The global pandemic has left professionals grappling throughout the globe. Are you clueless about how to support your business with the best eCommerce platform? We understand! As entrepreneurs, you can embrace the changes brought in by COVID-19 and create resilient enterprises. How? First, you must choose the best eCommerce platform that helps you support your business needs in 2021 and beyond. In this blog, we will focus on the Shopify platform. Let’s dive in!
What is an eCommerce Platform?
Take a moment to think! You have a small business, and, naturally, you want your clients to make sales. You’re right! The orders rolling in are critical. What are your options? Well, there are many ways, but a great way is to consider curating an eCommerce platform for your venture. It can help you create a game-changing online experience for sales, orders, and much more.
Many people consider eCommerce as a tool. In a way, they are right! However, it is so much more. With the right platform, you can have complete control over business operations, from processing payments to maintaining inventory. How? One of the ways is to have a robust eCommerce website. If you aren’t too sure where to begin, it makes sense to reach out to a proficient eCommerce website development company.
What Are the Types of eCommerce?
The types of eCommerce that one might have heard of are B2B (business to business), B2C (business to customer), C2B (customer to business), and C2C (customer to customer).
1. B2C: When one considers selling from a business to individual consumers, you’d be referring to B2C. One would also come across the term DTC (aka direct to customer), which is used quite interchangeably.
There are excellent examples of B2C companies, including Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba, Tencent, and more. In the Indian context, look at examples such as Myntra, Flipkart, Snapdeal, and more.
2. B2B: As the name suggests, when someone sells from one business to another business online, it would be B2B. Typically, transactions involving wholesalers and retailers fall under this type. General Electric (GE) is a popular B2B example. Another excellent example is the auto industry. For those keen on studying B2B examples, it would be great to observe trends and best practices in Salesforce, Hootsuite, LinkedIn, and Skype.
3. C2B: In this model, customers create value (by creating a product or service), and businesses utilize the value. It may sound like an inverted version of the B2C model, but it has its own valuable use cases. For example, a blogger, cartoonist, or photographer could offer stock images or artwork to businesses.
4. C2C: In the C2C type of model, consumers sell to each other. It’s a trend that’s emerging. One can find popular examples such as Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and eBay.
As a small business startup, your business’s future will depend on building an effective eCommerce platform. So, get started. Think of onboarding skilled eCommerce website developers or even consider partnering with an eCommerce website development company, which can help you gain a competitive advantage.
Champion: Startup Business Ideas
Don’t let the pandemic play spoilsport with your business ventures. Here are some great ideas that have been pushed during the COVID-19:
- Online shopping: People need to buy goods from the comfort of their homes. It could be coffee, toilet paper, vegetables, and the list is endless. Here’s the thing—developing an e-commerce website or mobile app can help propel your business.
- Food delivery: With mandatory lockdowns, it may be tiring to dish out food. Let’s get this straight—it’s great to get some takeaways. Needless to say, food delivery services have seen a spike, with a preference for contactless food items.
- Fitness and Wellness: Another exciting opportunity is embedded in the wellness industry. With gym chains shutting down, digital training services are growing by leaps and bounds. So, online tutors, dieticians, yoga teachers, and gym instructors will find digital channels productive to connect to their customers.
- Game makers and sellers: Gaming is yet another industry that is helping keep people entertained and engaged. Highly interactive games, digital board games, and puzzle makers have immense potential.
- Bottom line: At the end of the day, a great idea needs a great platform. For example, Shopify has an exciting suite of tools that can help you manage a wonderful range of your business. It is also exciting to look at an open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress (WooCommerce) for a powerful application.
Develop Unique Business Model with Shopify
Let’s learn more about Shopify. It’s a web application that allows you to create your own online store.
Are you wondering how it works? Simply put, it is a hosted solution. What does this mean? It means that it runs on its own servers and one does not need to buy web hosting or install the software.
With Shopify, it is easy to build an online store and also market it. The good part—you can choose to customize your store and meet your business-specific needs. If you don’t know where to begin, always reach out to a proficient solution provider, such as Cosmic Technologies, who can walk you through the entire eCommerce customization and development process.
Here are some facets that you may wish to know about the platform:
Feature | Value |
Price (Basic) | $29/month |
Price (Advanced) | $299/month (with various paln) |
Free trial period | 14 days |
POS | Yes |
Mobile app features | Suit of mobile tools |
Customer Support | Callback, email, Community Forum |
Ultimately, Shopify is one of the best platforms for eCommerce. It has powerful features that can help set up your business without hassles and little technical know-how. With a reasonable budget, you can propel your business and boost ROI.
It’s time to create winning eCommerce solutions. We have helped many businesses with incredible digital solutions, talk to us.