The term ‘E-commerce’ is termed for the concept of doing online business. The introduction of electronic data interchange had made buying and selling of goods through the transmission of data. The most popular way of making money online is through eCommerce business which has become a source of opportunity for investors.
Let me introduce you to the 5 smart ways of running a successful eCommerce business.
Step 1 – Selection of right eCommerce business model
Business to Business Ecommerce:
In this eCommerce business model, materials for production is been sourced from other businesses. Let me explain you with an example,
When a business is in need of a service of another. Let us suppose you own a furniture company and require someone to take care of finance. In this case, you will have to employ an accountancy firm to audit your finances.
Suppose you feel that you cannot succeed as a manufacturer, so you decide to become a reseller by selling the goods and services produced by other companies. You can even earn a recurring payments through woocommerce subscriptions
Business to Consumer Ecommerce
In this business model, products and services are being sold to the end-users directly. Companies that sell directly to consumers can be referred to as B2C companies. For example, mall shopping, having restaurant food, watching movies in theatres and so on.
C2C Ecommerce
In this eCommerce business model, both sellers and buyers are consumers. These two parties interact with the help of a third one who acts as a mediator. For example, Amazon and Flipkart are leading examples of this type of business model.
Consumer to Business Ecommerce
In the C2B model, business is provided on a fee-based option to market a product or service on the consumer’s website or blog. With the growth of consumer-generated media and content across different areas like youtube videos, websites, blogs, and social networks, this eCommerce business has brought in a good source of income.
Drop-Shipping
Credits – ober.io
In this type of business model, a company operates without maintaining an inventory, or a warehouse to store their products. They don’t have to ship their products to their customers themselves. You can easily make dropshipping websites from your normal WordPress websites using Woocommerce Plugin.
Let me explain how it works.
- Once the customer enters the online store, he orders a product.
- The customer details are then automatically or manually forwarded by the retailer to the dropship supplier.
- The product is then packaged and shipped to the respective customer by the dropship supplier to the customer on behalf of the retailer.
Wholesaling and Warehousing
If you have decided to start a eCommerce business by buying wholesale products in bulk and selling them through your website, the next thing which comes to your mind would be the storage of these products. Bulk storage needs quite an amount of space. To solve the issue of storage, a wholesale warehouse came into existence. You can find Warehouses located near industrial areas. Manufacturers, importers, and exporters make use of this as a means of storage.
For example, Suppose you run a pharmacy shop and you need to store medicines. Here you will have to select a warehouse that can accommodate all your medicines.
White Labeling
When you manufacture a product or a service without a brand or logo and give permission to the purchaser to use their own brand, selling such a product is called a white-labeled product.
For example, if you go to a gift shop say Archies, you will find all sorts of products that are sold under the Archies brand. Does that mean that Archies has manufactured all these products? Never! They will have a connection to various companies that already provide those products and are willing to put the product in the Archies brand.
Step 2 – Giving the right User Experience on your website
Here are 4 tips to Enhance Your User Experience
1. Page speed optimization
You are in an emergency to looking out a website for getting information related to something. What will your first action be if you see a site loading for a long time? Hit the close button, go back to google and search for a different URL, right? A quick and fast result is what a user expects always.
How to increase the speed of your website? Get your score. A free service is offered by Google where you can get the information regarding the page speed. It also offers suggestions regarding the load time on Mobile.
One of the most vital criteria for slow page speed is image size. Always make sure that all images are compressed before loading them on your website. You can make use of the website compressor.io to enhance the speed of your website.
If you are building your website on WordPress, the best managed wordpress vps hosting provider will help you in speed optimization. You can just relax and sit even if your sites get added up or there is a sudden increase in the number of people visiting your site.
I recommend taking a good managed wordpress vps hosting provider such as WPOven who are always keen on speed optimization. The common issues like dns probe finished nxdomain when DNS fails to lookup an IP address can easily be addressed when you have managed support.
Customers who visit your site are the ones who have already seen many different sites and are accustomed to determine which portion of the content is important to them. For easy navigation of your site, Calls to actions (CTAs) should be clearly marked with an action word, this will enable them to get exactly what they are looking for.
When you create buttons for your website, the psychology of color plays a major role. Do you know that colors speak your message? Different colors have different messages. Suppose you want to evoke a feeling of trust or, intelligence for a user, choosing the right color will help you achieve this goal.
The next important thing is the words used for these buttons. A verbal word would increase the number of user clicks on the button. An emotional connection always leads to action. So remember these three factors, words bold, time-sensitive and action-oriented.
3. Proper use of images
Users across the net are getting smarter and wiser at analyzing the websites before they could browse further. They can easily identify the generic stock photos which you have picked up from other websites. This decreases the trust with you and your website. So always keep unique photos and if you happen to use images from other websites, please make sure to add credits to the images.
4. Your website should be responsive in all devices
With the advancement in technology, It’s important that your website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate irrespective of the type of device users may use to access your website. A responsive website will dynamically change its structure according to the screen size, whether you use a laptop,iPhone or an Android device, your website should display all the information uniquely throughout all these devices. Also, WP security is very important to run a successful online eCommerce business
Step 3 – Having a smart team that runs on automation
When you build an e-commerce store for yourself and looking to scale your reach and eCommerce business, you bound to have a powerful team that is technologically sound. In an eCommerce business, some of the prior talent requirement includes,
- Content team,
- Marketing Ninjas,
- Graphics designers,
- Customer support assistants.
- Logistics Management team.
- Sales team.
The above-mentioned roles are required if your e-commerce business is observing growth. It is quite obvious that handling all the resources could become hectic without any Human resource management activity.
In this age of automation and AI, spending time on repetitive and unproductive tasks can indulge you in wasting your precious time. Deploying a smart automation tool that can manage your smart team members’ daily tasks with a time tracker tool, allowing you to share live reports, attendance, work, event, as well as onboarding new talents can enable you to automate your entire human resource so that you can focus on work that matters.
Step 4 – Find the right strategies to enjoy exponential sales
1) Customer buy results not products
When a user buys a product, he searches for its benefits and how would the product be useful to him in the long run. Identifying the ideal customer by making a list of advantages he will enjoy by using your product.
2) Know your customer
Identify the person who has a higher chance of buying your product and would buy it immediately? Please specific to a group of people or a particular region where your product will be sold quickly and in a larger quantity.
3) Make use of Content Social Media Marketing
Using social signals like facebook, twitter. You can also develop your own blog to market your product by ranking in google search engine. The best part is, they’re all free.
4) Cold Calling
Cold calling your potential clients would be frustrating and a difficult attempt. Patience is the key, you can either do it in person or on phone. If your product is new, you may have to generate interest in buying the product by tracing out the potential customers.
5) Upskill your ways to negotiate.
A skilled negotiator will always find a solution that is satisfactory to both parties. They always look for “win-win” situations, which will satisfy both the parties with the results of the negotiation. Read here about the right mentorship your business needs to grow exponentially here
Step 5 – Provide best after-sales service
Call to find out if things are going well.
It is an act of courtesy if you can call up your customer to know the well being of the product being used. It will also help you to correct the existing problems if exists and better your product. This will provide a good impression and increase the chances of your product advertisement. For the effective calling process you need to automate your hr calling.
Information on usage of product
There can be many ways of providing information regarding the product. You can send one of your agents to the customer’s place to explain the working of the product verbally or create usage tutorials. Making a good list with the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) will also be beneficial. Answering technical questions on social networks or forums will also be a good idea. It’s all about helping your customers use your products and getting the most out of them.
