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eCommerce and eShops
We often hear about eCommerce and eShops but what are they really?
What do they do to a website?
Do i really need them for my business?
If you are interested in learning all about eCommerce and eShops or having an eShop of your own, Keep reading this article!
Definition and Meaning
eShop
What is an e-Shop?
An eShop or electronic store is “the place” where a company can sell their products or services using digital networks. It’s an online store where customers can “visit” from anywhere at anytime using a Web browser on a mobile phone or a laptop.
eCommerce
What is e-Commerce?
eCommerce, also referred to as electronic commerce or internet commerce, is about the transfer of money and data to execute transactions for an e-shop. Is the combined innovative information and communication technologies, E-Shops use to support and conclude operative and strategic tasks for their sales, without using any paper documents. eCommerce is widely considered the sale of physical and virtual products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction through electronic measures.
The Terms Eshop and Ecommerce can also be written e-shop and e-commerce respectively. Both terms are used interchangeably throughout the article to prove the above statement.
The Difference of eCommerce and eShops.
In conclusion the difference is that e-Shops are online stores and e-Commerce is any kind of commercial transaction through the internet.
Types of eCommerce Models
These are the main ecommerce models that can describe almost every transaction that takes place between businesses or organizations and individual consumers.
Business to Consumer (B2C):
Is the most common type of eCommerce, it’s when a company or organization owns the eShop and sells goods or services to an individual customer. (e.g. You buy clothes from the online store of H&M.)
Business to Business (B2B):
When a company or organization owns an eShop, selling goods or services to other businesses. (e.g. Metro-CC or Makro is an international wholesale chain for businesses and professionals).
Consumer to Consumer (C2C):
It’s when an eshop is set up by a company or organization, for individual consumers, to sell their goods to other consumers (e.g. When someone sells their guitar on eBay to another person).
Consumer to Business (C2B):
When an eShop is set by a company or organization to buy services or products from consumers (e.g. An influencer offers exposure to their online audience in exchange for a fee, or a Musician licenses their songs for a business to use.)
Dropshipping:
When a business is selling products which are manufactured and shipped to the consumer by a third party. (e.g. A company in Denmark is selling Clothes which are both manufactured and shipped by a company in china directly to customers.)
Crowdfunding:
When a business must raise a startup capital for a cause, and in order to do so it collects money from consumers. (e.g. Cloud imperium games is collecting money from gamers for Star citizen. Which is the biggest crowdfunding campaign so far in history)
A company can also have an eshop set for users to crowd-fund through it for their own causes. (e.g. Kickstarter allows users to start a funding campaign for their causes through its platform.)
Subscription:
The automatic re-purchase of a service or a product, on a schedule until the subscriber chooses to cancel. (e.g. Spotify is charging monthly for ad free, high quality music. Netflix is also charging monthly for a variety of TV shows, movies and documentaries.)
Eshop Advantages
E-commerce in general and eShops in particular hide a dynamic that many companies still ignore and mistakenly do not exploit and apply in their practices.
As we have thoroughly analyzed in another article, the advantages of an eShop are crucial and very effective for a company that follows the right methods and practices and abides by the new conditions of the modern era of commerce.
Let’s take a brief look at the Eshop Advantages!
Unlimited clientele
Unlike a physical store whose customer base is limited by the geographical radius to which it belongs, an eShop can aim to significantly grow and expand its customer base, even globally.
24/7 service and availability
With an eShop you can offer your products and services to your customers at any time of the day they choose. 365 days a year, each and every moment there is the possibility for your online store to be on standby and to serve each of your customers even during the hours when a physical store remains closed!
Low cost
Building an online store is undoubtedly a more affordable and economical option than setting up a whole physical store. By no means do we degrade the needed cost and work for an eshop to be set up and run efficiently. However, it is not hard to realise that an e-shop requires significantly reduced costs while you can use the rest of your capital on promotional campaigns and smart customer engagement practices.
Easy and comfortable transactions
The number 1 advantage offered by the construction of an online store (eShop), is the fact that it creates the conditions for a comfortable, fast and easy shopping process. Customers can browse your store as long as they want, without pressure and stress from any crowd. From any space and device they want, they can take advantage of the incredibly convenient conditions offered by an e-shop. However, all these parameters apply only to a well-designed and fully functional eShop, based on efficient and user-friendly methods, which we will analyze below.
Advertising
A company’s online presence, in 2021, is the most important principle for a successful advertising campaign to promote the brand, the products and/or services,a dn raise awareness. Building an eshop is the step that every business needs to surpass its competitors and consolidate its position in modern eCommerce. The vast majority of today’s consumers use the internet on a daily basis for each of their activities. Given that, imagine how much power an online platform gives a business through which it can promote its products to a very large audience through the Internet.
How to run an eShop: Good practices
Building an eShop is not enough to give the dynamic you want for your business and services. You need systematic study, methodical preparation and specific practices to provide your customers with an excellent online shopping experience but also to launch the success of your company through eCommerce.
Given that, let’s analyze the practices that have to be applied in every eShop to enhance its success and increase sales
Purchase and payment process optimization
An important and very crucial element for an eShop, as it is logical, is the process of purchasing a product from consumers, utilizing the services of eCommerce. In these circumstances, it is necessary to create and apply data and methods that best serve each customer who is interested in making a purchase.
