Starting Out in Ecommerce for Dummies

• 14 Jun, 2021
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                                                            Starting Out in Ecommerce for Dummies

If you’ve ever made an online purchase, you’re likely familiar with how eCommerce works from the consumer’s perspective. This article provides an overview of what it entails starting a business in e-commerce.

An e-commerce site, or electronic commerce store, is essentially a website where people can purchase products or services over the Internet. In the most basic words, an eCommerce site is an online office or store.

The many usual barriers to starting out in conventional commerce have fortunately been made ease – or non-existent in some cases – with the advent of technology and digital aids. For example, with eCommerce, you don't have to spend months looking for a suitable place. Nor do you have to sign a potentially risky long-term lease, that also makes you spend a small fortune furnishing the room. To run the shop, you won't need to recruit a small army of employees. Things are simply simpler with e-commerce – a digital store. All you need is a website, which can be set up relatively quickly and easily for a fraction of the cost of setting up a conventional store.

Of course, there are certain items that both an online and offline store would require—for example, security and a way to process payments—but these are much easier and less expensive to set up.

Because fewer people have the financial resources or risk appetite that a physical store needs; this has resulted in a fiercely competitive online marketplace where anyone and everyone can try their luck in e-commerce; from small one-man hobbyists to well-known multinational corporations.

Getting Started

The same business concepts that apply to running an offline store apply to running an online store, although the issues you’re likely to face and applications will be different.

With this in mind, the basics of an eCommerce business model and an offline model are somewhat similar: you'll need goods to sell, a location to sell them, and a marketing plan to attract buyers. You'll also need a plan for actually shipping the items you sell with eCommerce outlets, so customers can't just pick them up off the shelf.

The following are needed to start out in eCommerce:

·         A product or service to sell

·         A place to sell them

·         A means to process payments

·         A marketing strategy to attract customers

Products to sell

Firstly, your e-commerce store will need a product(s) for you to sell. These can be made in-house or sourced from outside sources. When it comes to sourcing your goods as an online retailer, you are not limited to online suppliers; as any offline, the supplier will suffice. Most eCommerce owners, however, would do business with other online businesses due to the nature of their business.

In certain ways, finding products for an eCommerce store would be similar to finding products for a physical store: finding the best product at the best price—easy, right?

In general, the items you sell from an eCommerce store would be similar to those sold from an offline store—after all, if you sell guitars, a Gibson is a Gibson whether purchased online or offline, right?

There is, however, one significant difference.

Running an eCommerce shop, on the other hand, allows you to sell digital goods as well.

A digital good is a virtual representation of physical goods—think eBooks instead of books, and downloadable music and videos instead of CDs and DVDs.

From the buyer's and seller's perspectives, they have a range of advantages over physical goods. A digital product is advantageous from the buyer's standpoint because it can be downloaded immediately. There is no need to wait many days for delivery. There are no shipping costs for sellers, and you never have to worry about selling out (a download has no effect on stock levels) or purchasing too much stock.

There are also few things to bear in mind:

·         Who are you going to market your product or service to?

·         Anything special/niche

·         Anything that provides a solution to an issue

·         The price you charge for your products and the price you charge for them

You want to keep the commodity prices low enough to compete with other similar goods on the market. However, you don't want to underprice yourself to the point that you don't make enough money to stay in business. On the other hand, you also don't want to overprice yourself to the point that no one buys your goods.

Location

The location of your company is the key distinction between an eCommerce site and a brick-and-mortar store. It is, of course, online to be called an e-commerce shop. You'll need a website to do this, with your website serving as the most critical aspect of your online store. After all, the website is where your customers connect with you and make purchases.

The look and feel of your website have a big effect on how they perceive you and how likely they are to make the purchase. Simply put, if you want to run an eCommerce company, you need to get your website right. Fortunately, choosing a website and running one has been made easy with Content Management Systems – irrespective of the many factors to consider.

Content Management System

With Content Management Systems like Arfa International, Rawado (INSERT LINK TO ARFA AND RAOWADO), etc. you do not need any programming knowledge to construct your website. CMS provides the foundation for your website, allowing you to add and update pages on your website with the click of a button— even up to adding and organizing an entire product line. CMSs also have special features that enable you to integrate payment and social media marketing into your website.

Summing up, regular commerce and e-commerce are quite different in their applications. However, thing like the product or service to sell, a target market, a place to sell them, a means to process payments and a marketing strategy to utilize are common factors for both types of commerce.