Everything You Need To Know On Ecommerce And How To Sell Online

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Ever wondered how you can make money with ecommerce, or what is ecommerce in general?

You've come to the right place.

We've put together this entire guide to help you understand what ecommerce is, the history of ecommerce, how to set up your ecommerce store, and how to make money by selling online, and more!

Now, let's get down to business.

Here is everything you need to know about ecommerce and how to sell online:

1. What is ecommerce

2. History of ecommerce

3. Types of ecommerce

4. Benefits of selling online

5. Future of ecommerce

6. What's your business model?

7. What product/service will you sell?

8. How will you stand out?

9. Branding

10. Domain name and platform

11. FAQ and About Us

12. Product photography

13. Product description

14. Payment and pricing

15. Shipping and fulfilment

16. Communication - email, messaging

17. How to generate traffic to online store

18. Ecommerce marketing: social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

19. Launching your online store

20. Data analysis

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What is ecommerce?

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Ecommerce is a broad term.

Basically, electronic commerce - or ecommerce for short - refers to the buying and selling of goods or services online via the Internet.

You can sell almost anything if you have an ecommerce business - physical goods such as clothes or gadgets, digital goods such as music, and services such as coupons and insurance. 

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History of ecommerce

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With ecommerce, anyone can easily sell and shop online.

As a consumer, you can  shop whenever and wherever on your device. And as a merchant, you never have to abide by closing hours - you can sell online 24/7, every day of the week! 

Now we have ecommerce giants like Amazon, Alibaba, and Rakuten, that make every day life so much easier. And the retail space has never been same ever since.

But what about back then?

Back in the day, there was no "ecommerce" nor the option to shop or sell from the comforts of our own homes and devices. 

So, how did ecommerce start?

Here's a rough timeline of ecommerce and how it came to be what it is today:

• 1970s - 1980s - Basic ecommerce systems such as Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).are used by a small group of people.

  
  

• 1980s - 1990s - The Boston Computer Exchange and Minitel become some of the world's first ecommerce platforms. Usage of credit cards and ATMs for fund transfer helps pave the way for ecommerce.

• 1990s - 2000s - The World Wide Web is born. More and more people around the world are getting Internet access. Ebay and Amazon launch, and spark the ecommerce revolution.

• 2000s - 2010s - Ecommerce is booming, especially in the later years, thanks to social media, which speeds up the spreading of information. Countless ecommerce services emerge such as music streaming, video streaming, online marketplace, online stores, food ordering, and more. Online sales like Cyber Monday and Singles' Day break more and more sales records worldwide.  

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Types of ecommerce

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Ecommerce involves various parties - consumers, businesses, and governments. So because of this, ecommerce can be split into six different categories.

Here are the 6 types of ecommerce business models:

• B2B (Business-to-Business)

• B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

• C2B (Consumer-to-Business)

• C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)

• B2A (Business-to-Administration)

• C2A (Consumer-to-Administration)

Let's take a look into what each ecommerce model type means:

B2B (Business-to-Business)

B2B refers to transactions made between businesses, such as suppliers and retailers. This type of ecommerce business model is not consumer-facing, and the volume and value of transactions of B2B ecommerce are usually very big. An example is a retailer ordering clothes from an online supplier.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

B2C is the most well-known and popular ecommerce business model. B2C transactions are made between a business and a consumer, where a business sells goods/services to consumers. Some great examples of B2C type ecommerce companies are Lazada and Zalora. B2C ecommerce removes the need for physical stores. Shipping and logistics are an important factor to the success of a B2C ecommerce store.

C2B (Consumer-to-Business)

C2B ecommerce involves a consumer selling something to a business. Confusing? Not really. It relates to businesses like crowdfunding sites and freelance services like Kickstarter and Upwork.

C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)

C2C ecommerce involves consumer-to-consumer business. C2C relates to auction and classified sites. A good example of a C2C ecommerce business is eBay, which allows its users to trade, buy, and sell things to other of its users via its site for a small commission fee. 

B2A (Business-to-Administration)

C2A (Consumer-to-Administration)

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StoreHub Ecommerce is our biggest update of 2018! Our Product & Engineering team worked around the clock to launch this so our StoreHubbers can start selling online.

Now you can put your entire physical store online in just a few clicks.

Storehub Ecommerce is easy to use and set up. There's no programming and technical knowledge required. Best of all, there are no crazy expensive fees to pay when you use this feature for your business.

StoreHub Ecommerce is integrated perfectly with your StoreHub BackOffice and POS system. This means you’ll never oversell, you’ll always know when to reorder, and you can easily fulfil your orders - all in a single system.

