E-commerce as a Trend
Who doesn’t know about E-commerce? Maybe E-commerce was not that popular in several previous decades, while today, in 2019, most people have contributed in E-commerce activities around the world.
Economic expert expecting people will spend more time online as E-commerce transforms into necessity through time. Economists estimate e-commerce will gain a massive amount of transaction activities with 1.92 billion online consumers will do the transaction through the internet in 2019 and will keep increasing in the upcoming years.
E-commerce Role Model
E-commerce domination can be seen from Amazon’s success which become the role model for most other e-commerce company. As reported by FXSSI, Amazon, which involved in online retail industry, outperforming Microsoft, Google, and Apple as the most valuable company in 2019. The overtaking of Microsoft by Amazon showing us the advancing e-commerce industry has become the conqueror of the world economy.
Following the success of Amazon, There is a giant E-commerce player located far east, named Alibaba. Alibaba operates in China and most of Asian countries, while also become the leading company that control most of e-commerce activities in China market which has a massive population.
Alibaba is expanding to various industries such as cloud computing industry through Alibaba Cloud, which Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba believes, Cloud computing industry will advance to a greater extent, as the massive growth of E-commerce should be balanced with infrastructure and technology to support the industry.
E-commerce Future?
How E-commerce become the leading industry in world’s economy? Will E-commerce stays on top for some more decades or will there be another industry that might replace E-commerce in the future?
Many businesses transform their business from traditional to digital, which includes online marketing, online catalogs, online transaction (e-commerce) and much else. Their goals are to eliminating expenses, such as third party services, physical store, shipping cost, etc.
However, these days E-commerce proceed into the next level, which companies are competing to engage with online consumers. Through E-commerce, consumers are demanding a closer approach like 24/7 customer service via call and online chat.
Companies who can deliver the best service and convenience to consumers will have the upper hand in the industry. Therefore, E-commerce will benefit both company and consumer.
Reasons Why Everything become E-commerce
Let’s take a look of these factors that affect everything turns to E-commerce:
1. Optimizing Operating Cost
E-commerce allows retail a company/merchant to eliminate some costs that are considered in traditional retail. Inventory cost and utilities cost are the main factors that affecting businesses move into e-commerce industry. In e-commerce, a retailer can have one warehouse to store all products sold in their online store, or partnering with other merchant to sell through the retail website and eliminate the need of owning personal inventory.
Moreover, E-commerce infrastructures, such as Website hosting, internet, etc. are much less costly compared to traditional commerce infrastructures, like a physical store, physical catalog, etc.. Website hosting provider will charge the retailer annually to host the website for them. In contrast, physical store has an annual cost with extra charges for utilities and defective equipment .
2. Business Can Track Their Consumers
E-commerce allows business owners to track their consumer behavior through web analytic tools. This feature can be used to classify various consumers in the website to deliver the product and promotion that fit to the consumer. It will help prevent the business to offer deals to the wrong audience. In addition, consumer behavior will enhance the convenience for consumers, as it will save the consumer time for searching the desired products.
3. Consumer Convenience
Nowadays, most people prefer to shop online rather to go to physical store themselves. People will measure the cost of time and energy to visit a physical store for shopping. In addition to this, physical store are not commonly available for 24 hours. For this reason, people now are more enjoying shopping online where they can shop anywhere and anytime they want.
4. Expanding Business
By doing business online, businesses can grow massively through internet as it provides an integrated network around the world. Small business now can reach international market at a pace through the internet.
E-commerce allows businesses to offer their local product to international consumers. It can create a more comfortable environment for consumers to buy the products that not available in their original country. Businesses will enjoy higher revenue with bigger market, however, businesses will face other new competitors in this boundless market.
Top E-commerce companies such as Amazon, and Alibaba are currently operating in more than 200 countries around the world. It makes them become the leading company in their region, with almost 1 billion active buyers combined.
These reasons can show us how powerful E-commerce is, digitize most all business activities and help businesses to earn more profit, while also providing convenience experience for online consumers. E-commerce future is on the right track and allows anyone to sell anything online.
Brilliant Tips for E-commerce Newcomer
These are some brilliant tips to run an e-commerce business:
- Engage with consumers through feedback, customer service, social media, etc.
- Partnering with an e-commerce platform company which has a good reputation and big crowds to reach wider audience.
- Create a good quality content about your product with attracting but not deceptive images or videos, while also descriptive for the
- Run digital marketing campaigns through social media, own website, or even Google ads to generate more leads.
It is hard to say how long E-commerce will stay as the biggest industry in the world economy. However, we know one thing is certain: E-commerce has become part of social life and hard to be removed from human activities.