At the moment, it seems like people cannot live without the presence of the Internet. It helps us in many aspects of life. For example, dating, visiting doctors, socializing, and you name it, even buying stuff. With merely a few clicks/taps, your selected items will be ready to deliver to your front door. And those online stores you just scroll through are called eCommerce websites!
Oh, you wanna know more about it? Fortunately, this article will guide you to some fundamental knowledge related to eCommerce websites and eCommerce website development.
eCommerce Website Definition
First of all, let’s talk about the important part here: eCommerce.
Long story short, eCommerce (or electronic commerce) implies the activities of purchasing and selling products or services via the Internet. This concept sounds modern but actually, it appeared way back in the 60s. It was when students from Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used ARPANET to buy cannabis.
However, it was not until 1994 the first official eCommerce transaction happened when a CD by Sting was bought via NetMarket.
What Is an eCommerce Website?
eCommerce, which is short for “electronic commerce,” is the act of selling and buying goods and services over the internet. It also refers to the processing of financial transactions and data in order to do this. It can be done with electronic devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets.
So, eCommerce website development is the process of making your online store respond to what users do, help customers buy and return goods. It will also helps you accept online payments, make online shopping easy. An eCommerce website development tutorial will cover the technical parts like a fast page load speed and SEO. It will make it easy for users to move between pages, and have an optimized schema. “Business to customer,” or “B2C,” websites are some of the most common types of eCommerce sites.
And regarding eCommerce websites, perhaps you can easily guess that it is one of the media where online transactions are made. People will exchange their information such as item’s specialties, buyer’s name, address or card information, etc. through this means.
The 4 types of eCommerce
At the moment, there are 4 main types of eCommerce websites which are:
- B2B (business to business): companies/enterprises provide products, goods, or services to other companies/enterprises via websites. For example, Berlin Packaging, 3DXTech, Amazon Business, etc.
- B2C (business to customer): companies/enterprises sell products, goods, or services to customers online. For example, Amazon, Alibaba, Etsy, etc.
- C2C (customer to customer): this is the activity of selling products, goods, or services between one customer to another through an eCommerce platform. For example, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Airbnb, etc.
- C2B (customer to business): this happens when end-users sell products, goods, or services back to businesses. For instance, one could offer development services as a freelance developer on Upwork, Fiverr, etc.
FURTHER READING: |
1. 6 Best eCommerce App Development Companies |
2. How to Save Big on eCommerce App Development Cost? |
3. 5 Best eCommerce Website Design Services for Success |
Why eCommerce Websites Necessary?
Because of COVID-19 and pandemic restrictions, even the most traditional consumers had to buy things online. This changed the way people bought things all over the world. It also helped make online shopping one of the most popular things to do in many countries.
Statistics show that 43 percent of all shoppers around the world do research online before making a purchase. This means that 43% of people could become customers of your eCommerce site if you are willing to work hard to give your customers a great shopping experience.
You should plan an online route so that everyone comes to your store and you get a big piece of the market. They say that you shouldn’t get into eCommerce because there are already 20 million eCommerce websites in the world. We think you should kill it on the eCommerce front because you have to compete with a huge number of brick-and-mortar businesses.
Main Features of eCommerce Websites
At the moment when you just start building any website from scratch, it’s crucial to define all the most important features to develop or tools to integrate. To perform such a task, the best approach would be to access your competitors’ websites to do some research beforehand.
Nevertheless, lucky you, people from Designveloper have outlined some of the most necessary features in case you’re planning to build an eCommerce website:
- Order management.
- Various common payment methods.
- Mobile compatibility.
- Review and rating section.
- Shopping cart.
- Security features.
- Social sharing.
After developing all these backbone features, it’s time to structure others that fit your business model.
Recommended reading: Web App vs Website: Why Is It a False Dichotomy?
Pros and Cons When Using an eCommerce Website
People don’t just choose this method to sell products/services without a reason. In fact, they must consider it a lot since the cost of developing or maintaining this means is not cheap at all. Then, of course, eCommerce websites offer us various considerable benefits. But what are they exactly?
First, it’s more expensive to invest in building a physical store than a digital one. In this case, real estate, hiring staff, buying decorations, etc. could require a fortune. Furthermore, with an eCommerce website, you can easily scale up the size of your business. Once the number of items increases, your brick-and-mortar store might have to expand the area.
Have you ever been in a situation where there is high traffic of customers visiting the physical store? It must be a panicky sight to see. But don’t worry because, with an online store, you can process a higher number of orders in a shorter while.
Benefits of eCommerce Website
An eCommerce website also allows businesses to keep in touch with customers and utilize their marketing campaigns by means of email marketing, banner ads, etc. via the data they submitted to us.
However, sometimes, an eCommerce website gets on your customers’ nerves. If there is no physical store, they won’t be able to touch or feel the real products at all. For example, if you want to sell guns online, it can help to have a physical store for customers who want to examine the product before they drop hundreds or thousands on a piece. And data leakage is another reason why users are afraid of this purchasing method.
As for the business, even if the eCommerce website is on the Internet, high chances are that it can’t appear on the screen of potential customers. The reason is apart from you, there are countless other eCommerce websites out there too. That’s why businesses should focus on several strategies to keep up with competitors.
Conclusion
Building eCommerce websites is not as hard as it seems to be. You can choose an eCommerce platform (Shopify or Wix, for example) then drag and drop elements around to make one. However, the weakness of this approach is that you have very little to no control over these tools.
But hey, people from Designveloper offer various types of services such as web design, web development (eCommerce, educational, real estate website, etc), software development, and even business consulting. If you are interested, contact us and tell us your ideas now! Cheers.