With a single product catalog, you can choose what to sell in-store, online, or both.

You’ll never have to manage your business on multiple systems that don’t talk to each other again.

Don't miss out on all your potential sales, enable your Ecommerce store now!

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Benefits of selling online

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There are several benefits of selling online than selling in a physical store. Lower operational costs

Run your business from anywhere

No opening and closing hours

Less time consuming

Better cash flow and higher margins

Most cost effective

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Future of ecommerce

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If you ever had any doubt whether or not you can make money with ecommerce, read on. These stats are bound to blow your mind.

In 2017, global retail ecommerce sales saw huge numbers amounting to $2.3 trillion US dollars. And that worldwide revenue figure is projected to double to a staggering $4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021.

How crazy is that?! 

China's ecommerce king, Alibaba, alone saw record sales of $31 billion dollars for their annual 11.11 Singles' Day sale in 2018. That's 4x more than the $7.9 billion dollars of sales Cyber Monday saw in the U.S..

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What's your business model?

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Here are the main ecommerce business models:

• Dropshipping

• Wholesaling and warehousing

• White-labeling and manufacturing

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a popular ecommerce business model, especially for new business owners.

An ecommerce site that operates a dropshipping business model buys its stock from a third-party supplier/manufacturer, which then fulfills orders for the ecommerce site. This means that you don't need to worry about managing stock, operational costs, shipping, logistics, and packaging. Yay!

All you need to worry about as a dropshipping business is marketing, and customer acquisition, which in layman terms means getting more customers. 

Here are some tips for a profitable dropshipping business:

1. Select a niche so you don't overspend on trying to sell everything to everyone.

2. You'll be putting in the same amount of work into your business since your focus will be on marketing and getting more customers. So sell expensive products to make it worth your time.

3. Sell products that are trendy and appealing to your customers. Don't sell products that look cheap and ugly, because those kind of products will not attract anyone, and you will lose money.

4. Rebrand the products you are selling to make them your own to increase their value.

5. Choose a supplier/manufacturer that charges low shipping rates. Ecommerce customers are sensitive to high shipping costs, and this can affect your sales.

6. Sell products that are locally hard to find. These are more attractive than products that are sold everywhere, which customers can easily find down the street.

Wholesaling and warehousing

This business model involves you buying a lot of stock and selling it to other retailers. It is all about volume - stock and space. It requires a lot of money as you need to buy a lot of stock, and also pay for the storage space.

White-labeling and manufacturing

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What product/service will you sell?

[/et_pb_text]Business owners in Malaysia:

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Now that you have a better idea on your business model, let's take a look into the three main type of things you can sell online:

1. Physical goods

2. Digital goods

3. Services

1. Physical goods

Physical goods are the most popular type of things you can sell online to make money. Some of the things you can sell are beauty products, clothing, gadgets, and more. Four main things to keep in mind when selling physical goods are:

• Expiry date of perishable goods (eg: food and beauty products)

• Product size, which will affect packaging and shipping cost

• Storage - where to store all your stock

• Shipping cost and method

2. Digital goods

Digital goods include:

• music

• tickets

• vouchers

• ebooks

• software

• and more.

What's great about selling digital goods online is that you don't have to worry about where to store your items. You also don't have to worry about shipping and packaging, whoo!

And because you can sell infinite amounts of the same digital good, your profit margin will definitely be higher than if you were to sell physical goods or services.

Two things to note when selling digital goods are hacking and piracy.

3. Services

Services are the least common type of product sold online.

Services include digital marketing, graphic design, writing, content creation, consulting, copywriting, web development and more. Selling a service online will help you in terms of brand awareness, but you should note that this type of service is hard to scale.

It also relies heavily on manpower, so time and people management are skills you will need in order to sell services online successfully.

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How will you stand out?

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Branding

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Domain name and platform

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FAQ and About Us

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Product Photography

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Product Description

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FAQ and About Us

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Payment and Pricing

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Shipping and Fulfilment

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Communication - email, messaging

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How to generate traffic to online store

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Ecommerce marketing: social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

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Launching your online store

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Data analysis

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Get more with StoreHub

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There you have it - our biggest updates in 2018.

And that's not including the countless other things we've done throughout 2018 to help you make your business awesome - some of which include a mall integration app, easier accounting export, and more! Check out the StoreHub Knowledge Base for more updates and information.

We can't wait to bring you more exciting things in 2019 that will help you grow your business.

Till then, Happy New Year and here's to making your business awesome!

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Power Your Business With StoreHub!

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Click here to learn how StoreHub can help you manage and grow your business.

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