Dear reader,
No one could have predicted the events of 2020. It took everybody unaware, even the people we look up to as the world power never saw it coming!
nobody ever knew that the major spheres of life will be locked down for months.
But through it all, the Internet has been the one constant in many people’s lives. It has been our unwavering connection to the world around us.
The only hope that the world had as at 2020 during the pandemic was The INTERNET.
Television stations relied majorly on the internet to broadcast news, doctors could do researches with the help of the internet, many businesses were able to strive with the power of internet, Coporate organizations and individual successfully organized virtual meetings because of the INTERNET .
Because of its underpinnings, the Internet has remained reliable, and resilient – a lifeline for so many people throughout the globe.
More than any other year, 2020 has reminded us of the importance of the internet - Connecting the world and making the world a global village.
The internet has made it so simple that businesses and transactions can be done remotely without an in-person visit.
Individuals across the world were scratching their heads wondering how Jeff Bezos (AMAZON) may potentially become a trillionaire even during the world wide lock-down. However, the answer is simple. He was able to create a highly efficient method of fulfillment that has revolutionized the way people shop.
A major component of his success is his utilization of electronic commerce, otherwise known as Ecommerce
Every business should have a space on the Internet. It is a life-changing resource, and as long as it remains necessary, you should not limit your business to just your local customers. Ecommerce website is platform committed to closing the digital divide by bringing together the people ( the business owners, businesses and the potential customers) with the latest technology that is needed to give everyone the access they want.
Ecommerce has provided an opportunity for the creation of new businesses that would not have been able to develop in a brick and mortar setting, and as well as propelled growth in existing businesses through expansion into new channels of distribution.
Lets go through the topics below to gain a better understanding of how e-commerce is revolutionizing the retailing world.
1. 24/7 ONLINE VISIBILITY:
Visibility online is the overall presence of a brand or its products in the general consumer environment. A business can have a great physical shop or a store, but how are online users expected to find it if it's not visible online?
Having an an Ecommerce website (online store) for your business will enable Search traffic via google, yahoo, aol, bing and direct so many unique visitors to your website because they could find your business listed amond the business in their area online.
Currently, a lot of businesses are feeling the heat, because of lesser demand for their products.
Physical retail outlets are facing a crisis with lesser number of visitors daily because the sign posts, billboards, handbills and flyers can only direct local customers within your local shop to your store or address.
Success in business is not to wait for customers to come to your local shop but to find a way to reach them at the comfort of their home.
The best way to re-establish your business and project your business to online potential customers is to be the one who makes the journey to the users’ homes.
Contrary to having a physical shop, store or home address, e-commerce website does not have a closing hour. An eCommerce website, or a mobile app helps you to be accessible 24/7 to the users.
2. ONLINE STORE
Just like a physical building store like; FASHION SHOP, ELECTRONIC STORE, SHOPRITE and their likes, E-commerce website gives room to showcase your product range online.
It houses your products in categories and allow your customers to select your products into their online shopping, complete their shopping and finally checkout.
This feature of an eCommerce website saves your customers from having to take the risks of going out of their homes. They shop for all what they want, place orders and then expect your service or product delivery or they come for pickup (depending on the terms and condition).
3. PAYMENT and PAYMENT GATEWAYS
eCommerce website is so automated in a way that the business owner does not need to worry about customers' miss-calculation, as the ecommerce platform already has an inbuilt calculator to sum up all the items in the cart and present the accurate amount in the checkout page.
This feature also calculates both the tax of the receiving country and the delivery/shipment cost if you so choose to set the payment. It also includes in its calculation the products prices and their discounts in the checkout calculations.
There are some more features which includes international currency conversion services. This can be used when you are selling products or offering to foreign countries.
The payment gateway in an eCommerce website is to enable your online buyers to make payment directly to your company account or to an individual accounts.
This is where customers and business owners like you get scared. The question of how will they get their money safely into their bank accounts and fraudstaers will not hack their accounts or manipulate their payment runs through their minds...
