Creating e-commerce website

Oliver Kopke

• Publisher: Bibliomundi
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781526036919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Trading
• Index: Business

If you have a business that sells physical goods and that business does not yet have an active internet presence, consider this. In 2008, online retail trade turnover in the US measured somewhere around $230 billion, which represented some 10% of total US retail sales!Even with the recent economic downturn, the percentage of retail trade that is transacted online is set to keep growing throughout the commercialized world as the internet becomes more sophisticated and efficient, while 'high street' businesses are constantly on the lookout to expand their customer base still further.In fact, if you have a real world, 'bricks and mortar' business that is not represented online, there has never been a better time to get your business online. Even if you already have a web site, unless you keep abreast of the latest online business trends and thinking – and you are probably too busy running a business for that – the chances are that your site is not doing what it should do.What if you are thinking about starting a business that supplies physical goods, but you have not yet done so?Once again, there could be no better time to think about doing so (and therefore no better time to be reading this book) because despite the phenomenal growth of online business over the past few years, we are only scratching the e-commerce surface at the moment.There seems little doubt that in the next few years, there is likely to be a global explosion in e-commerce as potential consumers become more accustomed and comfortable transacting business online.There is an awful lot to think about when you are considering taking your business online, an array of questions and alternatives that you need to address before diving in. This is a given, but it is not something that you need be too concerned about, as I am going to analyze and discuss these aspects of e-commerce as we move through this book.Let's start by considering why taking your business online is such a good idea, and why there has never been a better time to do so than now.

Planning and research

Whether you are setting up a small business in the real world or doing so online, it is absolutely essential that you start off with a plan. As the saying has it, ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’, which is definitely a saying that accurately applies to starting your own business.

If you are a starting a business online, you have a significant advantage in that all of the information you could ever need is available on the internet, and most of what you need to know is available at no cost.

As you would expect in the planning stage, you need to look at every aspect of your proposed business with a very critical eye because this is certainly no time for ‘rose tinted spectacles’. However much you might love to set up a business that panders to your passions, there is little point in doing so if that business has a very limited chance of achieving success even before you launch it. While you might have a passion for Mongolian nose flute playing, you are (unfortunately for you) in a very small, select group of people who are interested in the same topic, and it is extremely unlikely that you would be able to build a viable business around such a narrowly defined interest.

These are therefore the questions that you must ask as a way of establishing the initial viability of your idea.

Does this business idea work as an online business?

It is a fact that there are some e-commerce business ideas that are just going to work better than others, and if your idea falls into the category of ‘difficult to do profitably’, you might be better coming up with an alternative idea. If the business is apparently not suited to the internet and e-commerce, then you’re better dropping the idea from the beginning.

Think about any artificial limitations that might be applicable to your business as well. For example, if you are considering launching a business to supply heavy plant and machinery, that business immediately has a very limited geographical appeal because you cannot realistically deliver a crane or a dumper truck to the other side of the world at a reasonable cost. Consequently, by choosing this business model, you have immediately removed some of the major advantages of e-commerce, namely its ability to attract customers nationally or internationally and to do so in an economically attractive way.

There are some businesses like running sports clubs or bowling alleys, amusement parks and the like that are never going to work online.

While you could take bookings and sell sports and bowling equipment and clothing from an e-commerce web site, the basic idea of running something like this does not work online.

Think about your local electricity company. Although they can accept bill payments online, most of them already have perfectly acceptable home delivery systems in place, so there is no scope for expanding their business via the internet at the moment.

You need to adopt a practical approach to your ideas from the beginning. If whatever you want to do is unlikely to be successful, drop it before you waste any more time and effort.

Study the competition…

Most people who are planning to launch an e-commerce based business probably think that they have come up with a completely original idea, but in truth, it is highly likely that other people have got there before them no matter what your idea is.

However, you should not necessarily view competition as a bad thing, because without competition, you would not be able to establish what works and what doesn’t. The problem with being the first into a particular market, a pioneer, is that you are the person who is going to make all mistakes. On the other hand, if there are other people already on the market, they have made the mistakes for you, so you should be grateful for competition.

Competition also indicates that there is money being made in the business in which you are interested, and that is an extremely important consideration. While you do not want millions of competitors, because that might make entry into the market extremely difficult, if there are other people already doing what you plan to do, then you know that you are on the right lines, as there is money being made.

If you were to open a business in your local shopping mall, you would look at other competitors who are operating in the same local market, but if you want to start an online business you have to look at competition on a much wider scale. There are probably people in your business already operating all over the world, and you need to know what advantages and disadvantages each of those businesses has.

Research and analysis of what other people in your business are doing online is absolutely essential. While it might be a time-consuming process, it is necessary and time that is very well spent.

Imagine for example that you are thinking of starting a weight-loss industry business, so you want to research what other companies in the same sector are doing. You type the name of a well-known weight-loss product like ‘hoodia’ into Google to see how many web pages there are that feature this particular word:

There are 14 million web pages that feature ‘hoodia’, and while many of these will not be pages from companies who are supplying hoodia based products, many pages are. These companies represent direct competition in your market, so find those companies whose names come up most regularly, and study their websites.

Look at the product range that a potential customer can access through their site, the kind of prices they are able to offer, what delivery terms are available and whether they are running any specific promotions.

Take the domain name URL of the top rated companies in your market and search to see what other information is available about those companies. This might help you to find out how they operate, who their target audience is, whether people are happy about dealing with them and the like.

Remember that the internet is a largely democratic place where pe...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Why e-commerce works, and why now more than ever…
• What do you need to launch a successful ecommerce site?
• Planning and research
• Conclusion