Introduction to E-commerce
E-commerce has grown significantly over the recent period and is no longer what it used to be. It has become one of the best investments in the current era and in the coming years. Traditional trading is no longer the right solution to grow your business.
In the past, online shopping through E-commerce stores was a form of entertainment and was considered a means of luxury and comfort. It has become a necessity for many consumers as companies that have moved towards electronic commerce have achieved excellent sales and increased income. The e-commerce platforms I work with have better inventory disposal, higher profits, and lower costs.
I have been working in marketing and media since 1995, and I moved to the field of information technology and digital transformation in 2005. I have always kept pace with all global and regional transformations towards the third industrial revolution. I have seen that some of our clients who have achieved the most growth over the past ten years are those working in the e-commerce and digital transformation sectors.
Many people want to know how to transform their business towards e-commerce and ensure success in this field, which has many secrets that need great clarification, and this article will address how to establish your business in the field of electronic commerce. If your goal is to make a quick profit, then you must set a strategy that guarantees you the establishment and development of a profitable and scalable business that continues through a long-term vision and the establishment of an entity that provides real value in the market.
Your gateway to building an e-commerce platform
Online retail is a thriving sector and is making a lot of profits, but there are a lot of e-commerce companies trying very hard and getting a success story in the field of e-commerce, it took many companies years to reach what was mentioned in this article. You must follow all the details mentioned in this article to create an e-commerce store, reduce a lot of time and effort, and protect yourself from making mistakes, which will enable you to develop and market your products properly through organized steps and stages.
Building any E-commerce requires a lot of details, not just choosing the name of the store, arranging product lists, and selling products, even if you have ideas that you find distinguish you. The biggest challenge lies in attracting a large number of visitors to your website, and you know that this requires many steps to achieve that success. How does e-commerce work?
The first step: Find an e-commerce model that matches you
Your first step is to search and not to work by mere intuition, and know that the growth of any business results from a pure investment standpoint, and you have to create your own structure and not depend on the structure that others work with, because there is no one business structure that works for everyone. Therefore, to begin with, it is necessary to understand business models before you decide to sell through e-commerce stores.
In the beginning, it is not preferable to start investing heavily in products and warehouses, but you should choose a business model such as drop shipping as a smart solution, which is a management system for the supply chain without the need to keep or purchase and store goods, but instead transfer orders from your online store to the factory or merchant directly with Shipping information, which in turn executes the order and ships it to the customer.
In the event that you want to invest in products and warehouses from the beginning, you must first do a good study of your product, brand, and manufacturing mechanism, and make a detailed study about that product. In order to expand the circle of spread for that product, you also have to approve subscriptions in order to activate the affiliate marketing system and give marketers commissions and rewards based on the results they achieve for your online store in terms of traffic or sales of your product, and this makes you more focused on increasing sales and improving income from traffic movement.
Good analysis of e-commerce business models
First of all, I recommend that you expand the circle of research and gather information from all previous experiences in your area of activity, and accordingly, determine which models are suitable for your resources and the size of your investment, and also choose the appropriate technical solutions that benefit you in the long run, and divide them into the stages of growth that you see in your future plan, and then choose the solutions that you will start with. Your e-commerce carefully and thoughtfully, and there are always three solutions to start your e-commerce
- Add your products to the most popular platforms that operate on the monthly subscription model.
- Platform programming through the use of content management systems (CMS), which are usually open source.
- Programming your own system using one of the special programming languages or open-source frameworks.
Each of these methods has advantages and also has some problems. Follow the next paragraph with us to determine what are the differences between each.
Comparison of online store development platforms
Below you will find a comparison of business models for building your online store.
Subscribe to e-commerce platforms (SaaS)
This model relies on working through ready-made platforms using its trademark, which always have lower costs, and some of these platforms operate on a monthly subscription system. What are the advantages and weaknesses?
Advantage
- You don’t need big budgets to work through
- You do not require high marketing expenses
- It would be best if you had a fewer staff
- There is no need to build your brand
- You do not need a designer or programmers
Weakness
- You cannot build your own brand and grow independently in the e-commerce sector.
- You cannot maintain your own databases as it is open source.
- You cannot create a business model for your products, which results in the inability to compete and excel.
- Difficulty integrating with management solutions and marketing tools and reaching maturity and development in your business.
Programming by using open-source CMS
Advantage
- The possibility of designing your brand and creating the identity and independence of your online store.
- The possibility of integrating it with marketing solutions and administrative applications as it gives you APIs.
- Despite the difficulty, some properties can be changed by programmers.
- The costs of setting up the store are medium and inexpensive.
Weakness
- The need to appoint a technical team or a specialized company with competence and sufficient experience to develop the store.
- Integration costs, modifying features, and adding features that differentiate you.
- It needs high information security in order to avoid the risks of hacking the store.
- There is no guarantee of the continuity of the system through which you work to develop with changes in information technology.
- System deployment, which enables programmers to gather information.
- Lack of protection from the most severe open-source software vulnerabilities.
- Intellectual property issues and lack of warranty.
- Reduce censorship of incompatible versions.
- Operational shortcomings in updating versions and their integrity.
- Developer practices that increase the risk of not having sufficient training on the open source system and its capabilities to deal with the programs.
