What is eCommerce and How Does it Work?

Over the past few decades, the Internet has become an indispensable part of the life of almost every person on earth. Trade is one of the most progressive and adaptive areas of our lives, and has begun to actively conquer the Internet. And although everything seems simple – buy, upload to the site, resell – e-commerce is much more complex. In this article, we will analyze what it is, give examples of what it includes, and why, despite all the difficulties, the game is worth the candle.

More about e-commerce

So what is it? In addition to the fact that how to build phone number list e-commerce (“commerce”) involves sales and purchases on the Internet, it is also a whole set of software solutions, services and platforms aimed at convenient sales — from a website to a logistics or accounting system. Imagine a huge virtual shopping center that never closes and where you can get to at any time of the day or night. This is an online store, the “face” of e-commerce. And everything that remains behind the scenes — from logistics to design — is e-commerce itself.

Types of e-commerce with examples

In addition to the fact that e-commerce is a whole ecosystem with many directions and models, just like regular trade, it is divided into types or kinds – it all depends on who buys and who sells. Let’s look at a few examples:

Type 1. B2C e-commerce (business sells to the end customer)

B2C (Business-to-Consumer) is the most famous and widespread type of e-commerce. This includes all online stores of clothing, electronics, food products, examples of marketplaces known to us – Ozon and Wildberries, any store where you can buy goods as an individual, and then pick it up yourself or order delivery.

The example of marketplaces immediately shows that this e-commerce business is aimed at the end user, there must be a wide range of products, convenient payment and delivery methods, and also interactivity. Here the average bill is small, but the flow of sales is massive.

From a marketing perspective, it is important to correctly design pages, create convenience, target a wide audience, and preferably create a wow effect. Users buy spontaneously, it is difficult to predict them, and constant monitoring of the latest market trends helps in building an e-commerce strategy.

Type 2. B2B (business sells to business)

B2B (Business-to-Business) is a more complex e-commerce model, where companies sell goods and services to other companies. Often these are raw material suppliers, equipment manufacturers, IT companies, and so on. An excellent example of such an online store is Gazpromneft – Lubricants. The company built a portal for selling its own products to other companies.

For B2B in e-commerce, there are also marketplaces for different tasks, for example, ThomasNet, the largest Western supplier of anything to companies. Large B2C marketplaces often also offer B2B services and goods. For example, Alibaba and Ozon both work well with legal entities.

In the B2B segment, the main feature amun gidan yanar gizon yana is that transactions often include large volumes and long-term contracts, and customers take a long time to make a decision. It is important to create reliable, strong relationships here , and the marketing strategy works not for speed, but for convenience and benefit. That is why many modern companies are trying to build their B2B stores similar to B2C, but with all the necessary capabilities for companies, from logistics to convenient documentation.

Type 3. B2G (companies sell to the state

B2G (Business-to-Government) is the very same e-commerce model in which companies participate in tenders, enter into contracts for construction, supply of equipment or software for administrative and government agencies.

Here are particularly strict requirements and standards, including long-term contracts and various competitions. From a marketing perspective, it would be a great idea to fine-tune e-commerce — user convenience, the ability to pre-select th phone numbers conditions and requirements, and accuracy in documentation. Marketers in this area are more likely to work on stability and attracting the attention of large state-owned enterprises.

Of course, there are many other types of e-commerce, where companies sell to both companies and customers, users sell to users (take Avito as an example), and so on. What unites all these types of e-commerce is that they all need marketing, the competition between marketplaces and online stores is constantly growing. The owners of such portals need a reliable marketing strategy and a willingness to constantly change and adapt.

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How it all works

Let’s dive deeper and find out where and to what extent marketing benefits e-commerce.

The online store window is the first thing a customer sees. Here, it is important for the store owner to correctly display the goods, create attractive descriptions, select or create photos and videos, and it is also important to control reviews. A high-quality software platform is also extremely important. It allows you to connect ERP and CRM systems to the site, as well as many other resources for monitoring sales.

Internal e-commerce systems are the same e-commerce backend that we started to describe earlier. The website is the main thing that is important to the client, but the seller will not be able to manage everything without a high-quality internal resource – a reliable e-commerce platform and process control systems. This is where most of the work happens and the magic happens. As a rule, the company’s frontend is outsourced to marketers, copywriters, designers or integrated marketing agencies, and the “internals” are managed independently. And this often becomes a mistake.

Firstly

the appropriate tool must be correctly selected in accordance with the needs of the target audience, which is defined and analyzed by marketers. Secondly, the process of distributing goods, monitoring interactions and tracking activity on the site is also important. And here, a special marketing approach is required for the constant development of the company.

The third level is working with suppliers and logistics. And here marketing is also extremely important. Finding the right supplier, concluding cooperation with them is half the battle (the owner himself or outsourced logistics companies do this). Establishing contact with them on promotion or agreeing on rebranding is another matter. And here it is important not to miss the details and reorient e-commerce – often you have to reorient the product to your market – localize, redesign, and so on.

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