What is e-commerce?
Electronic commerce (or E commerce) refers to purchases and sales made online for a certain amount of money that is often transferred through digital platforms. The concept of e-commerce is broad and includes all sales of digital and tangible products as well as services, but the term itself is often applied to the sale of tangible products.
The difference between e-commerce and traditional commerce
E-commerce and traditional commerce sell the same products and services, but they differ in the method of payment and delivery.
In e-commerce, the process takes place entirely through digital platforms (from browsing products, choosing the desired product, completing payment, and delivering the product). No human element is dealt with between the seller and the buyer, but rather the entire purchase process is completed online.
As for traditional trade, it is carried out by relying mainly on a face-to-face interview. The buyer himself goes to meet the seller and begins browsing the products and examining them well, then chooses the appropriate product and gives the merchant the price of the product hand in hand. The process is often done through an interview in this way. If the seller cannot meet the buyer to view the product and receive the money, he will not be able to complete the sale.
This may be a difference in theory, but what is the difference in practice?
There are 10 differences between e-commerce and traditional commerce, which I will review for you in this infographic
The importance of e-commerce
In fact, I cannot tell you that the future of business currently is moving towards e-commerce. This saying may have been true 5 or 6 years ago…but now we are in the future and e-commerce has the lion’s share in the buying and selling process 🙂
Let me tell you some statistics that show the importance of e-commerce in the current era, and the need of all commercial activities of all sizes to go to the world of digitization.
Volume of online purchases
Currently, the largest selling stores on the Internet are electronic stores, the most famous of which is the Amazon store, whose sales exceeded 75.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2020, and in 2019 it surpassed Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) to become the richest people in the world. The volume of e-commerce sales around the world has been estimated at $3.53 trillion US dollars, according to Statista .
As for e-commerce in the Arab country, the size of the e-commerce market in the Middle East was estimated at about $48.6 billion in 2022, compared to $26.9 billion in 2018. The volume of e-commerce sales in the UAE alone reached about $16 billion in 2019. .
There is no need for me to mention more statistics to you. Perhaps you will look around you and see the rapid growth of electronic stores in the Gulf (Amazon, Noon, Namshi, Jarir… and others), and see the size of the purchases made by your friends, and you will know the validity of these numbers.
E-commerce in crises
In the recent crisis that passed (the Corona epidemic), it affected many sectors due to the tendency of most people to quarantine at home, and this was a strong reason for millions of users to tend to buy online, as they want to complete the purchase process without leaving the house, and electronic stores helped them in that. Online stores benefited the most from this event.
It is also expected that if any crisis occurs that prevents people from leaving their homes, purchasing from online stores will be the best alternative for them.
Of course, we do not like to rise on the shoulders of crises and ask God for safety for everyone, but this gives you an idea of the importance of e-commerce in that it actually helps people in light of these crises. So imagine if such crises happened and there were no electronic stores for purchase? Users will face extreme difficulty in making purchases.
The bottom line is that e-commerce facilitates people’s daily lives and healthy habits and saves their time, whether in times of crises or otherwise.
The future of e-commerce
When you look at the e-commerce index since its inception in the 1990s, it has risen and increased very quickly year after year, especially because of what I explained to you in facilitating purchases and having many advantages if we compare it to traditional commerce, in addition to the trend of all business sectors towards the world of digitization and artificial intelligence, it is natural This will contribute to a greater boom in e-commerce.
But in order to tell you about the future of e-commerce itself and the expected developments, God willing, let me tell you some expectations mentioned by some experts, and some statistics from the United States:
- The volume of e-commerce is expected to reach $29 billion by 2023, an increase of 4.5%.
- Increase sales quotas for stores that sell products made by a third party (Private label).
- The percentage of mobile purchases reached 53.9% of the total purchases.
- Increasing automation processes (reliance on automated systems) in electronic stores to enable expansion to a larger customer segment.
- Online stores are keen to increase the speed of product delivery and reduce shipping costs.
- Use voice recognition for purchases
Types of e-commerce
As we said, e-commerce in its comprehensive sense includes all buying and selling operations over the Internet, but so that you have a broader perception of the types of e-stores that you can start with,
note: the letter B means the abbreviation Business and the letter C means the abbreviation Customer.
- Merchant selling to individuals (B2C)
It is the most famous type of e-commerce, where the target customer for purchase is ordinary individuals (such as selling food and consumer products to consumers on a regular basis). This includes all products sold in the retail sector whose target customers are ordinary members of society.
- Merchant to merchant (B2B) selling
In this case, the target customer to purchase the product is another company represented by the company’s management. Such as selling accounting software, in this case the accounting or purchasing manager or the company’s CEO are the people targeted to buy the product, not anyone in the community who will buy such products.
- Selling C2C
In this case, the seller is an ordinary member of society (not a merchant or manufacturer) and the buyer is also an ordinary individual, and this includes intermediary platforms in which users exchange the sale of products. (Like selling your old home furniture on Haraj website )
- Selling individuals to merchants (C2B)
In the fourth case, the seller is a private individual and the buyer is a merchant. This includes companies that offer to purchase certain products or services from private individuals. Like a photographer who sells his creative images to companies in exchange for the right to commercial use.
In these four areas, selling can be in different forms, whether selling a tangible product or a digital product directly between the merchant and the buyer, or through a third party or through an intermediary, or selling a digital service or a service on the ground in exchange for an agreed-upon financial sum or in exchange for a subscription. Monthly or pay in advance.
Whatever the method of buying and selling is applicable through e-commerce.
Areas of electronic commerce
If you decide to start selling online, there is no need to rack your brain thinking carefully about choosing the most appropriate field to rely on when entering the field of e-commerce. Any product that a group of consumers needs can be sold online.
