E-commerce: how to sell more through your online shop (for e-commerce novices)

The purchase of goods and services via e-commerce, or electronic commerce, is utilized by all segments of the population and age groups as an alternative to shopping in physical stores, and has long established itself as an attractive distribution channel for companies of all industries and sectors. The online shop (synonyms: e-shop, webshop) is the virtual or digital sales presence in e-commerce.

How and why do I sell more when I run an online shop?

By using e-commerce and particularly by operating your own online shop, there are a multitude of opportunities to generate more revenue, expand market share, and appeal to diverse customer and buyer groups. These opportunities are generally known but are often not recognized as value-adding success factors.

A small excerpt from the many possible opportunities from the supplier's perspective:

• ‍Time and location-independent availability of offers: Sales around the clock, seven days a week

• Expansion of sales markets: New target markets and target groups through national, international, and global market presence and expansion‍

• Expansion of distribution channels: Utilization of multi-, cross-, and omnichannel strategies, as one sales channel is no longer sufficient‍

• Cost advantages: Automation and digitalization of trading functions support the financing of research and development

From a sales perspective, the following possibilities arise more specifically:

Legal creation of customer profiles and thereby

• More personalized customer service

• More personalized offers and services

• Simpler and stronger customer loyalty

Generation of visitor frequency and thereby

• Continuous increase in reach and popularity

• More interesting presentation of the range of services and visitors/interested parties become buyers

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Going into detail on these topics would exceed the scope of this blog post, but it can be claimed that every successful sales strategist rejoices at such opportunities. Not only that, but he will surely find promising opportunities for his company in detail, particularly for generating added value and more revenue.

Without going into detail, other arguments that speak for operating an online shop in many areas of the economy include:

• The boundaries between offline and online commerce are largely disappearing

• Digital natives or smart natives (born between 1995 and 2000) were born into the digitized world and instinctively use digital procurement paths

• In marketing, the importance of social media marketing is becoming more and more apparent, which in turn sensitizes the purchase of products and services through online shops

• Target group addressing can be optimized quickly through provider-demander interaction in online shop systems, and new needs of demanders can be recognized

The most important prerequisites for success in online commerce are primarily and overview-wise the following:

• Due to the rapidly increasing use of mobile devices, mobile-optimized design of the online shop has top priority

• Our attention span is also rapidly decreasing due to the excess supply available to us - a logical and simple user guidance and fast loading times are essential

That's it for this week. In one of the next blog posts on e-commerce, we will discuss the market forms and market players in e-commerce and take a closer look at B2C e-commerce (business-to-consumer). We will examine the four basic models of e-commerce in more detail and compare pure online retailers with retailers who sell online and offline.

Until next time!