How to start an e-business with e-Commerce consulting?

Entering the e-commerce market right now is very challenging. The online sales segment is very tight and it is difficult to find a niche in this space. Although the e-commerce market is still growing, new e-shops have an extremely difficult time reaching e-consumers who already have their favorite brand and are often loyal to it, or choose those products and those stores that have a longer history and are well-reputed. In this case, how to break through with your e-shop, how to appear in the consciousness of users perfectly moving in the web. E-commerce consultancy will play a major role in this matter, thanks to which you will be able to develop a competitive advantage with a well-planned strategy.

E-commerce consulting what is it and how can it help?

Consultancy, in other words, is the provision of professional and comprehensive advice and support on a particular subject. If we take into account business, consulting, regardless of whether it is e-business or traditional business, refers to both external factors and the functioning of the company internally. Internal operations will include such areas as business model, sales model, business architecture, marketing activities and sales policy.

Whether you already sell stationary and want to exploit the potential of your products by launching an e-commerce site or you are starting a brand new online store, it is necessary to plan your first e-commerce site perfectly. What basic steps should you take? You need to decide on a business model, choose the best way to sell online (online store, e-auctions), define a revenue model, or choose the ideal technological solution for your products.

There are many issues that you will have to face during the whole process leading to the launch of your own online sales. Therefore, an important factor that will allow you to minimize or completely eliminate mistakes is to use professional advice. It is extremely important to start cooperation with a consulting company that can boast of extensive experience, many implemented projects that are still functioning and developing.

What are the business models operating in e-commerce?

Coming back to the business model itself, it’s worth taking a little closer look. The models already mentioned are:

• B2C – refers to selling products to individual customers. While this is a type of business that has great revenue potential, don’t forget that it will also require significant budgets to be allocated to online marketing. Issues such as pricing and promotion strategy are not insignificant,
• B2B – on the one hand, the most profitable type of online sales, but on the other hand, it will require the most financial investment. In this model, the sale takes place between the seller and the business customer. So these will be orders of larger size and value. This is where reliability and fluency in order fulfillment will count. And especially in this segment, e-commerce consultancy can prove invaluable, it will facilitate the development of all business processes,
• C2C – this market segment in fact emerged only when the Internet started to function more widely, and with the dynamic development of C2C technology, its share in the e-commerce market became increasingly clear. Customer to customer is based on transactions between consumers.

What type of income method should I opt for?

E-commerce provides a wide range of opportunities in terms of income model. Once you’ve decided on your business model, it’s time to make a decision on how you want to earn. While you may decide on one particular model of income, there is nothing to prevent you from using several of them and reconciling them reasonably. In this matter, too, it is worthwhile to use e-commerce consulting, thanks to which you will manage to seal the sale. And what do we have to choose from? We can opt for convenient drop shipping, which seems to be the simplest method of selling online. It is limited to connecting one’s own e-shop with the supplier’s website in order to be able to present the products and stocks of the e-warehouse. The simplicity of this solution is that the products are ordered from the supplier when the order is placed by the store’s customer. Even the delivery to the consumer is on the side of the wholesaler. However, if it turned out that certain products require us to keep them in stock, you can decide to cooperate with a partner who offers the so-called fulfillment service. Then the goods are managed by an external company, which will also take care of packaging and shipping. There are many possibilities, and if we want to fully exploit the potential of e-commerce, it is definitely worth consulting a professional consulting company.

After all, there are also issues related to the choice of appropriate technological solutions. Should you opt for SaaS solutions, or maybe choose more flexible open source technologies, such as Magento. And how to take full advantage of multi-channel sales paths? Decide on affiliate networks, sponsored links, SEO campaigns, regular content? There are a lot of questions, that’s why using consulting services, in the era of the well-developed e-market, seems to be the right thing to do.