I will mention some of these areas to you:
- food products
- Sports supplies
- Car supplies
- Kids Games
- Clothes and shoes
- Watches and jewelry
- Innovative accessories and products
- Personal care supplies
- Household and electrical appliances
- Home Furniture
- desktop gadgets
- Flowers and decorations
- Electronics and televisions
- Computers and accessories
- Smart phones and accessories
- Protection and safety tools: such as surveillance cameras
- Digital or printed books
- Solar energy products
- 3D printing
- Selling fresh meals
- educational courses
- Software services
- Marketing and business management services
- Writing and translation services
- Maintenance and repair services
- Selling and renting real estate
- Hand Made Tools
- Sell photographs
- Building an intermediary platform between the merchant and the buyer
In fact, there are many ideas and markets that you can break into one of them, but what is important is that you choose products that you can deliver to customers with high service and quality. Let us now move on to the correct way to build a successful online store.
You may be interested in: How much does it cost to create an online store, and how do you start with less than $1,000?
How to start e-commerce
The simple equation is: obtaining products + creating an online store + marketing campaigns = a successful online store.
This simple equation includes the basic elements of building an online store, but let me tell you more about these elements:
Market selection
You need to choose your market first: Will you specialize in selling clothes, electronics, or what? Specialized stores have an opportunity to compete with large stores, because specialized stores are more distinguished in what they offer than others, as is the case in the Namshi store .
Read also: How do you choose the market for your online store (Niche)? 7 practical steps
Selection of products
You need to identify the valuable products that users get, whether you are the one who manufactures these products or you import them from abroad. You need to take care of every product in your store and ensure that it is the best product on the market.
This does not mean having amazing features in the product that are unparalleled, but I mean ensuring the quality of the products before offering them to consumers, and that they are truly distinctive products when compared to most competitors.
Storage and shipping
You need to develop an integrated shipping system that starts from the date of importing the products and receiving them in your warehouses, then supplying these products from your warehouses to the customer’s residence as quickly as possible.
Despite the intuitiveness of the process, some friends were facing problems with the time of receiving the products from the supplier and in the product storage system, especially some products that need a special storage system (such as food products), and also with the time of product delivery. The customer gets angry if the product arrives late, especially with the large number of Shipping problems in Arab countries.
Create an online store
There are many methods that you can rely on to build your store, but the best thing I advise you to start with at a low cost and high performance is to rely on WoCommerce through
- Obtaining a domain name: This is the website address that represents your site.
- Obtaining hosting: This is a service that enables you to host your website files and make it visible to users.
- Installing WordPress: It is an open source content management system that you can use to build and customize your website or online store.
- WooCommerce installation: This is the most popular add-on that enables you to add products and customize sales processes in your online store:
- Installing an attractive template: This means the appearance that you will rely on to build your online store from store pages, product pages, etc.
- Making store settings : This includes adding products and customizing technical matters to make your store look interactive and enhance the user experience
I explained these steps in detail in this video, starting from having the idea until fully launching your store, and offering a discount on hosting and domain.
I advise you to watch this video
Create marketing campaigns
If you have carried out all the previous steps professionally, you will still need to create marketing campaigns on various platforms in order to reach these ads to your potential customers and make them purchase from your store.
There are many methods that you can rely on to promote your store, but I will mention some of these methods to you:
- PPC paid advertising
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing
- Video marketing
- Content marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Email marketing
- Making business partnerships
For more about methods for promoting your online store, I advise you to read this article, which fully explains electronic marketing .
These and other methods help you reach potential customers, and your role continues to gain customers’ trust and provide integrated service and a distinguished online purchasing experience so that they return to buy from you again and tell their friends to buy from you.
At the beginning of launching your online store, I will not think that you will achieve all of these factors 100%, and you are expected to experience some failures in some aspects, but if you take these factors into account as much as possible, they will have an impact on the success of your online store on the first day.
Noon store success story
There are many success stories that I could tell you about building online stores, and I will not tell you the story of Amazon’s success and that it started from his home surgeon :), because you might say that these are old success stories and now the market has no opportunities!
Therefore, I want to mention to you a success story that recently appeared in 2017, which is the Noon store , which you may have recently dealt with, purchased from, or even heard about.
The platform was launched to begin its work in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Egypt and includes a wide variety of goods and products in the fields of fashion, electronics, books, home and garden supplies, sports and outings, health and beauty, personal care, toys, children’s and newborn products, and others.
- All products sold on Noon website are 100% original and reliable.
- There are many international brands in various departments at competitive prices, especially in electronics.
- Noon has recently launched several large-scale promotional advertising campaigns.
- Payment can be made through more than one method and is available to most users.
- There are many offers and discounts that Noon offers continuously on its products.
- There is a fast shipping service (shipping the product within 24 hours) and a low shipping cost (12) riyals for the product to arrive the next day.
- Free shipping for orders exceeding 250 Saudi riyals.
- The site continuously releases discount coupons, and offers discount coupons to affiliate marketers as well.
- Providing a professional technical support service and the ability to review products within 15 days.
- Products are protected, packaged and delivered in an elegant manner to ensure a good user experience.
Some of these items were available on Souq.com (before Amazon acquired it), but Noon excelled in providing competitive features and better services in its online store until it found opportunities to compete with the competition.
There are also emerging e-stores in other regions, such as the Chinese JD store (JD.com), whose revenues have surpassed the Alibaba Taobao platform in China.
This is a quick example that shows you that there are still opportunities in the e-commerce market. Even the large stores that have been in the market for more than 10 years have had smaller stores appear and compete with them. There is a famous example in business administration that says: The fast eats the slow, and it is not the big that eats. Little.
The important thing is to think about having new competitive advantages to offer users and countless ideas that will help you build a successful online store, God willing.
Share your e-commerce story with us in the comments 😉
