What is e-commerce?
The full form of e-commerce is electronic commerce. Buying and selling products and exchanging money using the internet is called e-commerce or e-commerce. Traditionally, we have seen that people go to the market to buy and sell. With the change of era, the concept of going out to shop is changing.
With the expansion of e-commerce business, any product or service can now be purchased online from home. Products are being delivered directly to our doorstep. This has made life much easier.
E-business is conducted using the business to business, business to customer and customer to customer methods. That is, the transactions between the service provider and the consumer in this business are conducted automatically.
The most famous website of today, Daraz, is an e-commerce company. Everything that a person needs in his life can be found on Daraz. An e-commerce website has various types of products and they are available for purchase online.
After purchasing the desired product, there is a system to pay for the product online, which is setup and configured on the website. Once the payment is made, the delivery location has to be provided so that the product can reach your home.
In short, a website created for online shopping from home is called e-commerce or electronic commerce.
How does e-commerce work?
E-commerce works as a business model. It has some important trends that help this business model to develop. We have already learned that e-commerce is an online business. That is, all types of transactions are done online here.
However, to establish an online e-commerce business, a website will be needed first. Because in a traditional business, a shop or supershop is a place to display and sell products. On the other hand, an online website is a shop or supershop where all types of products are displayed for sale.
Products are added to the website depending on the category. Each product is given a detailed idea about the product so that the customer feels like he is buying the product himself. In addition, everything good and bad about the product is mentioned there. After arranging all the information, the selling price is added there.
In this, the potential buyer can judge the quality of the product and purchase it at the mentioned price. To buy the product of his choice, there is an “Add to Cart” button on the page which takes him directly to the payment page. This page provides all the information and options for making payments. During payment processing, you have to provide a delivery address, in which the courier or delivery service delivers the product to your home.
So, the e-commerce business model creates a strong bond between the business and the consumer. This bond ensures that the business will not provide duplicate or damaged products and the consumer will pay in advance to receive the product.
How to start e-commerce?
Before starting an e-commerce business, you need to have a clear idea about what this business model is and how it works. Let’s learn in detail about how to start an e-commerce business.
Planning
It is said that proper planning is 50% of any work. Since e-commerce is a business, an effective plan must be made to implement it properly. This plan will include the target audience, specific area, what products will be available, how much product will be in stock, warehouse setup, website creation, marketing, after-sales service, etc., and other related matters.
If you can make a proper plan considering the current market situation before starting a business, you can go far ahead in the competition. When starting a business from scratch, we must remember that wars are not won with weapons but with tactics.
Investment Processing
The most important thing for doing business is investment. A business can never be established without capital. Before starting an e-commerce business, you must make a plan regarding capital and investment distribution.
Even if you start a business with a very small amount of capital in the beginning, it will gradually grow. Then investments will start coming from domestic and foreign investors. If these investments cannot be distributed properly, business losses will occur.
On the other hand, if investments can be processed properly, you can get ahead of your competitors in a short time. Which is very necessary for online business. Currently, many well-known domestic e-commerce companies are losing business due to unplanned investment processing. Then at some point, they are declaring bankruptcy after failing to repay their investors. Therefore, if you cannot process investments and capital properly, you cannot succeed in e-commerce business.
Website Creation
Once the pre-preparation is complete, you will have to focus on creating a modern e-commerce website. Currently, many development start-up companies provide services for creating e-commerce websites. You can take services from them or hire a personal developer to create a website.
While creating a website, you must pay attention to high-quality hosting configuration. Because an e-commerce website has many donors and many visitors come to browse. If you have a cheap or poorly configured hosting, the website will work slowly or stop working, which is harmful to online business.
Give instructions to the developer so that the website has all the necessary features of the latest times. In this way, the buyer will easily like your website and your sales will increase.
Quality Control
Make sure that the products you sell are of good quality. When a general customer buys a product online, he has doubts about the quality in his mind.
When you supply good quality products, the doubts of the buyer will be removed and he will buy products from your store again and again.
Marketing
Marketing is the most important factor behind the success of any online business. There is no alternative to marketing on the Internet. Marketing is the process of creating demand for a service or product among the general public.
That is, there is no jury for marketing to spread your e-commerce business across the Internet and make it easily available to the buyer. Therefore, a large part of your entire investment will have to be spent on offline and online marketing. SEO is very important for online marketing and for offline marketing, you have to participate in various conferences or programs.
Gaining credibility
An e-commerce company created for the sake of business becomes popular as a brand when it gains the credibility of the buyer. Amazon or Daraz did not come to this position in a day. They have earned the trust of the customer by providing good service and product supply for a long time.
Before starting an e-commerce business, you need to gain experience on how you can also gain this trust. Otherwise, it will not be possible to take this online business far.
E-business is an eternal business model.