Now here is it, there are several payment gateways in nigeria that are licensed from the CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA such as PAYSTACK AND FLUTTERWAVE (For Nigeria and Africa) to help merchants like you to collect payments from online customer. So many security works have been put in place to handle such payment collections online without you having to worry about your funds and products.
Moreso, in a situation where you sell to international customers, there are payment gateways like STRIPES AND PAYPAL that have been trusted over the years to help merchants and vendors to collect payment from their customers.
Your eCommerce will then be integrated with the payment gateways through their API and your customers can pay for their your products or services with their debit cards ( master, visa or verve) which will be cleared and settled with these payment agents. Your account will be creditted afer these processes. Mind you, these processes will take place within few seconds or minutes without any stress on your side.
The image below really explains how it works.
This is another option for merchants who will also want their customers to pay directly to their company / Individual bank accounts via the Account numbers. This option is very good if you dont want any payment gateways to help you in the payment collection.
PAYMENT ON DELIVERY:
This option is for merchants and customers who will want to create a level of trust for each other by paying for their orders only when the orders have been delivered to them. This is also a good one. Online business has suffered immensly from trust issues, so in order to meet at a point, the merchant or vendor will be so wise to make this option available for their customers to shop on their eCommerce website and pay on delivery.
One other important thing to note about shopping and payment is the fact that the customers can print a receipt for payment or invoice for orders before payment. All of these can be generated online on the eCommerce website automatically without a single stress from you.
In the receipt or invoice, there will be provision of the calculated amount of the orders, the shipment cost, the tax ( optional) and discount (optional)
7. ONLINE CUSTOMER CARE:
This is another feature that can be embedded on the eCommerce website for easy customer satisfaction. This is widget for live chat where one or two customer representatives will be assigned to attend to customer needs in Real-Time on the website. The Live chat widget is always there on the website where customers can start a chat with the company representative directly from the website without him leaving the website. This is good because it allows the customer to make more inquiries and get feedback immediately, this also keeps the customers on the website without having to leave for phone calls and thereby get distracted .
To make it more interesting, it can be linked to whatsapp numbers of either the company or the representatives for easy communication.
With this, your customers or client can get feedback from the company for 24hours a day without having to wait for days for replies via emails or having to call the companies phone numbers that might likely be unreachable at each trials.
8. GOOGLE MAP:
This is a great feature that will be integrated in your eCommerce website to enable easy access for your new or returning customers to your business address. This is also a good quality of a good marketing strategies, It is used to make google find the business address.
The above listed features are not the only feature of an E-Commerce website but these are few salient features that you need to know about an eCommerce website so as to know how important it is to get your own e-commerce website for your business.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
The steps to get started with eCommerce website is:
1. Have a business or a business idea
2. Look for a domain name ( e.g www.yourbusinessname.com)
3. Look for a professional hand to handle it for you.
As your physical shop, store or business has a name so is also required to get a name for your ecommerce website. This is called a domain name.
This domain name is used as an address by the online users to navigate to your website.
Getting a domain name is to only make up your mind on a suggested name for your business online, which is your eCommerce website. After getting this, you look for a hosting company ( I recommend namecheap or bluehost) to purchase it. You can do this by yourself or trust it into a professional website designer to get it for you since he is also going to be the one the design the website and the domain name is where he will use as an address to the website files - eCommerce WEBSITE.
Getting a professional website developer is very expensive, and you also just have to be sure he can integrate all the good features of an eCommerce website listed above.
I can not say precisely how much any other website company charges for a professional website because every company charges differently according to their companies price lists.
We at Tech Hub Consults, We pride ourselves as Nigeria Premier ICT COMPANY /Digital Marketing Consulting Firm – with a complete practical working knowledge of the digital marketing sphere.
We are best professionals for your websites, mobile app, web app, content, digital and video marketing.
In our Next posts we will be talking about the following features of eCommerce website.
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