An income of more than 735 billion dollars has been estimated by 2023, according to Statista. Therefore, if you want to earn money through e-commerce, a huge opportunity has come. However, there are some tips to follow before really starting online selling.
Build Your Own Online Shop
It’s traditional to build your own online shopping website on which products are displayed, marketed, and traded. That calls for detailed work from site design, content generation, product display, and transferring to traffic improvement and marketing. Nevertheless, your own website provides the biggest freedom and control. You don’t need to worry about any change occurring to site rules, commission principles, etc. Any slight change in them may arouse huge results.
To build your own online shopping site, you need to find your website hosting and domain. Then, you need to design the site, add products and fill in product content. Of course, some of the work can be done by employees but it cost money.
The biggest advantage of building your own online shopping website is that you can control all aspects of your own site. New products can be added, removed, and edited easily and quickly with all rules in complete control.
Find a Suitable E-Commerce Platform
If you have a limited budget, building your own online shopping site is not suggested but an e-commerce platform is a good idea since it provides complete functions compatible with e-commerce needs and requirements. Its disadvantage lies in your limited control over the details of your business.
Using an e-commerce platform, your online shop can be quickly established and decorated with a theme or template selected. Some items can be even customized on it. Moreover, it provides you with instructions on how to add and edit products.
In addition, it’s quite simple and quick to establish an online shop on such an e-commerce platform because it’s been running with a fully professional backup and system. However, a risk will be always there that the commission will see an increase as your online shop goes for a long time, which is usually seen on the leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.
Use a Marketing Site
A marketing site is one like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, etc. on which products from small businesses are sold with other equivalent sellers.
The essential advantage of such marketing sites lies in their high traffic. For example, 59 million users stay active on Amazon each month while 27 million on eBay. The number can hardly reach when it comes to your own online shopping site. Nevertheless, while consumers search the keyword on such a site, your products will compete against so many similar products on the same platform. In addition, you still have no freedom to decide the detailed rules and principles on such a site.
Make Full Use of Social Media
Today, about 72% of American adults stay active on social media platforms, some on only one while some on at least one. Therefore, social media platforms become naturally beneficial for marketing products and contacting current customers and potential customers.
Social media platforms are created for businesses and each platform features distinct rules for e-commerce. For example, an online shop is allowed to be established on Facebook and Instagram allows followers to complete the purchase via clicking the link in the image.
However, the leading disadvantage of a social media platform for e-commerce is that most social media users don’t aim to buy things when using it. Therefore, it’s a little difficult for business owners to increase ROI, which is worth carefully considering.
Prepare a Business Line
Communications are a must for online commerce but are always neglected. Telecommunications seem more like being offline instead of online, leading others to easily neglect them.
However, a business phone number plays more than a role in connecting two parties or people but one as a name card for a business. E-commerce deals with global trading that calls for instant and non-stoppable communications around the world. A business line helps cut the calling rates that are a leading part of the budget. On the other hand, a business line stands for your business’s unique online identity, making your business brand stand out easily.