E-commerce websites: things to consider before building your online store.
What is E-Commerce?
An e-commerce website is simply an online shop which gives people an opportunity to buy things online. Nowadays, most people who have access to the internet have used e-commerce websites at some point. Many of the big retailers around the world have experienced a significant increase in sales after setting up an online store. In 2014 online spending of New Zealanders accounted for 6.3% of total retail sales or $2.9bn (BNZ Online Retail Sales Report, https://www.bnz.co.nz/assets/business-banking-help-support/online-retail-sales-index/pdfs/or2015-02.pdf).
Share of online spending by sector:
Fashion and accessories – 12%
Daily sales – 5%
Department, variety & other – 26%
Furniture, Housewares and Hardware – 9%
Electrical and electronic (incl. Computers) – 14%
Recreation, books and entertainment media – 14%
Groceries, Liquor and specialized food – 15%
Pharmacy, stationery, antiques, flowers & cosmetics – 6%
It is evident that online shopping is a continually growing sector. If you are not a big brand yet, you may consider selling your goods via an e-commerce website first. It is cheaper and easier to run and will bring you desired profits without huge investments.
Before starting up your e-commerce website, there are a number of things you need to consider and questions you need to answer. This will help you better understand your future online business and provide your website
The first key to starting a successful online business is to first understand ecommerce and how it operates. Most people understand that ecommerce or electronic commerce refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer
E-commerce is short for electronic commerce and refers to purchasing and selling items and services on the Internet via a website. Otherwise called an online store, an E-Commerce website has features that make it easy for customers to browse for items to purchase.
Consumers are making purchases daily. There are a number of occasions and reasons prompting people to shop. Special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays all contribute to retail sales. Sustaining one’s daily life through purchase of food, clothing, personal hygiene products and cleaning products also contributes to the economy through commerce. How do most people like to shop? In recent years a new alternative to the traditional brick-and-mortar shopping, online shopping, has increased in popularity. “U.S. e-commerce sales grew from 72 billion U.S. dollars in 2002 to 228 billion U.S. dollars in 2010.” (“Online shopping,” n.d.,
The internet and World Wide Web are extremely well suited for conducting business electronically on a global basic, Web-based Electronic Commerce(EC) has introduced unprecedented opportunities for the marketing of products and services, accompanied by features, functionality and innovative methods to serve and support consumers. E-commerce has became a major catalyst of the economy and remains a vital growth engine for businesses today, It successful change the consumer behavior. Consumer purchases over the Internet continue to grow from year to year. The survey involving
The growth of the internet and e-commerce affords us an opportunity to sell our products and promote our shop on a national, and eventually global level. However, it is important that we take things slow and not grow too big too soon. A key to success is ensuring that we only move onto the next step when it becomes financially feasible to do so.
Among the Orange County on-line florist markets, Soft Touch Flowers has launched its website in this growing industry. However, despite the high growth, the competition in Orange County is stiff as the main competitors such as Everyday Flowers, Vissers Florist, OC Flowers, Capri Flowers, etc…occupy the market. Therefore, Soft Touch Flowers needs better effective business strategies to stand up and be strong in this complicated competition from the existing on-line flower shops.
It is not easy developing an e-commerce business which will assess the determination and commitment of any person that has put up a business in the past. With 1000 dollars, the Clothing Store intends to build a domain and start on e-commerce. The e-commerce has only begun booming in the recent years, and has proved very successful. Among the businesses that started online is the eBay online supermarket. The most important part in starting an online business is learning the ethics involved. These include the methods used to get clients to your business and also the manner you secure their personal information. Having created a domain for the Clothing Store, which is not only an expensive process, but also time taking, selling it would be inappropriate for several reasons (Pelau, Bena, 2010).
E-commerce is a product that has been available since the early 90’s. It is something that people are familiar with. A product that is now part and parcel of people’s lives.
E-commerce is the process of buying and selling of various products and services by businesses through the Internet. Primarily there are five types of ecommerce systems: Business to Consumer (B2C)
Starting a business can be a daunting task. Many prospective business owners think it is less costly to choose e-commerce. While this may be so, an e-commerce company still requires an investment (Holden, Belew, Elad, Rich, & Gulbrandsen, 2008). The owner will mitigate some of the normal overhead expenses by taking on tasks instead of paying professionals and working from a home office.
The costs of running traditional offline shops are much higher than operating an online store. So most businesses are now setting up online ecommerce stores. For a successful ecommerce business, one needs an ecommerce website, and inventory and customers. Select a niche for ecommerce website. Also, choose the inventory. One must register the domain name. Hire professional web developers to build a fully functional, impressive ecommerce website where you can sell your products or services to online customers. The professional website developer would work closely with you to build your website and would create shopping carts, online payment gateways, product descriptions and would embed the product images using the best technologies. Customized ecommerce website development services can make your online store highly profitable.
According to the LA Times (2014), 3 billion people have access to the internet. Facebook reaches 250 million users and as I demonstrated in Chapter 5, 95 million people are shopping online in the USA alone. The most amazing thing is that these numbers will only get bigger because most of the world still has to get online. These figures only represent 60% of the world population who are using the internet. Still, the experts say that worldwide e-commerce sales are growing by 19% a year and will represent US$1.4 trillion by the end of 2015. In the USA those sales are increasing by 10% every year and this will be the trend as people understand what they save in effort, gas, and how there is more variety online than in the stores. Furthermore, it is true that more than 80% of the online population has used the internet to purchase something, and more than 50% of the online population has shopped online more than once. In every region of the world people are understanding how easy, fast and efficient it is to shop online and they like this convenience and the safety. There is no reason why part of this phenomenal growth should not be yours.
E-commerce Explain what is meant by the term ‘E-commerce’. It is the conducting of business communication and transactions over networks and through computers. As most restrictively defined, electronic commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, and the transfer of funds, through digital communications. However EC also includes all inter-company and intra-company functions (such as marketing, finance, manufacturing, selling, and negotiation) that enable commerce and use electronic mail, EDI, file transfer, fax, video conferencing, workflow, or interaction with a remote computer. Electronic commerce also includes buying and selling over the Web, electronic funds transfer, smart cards, digital cash (e.g.
Selling your own products, work or services to customers is the ideal as you have control over your customer relationships and maximize your profits. Building an ecommerce website or adding ecommerce to your existing website doesn’t have to be difficult or
Despite the rapid growth of E-commerce sites, 43 percent of the them fails, and the difference between the success and the failure is consumer experience, according to Ecommercetimes.com. The Dotcom Survival Guide reported there is still one resource left untapped that can save dotcoms from failure. It's the one resource that historically is most ignored in favor of ads, press, and flashy features yet it's the one resource that can lead dotcoms to survival. That resource is customers. Customers can provide the revenues needed to attain profitability. Customers can give the word-of-mouth marketing to drive traffic. Customers can give the feedback needed to continually improve the website.