eCommerce
An online business every merchant must start in 2024
In this article you will learn what an e-commerce business is? You will learn some basics about e-commerce so that you can also start your online e-shop in 2024 itself. You will also learn how WebAppsLive helps merchants in starting a new e-commerce website and how WebAppsLive helps merchants in managing their already existing e-commerce websites.
So what is an e-commerce business meaning in-general for common merchants?
This article is to make the concept simple and easy for the common shopkeepers. I am not going to use very technical words here in this article and not going to write bookish statements about e-commerce business. If you are a student and wants to learn concepts and want to read in depth the technical definitions of the term e-commerce then you can buy a book from the market as per your syllabus or you can also read technical articles by searching it from Google or from Wikipedia also
Now if you are a shopkeeper and are selling products from a physical shop then I will advise you to enter into the online e-commerce business world also to increase your sales. Now if you say to me "Yes I want to increase the sales but I don't know what an ecommerce business is." Then in simple words I will say that an e-commerce business is the way to sell your products online through a website. In your physical shop which you have in your market, customers physically visit your shop and you and your staff members are physically showing products and explaining good features of products to the customers to sell the products to customers. But the same thing you can do through a website also. If you will have an e-commerce online shop then a customer can check the list of your shop products from his/her home itself by opening your e-commerce shop website on a computer device or on mobile or tablet also. He/she can order the product online from your website and can pay you for the product online. On your website they will submit their billing and delivery addresses and after they place an order and after you receive payment from them online then your job is to send that ordered product through a courier company at their delivery address. This type of online business is called one of the type of e-commerce business.
What is required to start an online e-commerce business website?
To start an online e-commerce business through a website, first you will need a domain name. Then you need a server space. You will need a ssl certificate also for your website. After this then you have to choose a nice suitable platform for your online shop. Below I have explained all these required features one by one.
What is domain address?
In a simple way if I will explain to you about what a domain is? Then let us understand it through a physical example. Let us say a customer got a phone number of your physical shop and he or she called you and asked about availability of a product. And you told him/her that yes the product is available in your shop and he/she can come and purchase it. Now obviously your customer will ask you for an address of the shop. Now you will tell him/her about the physical address of your shop in detail so that he/she can reach your shop without any issue. Now let us say if you will tell him/her to reach only to the market where your physical shop is, then it may happen that after reaching to that market the customer may found another shop with same products as like yours and it may happen that instead of reaching your shop, the customer may purchase the same product from another shop. But if you will tell him/her exact shop number also then the chances that your customer will reach your shop increases. On the internet also the same kind of address is required for your online shop. When someone searches a product online then in search result there can be lots of online shops domain addresses, so a customer can go to any address, but if you want your customer to purchase your products online then you need to have an address on internet so that your customer can type that domain address in browser and then on hitting enter button from keyboard, he/she can open only your website to see the list of only your products catalog on webpage. That online url address which a customer types on the browser address bar to open only your website is called a domain address. So to start an online ecommerce business you must have a domain address. Now there are some hosting companies which can provide you free domain addresses also, but I will always advise you to register a domain address on your own name or on your business name. I will also list some professional hosting company addresses here from where you can easily register your domain at a very affordable price.
What is server space?
To understand "What a server space means", I will again explain it to you by taking an example of a physical shop. Let us say you decided to start selling some products physically from a physical shop. Now first thing you will decide the name of your business, after that obviously you will start searching for a physical shop in a market so that you can store your all physical products to sell them. Your customers will come to that shop to purchase products from you and you will do the stock management from that physical shop. So to place your products and to attend to your customers you need a physical space for your physical shop. Similarly for an online shop also you will need a space on a server. There are many good hosting companies who can give you shared based or dedicated server space. On that server space you will have to place your website code files, database tables, and your product images. To understand it in a better way I have given the example of a physical shop above. If you are a shopkeeper then by relating it to your physical shop you can understand the concept of server space in a better way. So as you need a physical space somewhere in the real physical market in the form of a physical shop so that you can store your physical products and can manage the inventory of products, in the same way you need a server space on internet so that you can upload your website files, details of products and images of products on your server space on internet. To learn more about it check it on Google by clicking this link. What is Server space
What is SSL certificate?
If you open a website then in the address bar of your browser you will see either http:// or https:// before the domain name of the website. if you see http:// then that means that website doesn't have an ssl certificate and it is not trustworthy for a user to open it on browser. On the other hand if you see https:// then that means the website has a ssl certificate and it is more trustworthy for you to open it on your laptop or other devices. if a website has a SSL certificate then only it can be opened by adding https:// before the domain. For example if you will check the url of this page then you will notice it has address like: https://www.webappslive.com/ecommerce, notice https:// added before www.webappslive.com this means this domain has a ssl certificate and it is secure webpage and a user can open this website without any security risk. A website needs an SSL certificate in order to keep user data secure. By using a ssl certificate on a website, the owner verifies ownership of the website. It also prevents attackers from creating a fake version of the site. If your website has a ssl certificate then your website will gain more user trust. Also it increases the visibility ranking on search engines. In short I will say if your website will have an ssl certificate then internet users will trust your online e-commerce website more.
Choose a nice suitable e-commerce platform for your online shop.
After registering a domain name and purchasing a hosting plan, now your developer has to create an ecommerce website for you through his/her coding skills. But instead of creating all basic core code files he/she can install an ecommerce platform on your server. There are many good ecommerce platforms in the market. Some are free to install and some will charge you on a monthly or yearly basis. Benefit of installing a platform is that your developer will not need to code everything from scratch. If your developer will use a good e-commerce platform then he/she will have to only do basic setups on that platform. A good e-commerce platform already contains all the necessary core code files and basic database tables structures.
Click here to check a list of some good ecommerce platforms.