Ecommerce hosts a platform that lets businesses sell their products or services throughout the world through an electronic medium. Earlier, ecommerce was referred to as Electronic Commerce. As the definition of ecommerce implies, it includes all sorts of businesses that use the internet for data exchange and/ or money exchange. It is successfully running in many sources such as supply chain management, electronic data interchange, mobile commerce, internet marketing, data collection, online transaction, and electronic exchange of funds. The ecommerce platform you choose for creating your online store should be cost-effective and help your business grow as well as evolve with time as required. Ecommerce is a part of our day to day life. Today, technology aids in literally purchasing anything, online!
The history of ecommerce
The history of ecommerce longs back to the time when the telephone was invented. Electronic Data Interchange or EDI is believed to be the start of ecommerce. Huge companies have been investing in EDI development since the 60s. However, it did not get considerable acceptance until the 80s. The last few years have reasonably changed the definition of ecommerce. Originally, ecommerce was used for commercial transactions using the electronic medium that includes technologies such as EDI and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These methods were used for commercial transactions, while later, the use of credit cards, ATMs (Automated Teller Machines), phone banking, railway, and airlines joined with the process.
In 1979, Michael Aldrich invented online shopping which eventually became the essential component of ecommerce. During the 90s, ecommerce was introduced to data collection and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Also, the World Wide Web (WWW) was invented during this time; introducing the world to an everyday communication system. Although the Internet was popular, security protocols were introduced 5 years later. From the 2000s, ecommerce was started being used as a medium to sell and purchase goods and services.
What are the objectives of ecommerce?
Ecommerce business drives profitable growth with reduction is cost-to-customer, developing customer-reach, and providing a unique customer experience. It has become more than essential for B2B as well as other businesses to make the right use of ecommerce. Now, ecommerce is evolving or better say evolved into digital commerce that implies to the entire business journey from buying to delivery with an online experience. Below are the few objectives of ecommerce:
1. Reduce management costs
Businesses aim at reducing the costs incurred for the betterment of their revenue. Automating the ecommerce business can help in reducing the management cost significantly. Moreover, the right use of digital marketing can help in reducing the cost spent on driving customers to such an extent that businesses can bring customers for free of cost.
2. Developing business relations
With ecommerce as the primary use, business development can be easily achieved. The direct communication between a company and the customer, the business relationship can be boosted. Eventually, the ecommerce market shall be expanded.
3. Providing a unique customer experience
Uncountable ecommerce businesses are functioning out there in the market. When a customer searches for a certain product (for instance, shampoo), they will probably click on the first three links that are shown on the Google Search Engine Results Page. All the rest links are either avoided, never seen, or are visited by a few. This itself shows the competition in the ecommerce market. One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is by providing a unique customer experience. This includes giving a personalized experience to each customer or visitor of your online store, website, or mobile app. Some other pointers to consider are round the clock customer service, immediate responses to the queries rose, engaging with the customers, and so on.
4. Increasing the number of loyal customers
Customers are the core of all business strategies. Therefore, ensuring the great customer experience is of prime importance for the growth of the business. You need to meet your customers where they spend their time. More than 60% of consumers look for purchasing goods and services online. If you meet your customers where they are already active, the chances of them, interacting with your business increases two folds. You can increase the number of loyal customers by giving the best experience to your already existing customers as well as bring in newer customers.
5. Boosting the efficiency of services
With the continually evolving technology, you need to enhance the efficiency of your services. By choosing an online ecommerce platform to create an online store, you can efficiently reduce the cost of managing and selling online. You have various opportunities to boost the efficiency of your service that eventually enhances the revenue earned. By reducing the delivery time, you can witness happy customers getting back to your business two times faster. Another way is to provide your customers with automated services such as status update, invoice creating, chat support, etc. When you update your efficiency of delivering products or services to your customers, you are creating a strong online presence that helps you sell more.
6. Developing relevant target
Developing relevant traffic for an ecommerce business is a common objective. Whether an ecommerce website or an online store, building traffic is one of the most important objectives. However, you should know that not all traffic is useful for your business. If you are successfully creating traffic for your ecommerce site or store, but most of the people in the traffic do not require the products or services you provide, the traffic is not causing any good to your business. For instance, your marketing strategies were attractive enough for teenagers; your business would not be receiving any boost in sales. Therefore, along with boosting your traffic, you need to analyze your traffic. Here comes the need for collecting customer data. Collecting customer data include demographics such as age, location, and gender, customer interests, browsing history, browser history, and so on. By saving these data, you can aim in targeting the relevant market.
7. Making responsive ecommerce website
With the increasing use of smartphones for shopping online, it has become more than mandatory for ecommerce businesses to go mobile. Apart from creating a native mobile app, like the one offered from Builderfly, you need to create a responsive ecommerce website. It is one of the major objectives of all leading ecommerce businesses. By responsive, it means to create a website that can be viewed from any devices of varying screen size, equally. Studies say that Google may next rank a website based on its mobile website. It means that any website that has a responsive design would be ranked on top of the website that does not have one. Making your ecommerce website responsive can help you optimize it. A mobile-friendly website earns more traffic than the rest.
8. Increasing sales
The objective of increasing sales will always remain continuous and constant for an ecommerce business. In order to thrive in the ecommerce industry, you need to boost your sales, constantly. All other objectives are zeroed down to make this objective happen. However, you also need to look into your past store analytics and figure out the marketing tactics that have worked well for you to increase sales. Although these objectives could help you in gaining sales, nothing can beat the tried and tested marketing tactics for your business. For instance, the products that are sold the most, ideally the best seller can be used for remarketing and grab more attention. Any marketing strategy you used earlier including the email targeting and traffic boosting tactics must be revisited and worked upon to increase sales. Based on the above-mentioned objectives and the marketing tactics that actually worked for you, you need to design your marketing plan. Only you can decide what is perfect for your business and what is not. Every business is unique, and so is yours!
Conclusion
Choosing the right ecommerce solutions is extremely important for business development. Consider investing your time and research in builderfly.com. It is a complete ecommerce solution that lets you take any offline business online, create a fully customizable online store, and create a personalized mobile app. The 14-day free trial lets a user explore the extensive features of Builderfly and once upgraded to a suitable plan, they can even connect an already existing domain name. To choose an online platform or to not, completely depends on your business requirements and company revenue. Your ecommerce store should not limit selling online due to lack of efficiency.
