[Getting Started] Ecommerce Meaning And How To Begin In 2024

1. What is the meaning of Ecommerce

The ‘E’ stands for electronic, which implies that the environment in which the business takes place. In other words, e commerce means conducting business transactions in the digital environment (on the internet). Most of the time, e commerce refers to buying and selling physical products or services online, however it can also be used to denote any type of commercial transaction conducted in the digital world.

Just like commercial trade in the physical world, e commerce can also be categorized into 4 main types:

• B2C (business to consumer): When businesses sell their products and services to a single customer through online channels.
• B2B (business to business): When businesses sell their goods and services to other businesses.
• C2C (consumers to consumers): When consumers trade goods and services with each other.
• C2B (consumers to businesses): When consumers sell their own goods and services to businesses.

2. How to start conducting ECommerce

There are many ways to start trading online:

For buyers

Buyers are normal people who purchase goods or services online. By purchasing something online, they have already made an e commerce transaction.

For Sellers

There are many forms of business transaction a seller can take online:

Selling services:

• Selling services or skills to single customers or businesses in exchange for money.

Selling as a retailer:

• Selling physical goods from a company to customers and other businesses.

Selling physical goods online:

• Selling any physical assets that can be packed and shipped to another party, which will be marked as a trade when both sides conclude the deal.

Dropshipping:

• Selling products produced and shipped to the end-users by a third party using an online store (Shopify or Amazon are the two biggest names in this industry).

Selling digital products:

• Selling digital goods like e-books, audiobooks, software, website themes or video courses which mostly can be used on computers, laptops, mobiles or tablets.

Pre-order crowdfunding sale:

• Announcing an upcoming product and using marketing to attract buyers into a preorder, which will be fulfilled later when the owner of that product has raised enough capital to produce that product.

Selling as an affiliate partner:

• Selling other people’s or businesses’ products or services through running ads and attracting organic traffic to blog posts or videos online.

Establish your online presence

Now that you know all about the basics of conducting digital trade, let’s move on to how you can establish an online presence for yourself and your brand in order to start selling.

New store owners establish their presence through their website, which takes on the purpose of introducing their brand and their service to digital consumers before selling their services to them.

The website can be an online store. Much of presence is based on professional appearance, and therefore its establishment requires from the store owner certain skills in web design and digital marketing to raise brand awareness.

Why Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a great way to start with e commerce compared to other methods of conducting trade online.

The reason for this is because dropshipping allows anyone access to the complete experience of e commerce, even if they don’t have their own products.

Every step of dropshipping can be done online. You select which product to sell from a producer; once the product is ordered on your store, the producer is alerted and ships that product to your store’s customer.

The best thing is that it only takes a computer and a steady internet connection to set up tests and monitor all of the operations. You simply open an online store, choose a product, take some pictures, design your store and market the product.

The easiest way to start with dropshipping in 2024 is by joining either Shopify or Amazon. These are the two biggest names in this industry, with years of experience and amazing resources to help entrepreneurs start with dropshipping. Both companies equip knowledge and optimize all processes to make dropshipping a seamless experience for both buyers and sellers.

Read more:

• How To Build Your Online Business With Shopify: A Complete Guide
• How Does Shopify Work: An Explanation

Prepare for Losses

The first thing you should be prepared for when starting with dropshipping or any other kind of e commerce trading is to prepare for the losses. It is highly unlikely that one can be successful on the first try at anything; great achievements tend to grow from experience and a back catalogue of failure.

Don’t give up. Learn from those failures and thrive to build a better version of yourself and your businesses.

Choosing which e-commerce platform to start with can be a draining experience, check out: 

• Wix or Shopify: Which Is The Right One For Me? 
• Etsy vs Shopify: Where To Start Your e-commerce Journey

Change to Survive

Now that you are prepared for losses before true success comes, the next thing to learn is to change to survive. Listen to your existing customers. Try to solve their problems as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Focus on solving the need of the majority of your targeted audience first and your business may survive.

Other than solving customer problems, solving your own problems financially and mentally each time failure occurs is crucial to gaining success in the future.

Conclusion

In this article you have learned the meaning of E commerce, and how to start a business online with dropshipping as an example. Finally, you learned how to deal with losses and failure to achieve success later. Not all businesses will succeed, but the ones who keep at it and continually fix their mistakes will be successful in the end.