When being thrown into the world of eCommerce, you may not know where to start. It is confusing when just starting out, and you need to learn the basics from our company PGN before you start your eCommerce business. Continue reading to learn more about the basics of eCommerce for beginners.
What is eCommerce
We are starting from the very bottom here and asking the most basic question. What is eCommerce? The simplest definition of eCommerce is the transacting or facilitating of business on the internet. The word itself stands for “electronic commerce”. However, eCommerce includes a wide range of websites. It could be anything from a website such as Facebook all the way to marketplaces like Amazon or even your business website.
The Benefits of eCommerce Business
The main benefit of an eCommerce business is that it eliminates the limitations of geographical distance, as well as time frames. Customers no longer need to walk into your store, they simply enter through a website from where ever they are. This means your customer base has the potential to grow by the billions.
Do Your Research
When committing to becoming an eCommerce business, do your digital market research. Find out if there are others in the market selling a similar product and if there is room for earning revenue. Also, consider how potential customers are searching for your type of product. What are they typing into search engines and how often? You should also consider the quantity of what they want to purchase. By using Google Analytics, you can research these questions and find out the trends.
Set Your Products at the Right Price
Setting your products at the right price also involves research. Obviously, you want to what your competition is selling the same product for. It’s also important to know just how much are people willing to pay for your product. Knowing how much development of your product will cost plays an important role in pricing as well. These are three extremely important elements when building an eCommerce business. Make sure you’re receiving a decent profit margin from each sale, otherwise it just isn’t worth it.
Generate Traffic to Your Website
You simply cannot expect to create an eCommerce business and instantly have customers. Marketing is a major entity in creating a successful online business. Investigate what your target audience is and where they spend their time. Is it Facebook or Twitter. Maybe it’s both. Once you discover this information, create pages on social media platforms and ad campaigns that target your customer market. Also, consider paid advertising campaigns as this will get the word out not just on social media platforms.
Know How to Fulfill Your Orders
Once you have orders generated, how will you deliver them to the customer? Make sure you have a proper distribution plan that includes a place to manufacture the amount of product you’re anticipating selling and the employees to help with that process. When just starting out, keep it simple and small. You could even start by placing your product on a marketplace such as Amazon to see if it sells. Then, once you’re ready and have enough income, get into a manufacturing building on your own.