E-Commerce has proven its might and moved the world to the next big change. Last year, with a pandemic to deal with, lockdown came as a boon to all E-Commerce startup stores. The year 2020 witnessed retail e-commerce sales amounting to 4.28 trillion US dollars worldwide. Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba, etc. serve as huge examples of the mountainous potential of E-Commerce.

An E-Commerce startup today can prove to be hefty if the execution is not in place. From giving a shape to your idea in the form of a product, conducting market research, coming up with a business model to build and launch your E-Commerce website takes an infinite amount of effort to make it a success.
Keeping everything in mind, the following are 3 major steps to get you started on your E-Commerce business:

Step 1: Getting your idea in line with industry and market research

There are primarily three methods for aligning your idea with industry and market research:

• “All great successful businesses were all once ideas” Getting started on your idea is the first step, and probably the most important one. Your idea is 50% of your business and success and failure is hugely going to depend on how well your idea was framed.
• Firstly, you have to start with brainstorming your idea through various filters and make it as unique as possible. We know that the market is flooded with ideas and it won’t be a surprise to meet an identical one but working through the particular element of your idea that speaks of its uniqueness is something that is going to fetch you sales in the future.
• Second, comes conducting market research and finding the right line of products. Here, you also have to see through whether to be a single product or a multi-product store. This will obviously depend on your planned budget and funds. However, when you plan to be a multi-product store you also need multiple vendors to secure your sale (in case one vendor isn’t available).
• Third, now that you are done with brainstorming your ideas you also must look through and decide on the kind of business model you are willing to adopt for your business. Selecting a business model is part of idea development and depends heavily on various case studies you conduct, it does take time and should not be done hastily. When your idea is in the development phase you will get an initial idea about which business model you will have to adopt. However, it is still advisable to study all the available business models for better insight. Let’s have a quick look at some business models:
  • Business to Business (B2B): In this Business model Companies sells products or provide services to another company.
  • Business to Consumer (B2C): The traditional retail model where a business sells directly to the consumers.
  • Consumer to Business (C2B): In this particular type of business model consumer (who may or may not be a sole proprietor) sells goods or provides his/her services to a business.
  • Consumer to Consumer (C2C): Apparently the oldest form of business model in which an individual (consumer) interacts with another individual to sell goods and provide services.

Now that we are familiar with business models let’s know about finding and finalizing the manufacturer/vendor for your product.

Step 2: Finding and Finalizing the manufacturer/Vendor of your e-Commerce Startup

• Finding and finalizing a manufacturer or supplier is not an easy task especially when you are just a startup, however, this step requires you to find appropriate sources for your raw material or any needed equipment. This step would again need extensive research of available vendors and manufacturers so as to figure out the best possible option which falls in your budget.
• This Step is extra-crucial for your product pricing. Once you decide about which vendor to go with, you will have an idea of how much the product is going to cost you and what should be its price for initial margins. If you end up buying a costly product you will have to sell it even costlier and this will ultimately lead to little no customers.
• If you are buying from multiple vendors the process becomes even harder. Amazon, for example, is a multi-vendor E-Commerce platform, where Amazon does not own all the products displayed on its website. It enables merchants to sell their products in its marketplace to the customers. Let’s further understand what are single and multi-vendor E-Commerce platforms.
  • Single vendor platform: Single vendor marketplace is an online platform where a single vendor or seller, sells to many consumers or buyers. This usually involves buyer and seller and does not usually have a broad range of products. Cost is usually less in this kind of platform since you are only dealing with a single vendor.
  • Multi-Vendor platform: It is a platform where multiple vendors sell to multiple customers and are usually highly profitable. Due to a big range of products and countless vendors, there are many transactions that take place. All the transactions between vendors and customers are managed and administered by the website’s admin, thus, the involvement of three parties i.e. Seller, Admin, and customer/buyer.

Step 3: Setting up an e-Commerce website for your platform

• Can you run an E-Commerce store without a website? Obviously not! An E-Commerce website is the heart of any E-Commerce business. But building a website for an E-Commerce business can be one of the toughest jobs. That is why many e-Commerce startups go for the smart choice—getting website development services, which not only saves time but is also cost-efficient for it enables you to focus on your business operations.
• For getting started with a website, firstly you will have to buy an online hosting and purchase a domain name for the website.
• After that, you will have to decide on how your website looks and decide on a template, that is if you’re using an online website builder
• Otherwise, you can always hire a developer or a company that provides E-Commerce website development services.
• Nonetheless setting up an E-Commerce website involves a lot many things. Let’s have a quick rundown of all the things an ideal E-Commerce website should be able to achieve.
  • Responsive design
  • Product management
  • Content management system
  • Shopping cart:
  • Checkout page
  • Payment processing

If you want to save time and hire specialists to get you a website that builds your brand value and maximizes sales for your e-Commerce startup, you can reach out to us at Master Infotech.

FAQ’s on E-commerce startup

For example, getting a domain name, designing a logo, designing a website, obtaining a payment gateway, the number of extensions required to run the portal, promoting the website, making it accessible in various search engines, backend work for uploading products, dealing with orders, and shipments.

Yes, E-Commerce has advanced to the point where a person may shop from an E-commerce store via a mobile app or a website from anywhere in the world.

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