The Growth Of eCommerce – In Relevance & Revenue
Some business models were once looked at as advanced demonstrations of technology but today, they have been taken for granted. E-commerce perfectly fits this category. There was a time when there were only a handful of e-commerce websites, but today, every other business has an e-commerce presence. The introduction of smartphones, the Internet penetration, and the growing familiarity with digital payment instruments has been a major catalyst for the proliferation and growth of e-commerce all over the world. The fact that the founder of Amazon has been the richest person in this world for a considerable stretch of the recent past is a resounding testimony to the profitability and relevance of e-commerce.
The e-commerce market revenue is expected to bridge the $2 trillion mark in 2021. It is expected to grow at a modest CAGR of 6.29% over the next four years, making the projected market value at about $3.5 trillion by 2025. Fashion contributed to about a third of the market in 2021, and it is expected to continue leading the contribution. E-commerce had a user penetration of about 50.8% in 2021, and it is expected to step up by about 12%, making it hit 63.1% by 2025.
The average revenue per user for e-commerce is expected to be around $714 per user.
This gives a lucrative opportunity not just for the United States but for the entire world to step into this arena and an even better opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to step into this space and reap their revenues.
How To Get Into This Lucrative Space?
Now that the profitability and the opportunity have been established, the million-dollar or maybe even the trillion-dollar question is how to get into this amazing and lucrative space. There are a few simple steps that you need to follow to capitalize on this e-commerce wave that has been amplified because of the COVID-19 crisis worldwide.
- Understand Your Market & Competition
E-commerce is wide and open, and it might not be easily possible to dethrone giants like Amazon from their seat of supremacy. However, there are a few niches, either by segment or by geography that can easily be capitalized on.
To find out which particular niche you will need to target, you will need to understand the market needs and your competition. Understanding your competition, their weaknesses, and the pain points of your prospects will ensure that you can strike at the right areas and find business success. It would not be an exaggeration to say that striking deep and striking wide have the same volume of revenue displacement!
- Work On The Features
E-commerce would have various dimensions if you were to look at the business. On one side, there are intense operations that not only need to cover customer support and office work but also logistics and warehousing. You also need to have the marketing muscle in place so you gain better traction even before you enter the market.
You also need to have the technical infrastructure in place, so you can mark your e-commerce presence in the most robust way possible. When you have chosen your niche of operation, you will also need to work on the features like if you will have a return policy and the commitment that you are willing to give your customers. It is to be remembered that once committed; it has to be honored!
- Choose The Platforms… Meticulously!
Today, e-commerce is platform agnostic! It is not surprising to see a simple app is made available on Android, iOS, and on the web. Some brands have even gone ahead and established their presence on smart variables, and some of them even have voice-activated ordering methods.
With so much diversity, it is crucial that you take into consideration the platforms that you will need to be present in. There might be instances where you might not want to be present on certain platforms because of business reasons. Whatever be your decision, it needs to be ensured that it is backed by data and is not a result of shortsightedness.
- Work On Tech… For The Future
Technology is constantly evolving… And it is both good news and bad news for businesses. Some businesses keep up with the latest technology in terms of accessibility, security, and even surface elements like attractiveness to stay relevant. It is to be remembered that the need for purchasing things online will never attenuate for a continuous stretch into the future, but the way in which we access e-commerce could change.
It is important for your e-commerce business to stay up-to-date with technology and not only be prepared for the present but also for the near future!
- Make Onboarding Simple
It is a difficult task to get people to know your brand and even more so to make them download your app or access your website. It is strongly advised not to make them any more difficult by complicating the onboarding process. A complicated and cumbersome, and boring process might repel customers from using your e-commerce platform.
Your e-commerce platform should facilitate logging in using their email address or phone number or legacy credentials like Google and Facebook. If possible, your e-commerce platform should also have a guest mode enabled, so one-off customers can purchase from your platform without being obligated to sign up.
- Make Payments Versatile
It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is digital payments that have been the rocket boosters for e-commerce. With digital payments in place, the customer does not have to worry about paying in cash, and the company gets their payment even before they dispatch the product.
To ensure that your customers stick to your e-commerce platform, you should integrate your app with a versatile payment gateway. The payment system should be able to accept payments from multiple payment methods like credit cards, debit cards, Internet banking, and wallets. It would also be a good idea to have your own native wallet, which makes it easy to make swift payments and to process refunds.
- Capitalize On Push Notifications
Push notifications have come in as bliss to communicate with customers and talk to Kamal through a device that they almost always hold in their hands: their smartphone. The push notifications can’t be used to the advantage of the customer and the business. You can push promotions and discounts using these notifications. They can also be used to keep the customer notified of the progress in their order, like acceptance, dispatch, and arrival.
- Add a Wish-List Feature
There is a little bit of “if only!“ And “I wish!“ In their lives. In the context of e-commerce, both of these product attributes make it to the wish list. The wish list not only helps the customer in keeping a tab of the products that they want to buy but also helps the e-commerce platforms in understanding the products that a customer wants with the greatest intent of purchase. They can use this data to customize promotions for that particular customer.
- Make Searching A Breeze
More often than not, e-commerce platforms have a wide variety of products that they sell. A direct consequence of this vastness and increase in numbers is the difficulty in pinpointing the correct product. To address this challenge, your e-commerce platform should be equipped with a proper search mechanism that can search by keywords and filter by attributes like price limits, brands, availability, shipping time, and reviews.
The Merchant/Seller Features
In most cases, apps like Amazon are e-commerce marketplaces. This means that Amazon does not have products of its own but acts as a mediator between independent buyers and independent sellers by creating a platform for people to buy and sell. So far, we’ve been looking at the buying side of Amazon. The features listed above should also be made available for the seller.
They should also be able to easily sign up for selling with your e-commerce platform, but they should also have certain additional formalities like providing their business identity number, the taxation identity number, their address of registration, and the banking details. As much as it should be easy for users to make a payment, the merchants/sellers should also get their earnings credited to their bank accounts as early as possible.
They should also be provided with push notifications to let them know that a product is going out of stock in the warehouse. If a particular type of product has started seeing a spike in the number of searches and sales, they can be prepared for any spike in the order that they receive.
The Costs Involved
Setting up an e-commerce business is not only cumbersome but also expensive. It involves fighting with big guns and taking directly on some already well-established names. However, it is not entirely impossible to succeed. If you can perfectly find your niche and slowly work on your operations and marketing expansion, the possibility of success is almost 100%.
What makes the entire e-commerce game easier is the availability of Amazon Clone scripts. With the best Amazon Clone script, it becomes easy to handle the technology that goes behind building an e-commerce ecosystem.
Conclusion
Once you have made all the business decisions, all that is left for you to do is to get in touch with the company that specializes in Amazon clone app development. They will take care to understand the requirement and present you with a perfect white label ecommerce script garnished with elements of essential customization in line with your business needs.