E-commerce business involves a lot of planning, management, market research, human resources, and investments. And, that also may not work well, if and only if you will be stuck with selling on existing e-commerce sales channels. To build the identity of your brand and to grow your profit margin, you need a platform of your own. It is undoubtedly a challenging step in your business; however, an e-commerce development company can make this process easier for you.
In today’s e-commerce culture, several startups are rising every day. It’s most likely that people are unaware of the market needs, the strategies that are going to work or not, and the platform they should opt for.
So, what could be an opportunity for businesses to grow at this stage?
Selling their products on existing business platforms is undoubtedly a path that most businesses opt for. E-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Google Marketplace, etc. enable selling to the broad audience for the stated commission charges. They are undoubtedly right to get your business started. It’s a common saying that ‘something is better than nothing’. Thinking from that perspective, selling on these sales channels sounds a better deal in the beginning of your business. But, that’s undoubtedly not enough, and you will discover it in a few months of getting started. There is so much at stake while selling across these portals, let me share a few situations with you:
- In-stock Inventory: When you are selling through big brands like Amazon, you better like to get benefited with their services like Fulfillment By Amazon(FBA). However, in such a case, you need to engage your stock by sending the lot in their warehouses. This implies that you will not be able to deal with offline orders unless you have a massive inventory in bulk.
- Hefty commission charges: When selling on any of the e-commerce platforms, you have to pay substantial commission charges on your sales. Some of the platforms may charge you the listing fees, whereas, others may not. That’s for sure that you have to pay fixed closing fees and a chunk of charges based on platforms. The cost may vary from category to category for different products.
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Inactivated listings due to format issue:
Every e-commerce site follows a specific format of listings, and you will be bound to follow the same. You can’t add your bulk listings with your CSV sheet of inventory. This adds your work of creating the inventory sheets of all the platforms individually. If you don’t follow the rules, your listings may get inactivated after a specific time.
- Higher shipping rates: Few sales channels like Amazon, don’t allow you to ship your orders on your own. They usually charge higher shipping rates. Usually, they do charge handling charges in addition to shipping and such cases; you won’t be able to save much.
Selling across your platforms can offer more opportunities to let your business flourish. But, when it comes to building a brand taking your business to the next level, you must consider e-commerce development. Let me tell you certain benefits of selling across your web store.
- No worries of price calculation: When you are listing your products, you already do the profit margin calculation. So, it will be fine even if you don’t have to keep track of the amount you receive as margin or profit share. The selling price (including the shipping price) is the total amount that your customer is going to pay you. This saves your time of pricing calculations.
- Sell for free: When you market the products from your store, you are free to sell on the same rates you listed it for. By saving on the additional commission charges, you can offer competitive prices of the products to your customers and can perceive the increment in sales.
- Unlimited listings: When you opt for custom e-commerce development, you can add unlimited products to your store. You don’t have to follow a certain inventory pattern that is set by default. Instead, you will be free to add the product attributes as per your choice.
- Ease of organizing products: When you sell the products from your website, it is easier for you to showcase the range of products that you are dealing with. You can organize the categories, sub-categories into it; which can help your customers in finding the exact product they are looking for.
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Improve your shipping services:
Once you start selling online, try hands-on few of the courier services, and integrate with the best ones. Swift and quick shipping improve your customer rating and the affection of people for your brand. Better will be your shipping services, higher will be the chances of getting more sales.
- Customize for your brand: Irrespective of the platform you choose to make your business live, e-commerce development company can be of considerable help for you. They can customize your store exactly as per your theme. This sets your business ahead of the others, and open diverse opportunities for you.
If you are ready to take your business online, you can seek for the e-commerce development company that can transform your tough e-commerce journey to the simple one. When you are looking for an e-commerce development company in Ahmedabad, you can connect with me to plan further about the key features you like to have for your business.
