up the majority of payment methods for eCommerce purchases. Businesses and entrepreneurs themselves can't process these payments on their own, requiring them to contract the services of payment processors.
It's important to keep in mind that when these systems don't work for some consumers, or fail entirely, potential customers won't be able to pump your eCommerce store with revenue and they're likely to be dissatisfied about the outage! Make sure to research reliable payment processors prior to contracting their services, and understand that paying more for a secure, consistent, reputable processor is unarguably well worth the added expense.
Select a mail carrier
Mail couriers are an integral part of eCommerce. Without them, operators of online stores could only offer their wares and services for in-person pickup or short-haul delivery. It's not feasible to send employees out miles and miles away for one, two, or a few drop-offs.
As such, you need to research which email delivery service you'll trust. While USPS is the most popular option, some organizations contact with UPS, FedEx, or DHL to secure email delivery at a discounted rate, similar to how Amazon deals exclusively with UPS.
Consider a fulfilment centre
Fulfilment centres are places that take over shipping processes for online stores. While they cost money, they're likely to improve the reliability and quality of your email delivery services. If you have a limited number of orders that aren't unreasonable to fill each day, consider shipping them yourself. However, if you have to hire additional help, it might be a good idea to contract a fulfilment centre for shipping needs.
Final words
ECommerce is thrown around in conversations around the Internet, but not everybody understands the concept. All eCommerce is, are a network of online stores, shippers, and email delivery systems that facilitate business transactions without traditional, brick-and-mortar stores. Now you understand the basic premise of eCommerce and several tips for implementing it into your business, website, or blog.