It is not uncommon to visit an eShop and encounter a variety of problems at the stage of completing a purchase. Whether the page is slow, or there are many stages of buying, or there are many pop- up ads, or payment methods seem unreliable, the customer gets the experience of an unpleasing online purchase and they are more likely to leave the eShop before completing their purchase and visit another e-shop with user-friendly conditions and data. You should keep in mind the great importance of a comfortable and fast shopping through your eShop, without obstacles that bother the customer and divert them from your content.
At the same time, it is important to be informed and take care of the possible payment methods during the purchase process, making your eShop suitable for each buyer to pay for the product of their choice in any way they wish and prefer. Many surveys have shown that consumers who shop online are particularly happy with eShops that include, at the stage of completing a purchase, different payment methods (cash on delivery, accepted credit cards of different banks, bank deposit, etc.) making it easier for them, in each individual case.
Promote your eShop
Comparing a physical store and an online one, what many entrepreneurs have not yet fully understood is that the online store does not have a showcase through which to present its products to the general public on a daily basis. Thus, it is necessary to implement a method by which it is possible to promote the content of an eShop to targeted customers.
Advertising
The most effective and therefore widespread method, is of course advertisement. Through a strategically successful advertising campaign, you can easily promote your eShop to the buying public that is directly interested in your products and services, standing out among other online stores that are struggling to emerge in the internet and eCommerce world. The SEO of the whole eShop plays an important element in the advertising process.
SEO
No matter how many times we mention SEO and its importance, it will never be enough since it is the number one tool that every eShop needs from the very first moment of its creation. Even in 2021, there are eShops and websites that ignore the power of SEO and thus automatically degrade their value, not taking advantage of the benefits it can gradually offer.
Concerning the advantages that enhanced SEO may provide to an eShop, these are associated with the ranking of a website in the first search engines results, as well as with a site’s better internal operation and consequently with the visitors’ better browsing experience.
One of the main problems that internet users face with eShops is that they often browse incomplete, slow, user unfriendly sites, with many annoying pop-up ad windows and obstacles in the process of completing a purchase. As we have said before.
By applying all the methods required to enhance an eShop’s SEO, at the same time you are given the opportunity to optimize every aspect and service of your site reaching the highest possible quality level.
You can visit our web page with our detailed article on SEO and any relevant information that you are probably interested in:
Content Optimization
In addition to the general quality that an eShop should possess in order to function properly and bring the desired results to the company it represents online, it needs reliable and useful content.
Quality content is what will add value to your eShop and this way you will be able to gain the interest of visitors, who will stay longer at your page increasing each customer’s average session duration.
Many people think that in the context of eCommerce, in an eShop the absence of the seller is very noticeable and its visitors find it difficult to look out for the products they want. With optimized and detailed content, this statement is completely wrong and the success of hundreds of quality eShops worldwide negates it.
The ways in which you can develop the content of your eShop in order to be interesting, meaningful and detailed are relatively simple and you can easily use them enhancing the success of your entire website.
Images / Visual content
The first step in the whole process is to enrich the pages of your eShop with high quality images and videos with details for each product or service you offer to consumers and your audience. In this way you will help the interested buyers to acquire visual contact with the product, emphasizing their confidence that they are going to buy something reliable and relevant to their wishes.
Descriptions
Along with the visual content that is needed to include in your eShop, what is just as important are the detailed and targeted descriptions for each product you promote and sell through your digital platform. So once again, you enhance the positive belief and impression of your customers about the suitability and quality of your products.
Social Media
In 2021, in the age of social media, an essential tool for every business is its online presence in the field of social networks. Through social media, you are able to reach an audience and customers who are directly interested in the product you offer in the market as they are quality visitors for your page. At the same time, from the moment you gain their interest through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. they feel more familiar and comfortable with you and your company, creating the conditions for more direct and easier communication , increasing the chances for making purchases through your eShop.
In addition, your followers and the satisfied social media audience can successfully share the page or account you have created on each platform and thus help you attract other potential visitors, interested in your services.
The History of eCommerce and eShops
The first ever Ecommerce transaction took place on the August 11, 1994 when a man sold a CD by the band Sting to one of his friends through his website NetMarket. This is the first example of a consumer purchasing a product from a business through the internet.
Since then, ecommerce has since evolved to facilitate the discovery and purchase of products through online retailers and marketplaces. Independent freelancers, small businesses, and large corporations have all benefited from ecommerce, which enables them execute transactions at a scale that was not possible in the off-line world.
eCommerce and eShops by DevSeg
The first e-Shop developed by DevSeg is Steamtuners. Back in 2016 our Co-Founder Stylianos Vasilakakis met with Steamtuners and agreed to develop their eCommerce and Marketing strategy.
The eShop met the needs of their customers and was able to withstand the estimated traffic due to their extreme publicity in their field.
This was the first step towards a successful path of designing and developing e-shops.
Are you interested in reaching your website’s full potential with DevSeg?
We pride ourselves in the work we’ve done, and our innovative point of view is what sets us apart.
We are looking forward to helping more people achieve their business goals.
We’ve made it our mission, to make our customer’s wants and dreams a reality.
The passion and skill that we put into it helps us achieve it and makes our work special.
If you are interested in an e-Shop of your own, contact us and we’ll make it happen for you.
Don’t be a stranger.
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