16. Conclusion

The internet has opened so many opportunities for doing business online, and e-commerce is one of the most popular ones. Not only does it require low investment, it actually is a type of business that does not require a full-time commitment, especially if you are selling a limited number of products. You just make an online presence and promote the business here and there using both free and paid methods. However, as each business, it has its positive and negative sides. If you want to achieve success, you will have to create an organized strategy which is based on realistic goals and comprehensive analysis of the market. 

Advantages and disadvantages

Website maintenance, processing orders, customer services and website analytics are all the tasks you will have to handle once the store is live and running, but this is not a 9 to 5 work. You do not have to be there all the time, sitting by your desk, bound by the fixed working hours.

Instead, e-commerce offers lots of flexibility for the merchants, and this is one of the main characteristics that bring this profession into the list of top desired ones for people nowadays. It brings a level of freedom to manage your own time and work flexible hours, which is a priceless thing to have in life.

Even though this is an advantage a lot of work professionals can only dream of, running an e-commerce business also requires being online and available all the time. You always have to monitor the notifications and be ready to help customers. Since e-commerce is not restricted by location or limited work hours, you can accept the orders from anywhere at any time. For you, this means that keeping an eye on the activity and customer support emails is going to be a requirement all the time. And this is important if you want to have a successful business because good customer support is one of the best ways to attract and keep customers loyal.

Consistency and dedication

Running an e-commerce business requires a lot of consistency and dedication from your end to create a successful business. You always need to keep it professional and use an approach that is in accordance with your business goals. The first part is the initial one where you are focused on planning and setting up the online business. Besides planning, which will actually be one of the main tasks, you will also have to focus on website development, product page creation, and optimization, etc. Before you make products and services available to the customers, you will also have to do a lot of testing of the website. You should especially focus on testing of the integrations such as checkout page and payment gateways. It is crucial that everything works fine on your website because any loading error will probably turn away the potential customers.

The second part of the work is done once the store is published online and these tasks are focused on website maintenance, product promotion, and customer service. Consistency in the approach you use is necessary here as well because each social media post, each newsletter, and each ad represents your company and adds up to the public image you create for the business you run. If you want to be taken seriously, if you want to build a respectable online business, you have to be professional and dedicated to representing your company in the best possible way. After all, every online activity will be scrutinized by potential customers, and you do not want to give them any reason to doubt your credibility.

E-commerce and online marketing

Throughout the ebook, the most important tasks and goals of an e-commerce website have been highlighted. Online marketing, or one of the segments of online marketing, is mentioned on several occasions. This is because having an e-commerce business requires the usage of online marketing techniques and strategies.

You will need SEO to optimize your website. You will have to learn about website analytics to be able to analyze and improve the performance of your website. Promotion of the e-commerce website cannot be done without search engine marketing, social media marketing, email marketing and even affiliate marketing.

This means that e-commerce is a part of the system. It is an online business, and as such, it is dependent on the online marketing strategies that can bring success. To make the most out of these strategies and to be sure you are doing all that is possible to promote your e-commerce business, you should explore the topic of online marketing in more details. The focus of this ebook was to show you different aspects of running an e-commerce business, and online marketing and its types are mentioned to a limited extent, which does not mean you should stop there.

For example, if you have learned that email marketing can help you with promoting your e-commerce, find relevant resources on email marketing and then explore strategies that can be implemented to your business.

Finally, it is necessary to highlight the influence of mobile devices once again.  There is no doubt that mobile user experience is one of the primary goals you need to think as the statistics in favor of mobile users are keep growing. This affects the creation of a sub-sector called m-commerce. It is left to be seen how this trend will affect selling online, but what is evident now is that mobile users comprise a significant portion of overall traffic, and as such, they cannot be ignored. You must not neglect the traffic that could help you increase the number of buyers, because, after all, that is what you are trying to do with various promotion strategies.

The bottom line is that the internet changed the idea of shopping forever. So many limitations are now extinct because you can buy goods from anywhere in the world. Even so, some boundaries are part of this online experience such as inability to touch and feel the product before it is delivered. All of this changes the way buyers think about shopping, and this is something you, as a business owner, need to think about.

This industry is all about consumers. Understanding their needs and expectations, together with defining your business goals and strategies is going to help you with running a successful e-commerce business. Have in mind that the online world is a very dynamic environment, and to be on top of your game, you need to make industry research and website analysis your top priorities.