E-commerce

E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet.

What is E-commerce?

E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business transactions occur either as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-consumer, or consumer-to-business. The terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably. The term e-tail is also sometimes used in reference to the transactional processes for online shopping.

Today the business of e-commerce websites has reached to more than billions of dollars a year worldwide and the business is growing at a very high speed. E-commerce website development is pretty easy when utilizing the correct type of tools.

We’re breaking down the process of an e-commerce website development project into 7 major steps, each filled with detail and tips to help you understand the process and get it right.

Identify the product / service, and the customer

keeps the following points in mind in order to choose well:
  • Consider the price of the product—items that are priced very low will make it difficult for you to get returns, but it also is difficult for people to purchase high-value items without seeing them first.
  • Availability of the product and convenience can help a customer decide whether to shop online or offline. Items that are usually not available too easily in stores tend to rack up more sales online.
  • Do consider the incidental costs. Perishables, fragile goods, voluminous or large goods all pose shipping challenges and drive up costs.

Know your eCommerce customer

It’s vital for any business to understand who their customer is so they can reach out to him/her in the best way possible. One way to ascertain this is by evaluating the customers of your competitors..

Choose the right e-commerce website development platform

To begin with, as the business owner you need to decide whether you’d prefer a self-hosted platform, or a hosted one. While the requirement for both is different, hosted platforms are usually preferred as they usually consist of full-features websites and maintenance plans. This minimizes the scope for error and makes website management much easier.

Scope for e-commerce website customization

Even full-feature platforms like Magento come with set features that may not suit the needs of your business, or you may have requirements for additional capabilities in your website. Moreover, each business has different requirements, and it’s important for the platform to support these.

Payment gateway integration

  • One of the challenges faced by e-commerce businesses is the discomfort with online payments. Your e-commerce platform of choice must support these capabilities.
  • If you seek international expansion or cater to customers from various countries, it’s important to incorporate multiple currency options to facilitate payment for overseas customers.

    Mobile-friendly, or responsive e-commerce

  • Studies have shown that people are spending more and more time on their mobile phones.
  • So responsive e-commerce websites, suitable for viewing on mobile phones, are a great alternative.

E-Commerce marketing

Do consider the marketing tools offered by the e-commerce platform—some platforms offer integration with analytics tools, social media websites, promotion tools, etc. Once you go live with the website, marketing will form a significant path of business growth, so anticipate the needs for these capabilities and choose your platform accordingly.

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