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The Importance of Starting an Ecommerce Business

Tag: paytabs

the importance of e-commerce
Mohab Ecommerce 0

the importance of e-commerce

Who does not want to run a successful business without breaking the bank? And if this can be achieved by making the most of digital revolution, then there is nothing like it! That is probably the main reason why ecommerce continues to soar globally and why even large companies are opening their doors to this business model. The importance of ecommerce in the Middle East is probably evident in the fact that by 2025, the market is likely to be worth $50 billion. Supportive government initiatives, avant-garde technologies, and a rise in disposable earnings are some factors driving this growth.

According to forecasts done by Emarketer, the significance of ecommerce also lies in the fact that sales is all set to grow by leaps and bounds and possibly touch $2.5 trillion by the end of 2018. And that’s not all. A study conducted by Credit Suisse Research Institute, earlier in 2015, had predicted that total annual online retail sales could reach upto 3.5 trillion USD. With such positive outlook surrounding this business model, we decided to deep dive into the reasons why starting an ecommerce business makes so much sense.

Importance of Ecommerce for Better Business Growth

For starters e-commerce businesses can sell tangible and intangible products or services, and reach out to millions like never before. They can not only sell more this way, but also diversify more, enhance their brand image, widen the customer base, and take risks and cut losses.

  • Unlimited Reach: The global internet audience continues to grow (3.5 billion as per Plunkett Research) and thanks to the vast base of high speed internet, it’s much easier to offer your audience a range of products and services. And that makes ecommerce a natural winner. Whether you are planning to create a new company or expand an existing one, ecommerce can open up a world of opportunity. The significance of ecommerce in blurring geographical boundaries, earning in international currencies, and scaling without investing in physical stores, cannot be overlooked.
  • Location Indifferent: Unlike physical stores, ecommerce stores don’t require prime locations to be visible to their audience. The swanky high street corner spot does not matter anymore. All you need is a smart domain name, good product photos, and a selling platform to get up and running – and the world can be your audience. You can do better if you don’t underestimate the power of physical advertisement in places like subways or parks. Just employ advanced technology whenever possible. For instance, capitalize on social media platforms to forge deeper connections with your target audience, especially if they include millennials or Gen Z people. Connect through popular communication channels such as instant messaging apps and SMS while subtly pushing products and promotions.
  • Go with your Favourite: With e-commerce, you offer a wide array of options to customers, be it clothes, cookware or electronics. Naturally, the buyer feels more motivated to make a purchase, as he or she can surf different categories or items for hours and read reviews or research. You can even profit by catering to very specific kinds of customers or those with unique preferences and sell say diabetic baked goods, bird houses and feeders, 3D printed items, pet health trackers, or sci-fi equipment.
  • Don’t have to Break the Bank:The importance of ecommerce from a financial standpoint is that you don’t have to go bankrupt to start a business. Not a lot of investment is needed to set up ecommerce sites, more so if you are in the know about SEO tools and the concept of marketing automation. Once you master the art of ranking high on search engines and maintaining an engaging site, you will see website traffic rolling in easily. Just build good relationships with distributors, so that you can procure quality products.
  • Easy to Build Loyal User Base: It has been found that around 80% of the web population purchase from ecommerce sites now and then. There’s no reason for you to not make use of this staggering figure! An easily navigable and aesthetic website, great informative content and ample privacy and security measures can encourage customers to trust you. Understand the buyer journey and what kind of motivation is required at every stage, from awareness to consideration. Experiment with multiple content formats to generate awareness, build interest, drive conversion, and encourage shoppers to keep coming back for more. Keep making improvements to build a large loyal base.
  • Retargeting Customers Easier than in Physical Stores: Ecommerce businesses sure have more advantages than physical stores. For instance, the problem of abandoned carts can be addressed smartly with retargeting tools when you have an ecommerce site. Valuable, engaging and original content is yet another way to lure customers and inform about discounts or promotions. You also get to tap into social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, by integrating your ecommerce site with them. Interesting and useful posts, offers and fun competitions can boost your social media image and enhance the traffic for your online store.
  • Ecommerce Offers a Personalized Experience: By setting up an ecommerce site, you can offer a more personal experience to shoppers than brick and mortar stores. Advanced technology, including AI and deep learning tools, can help you read and analyze customer behavior quickly and easily. This way, you will know what to offer whom. Potential buyers will get to enjoy benefits like prompt customer service, tracking of orders, rewards, personalized recommendations, newsletters and more.
  • Offers Ease of Shopping to Customers: Remember that the more convenient you make the shopping experience for your customers; the higher will be your sales. And what better way to do it than with ecommerce sites? On such sites, shoppers can place orders on busy weekdays, weekends, early mornings, late nights and holidays too. So, the importance of ecommerce also lies in the fact that the model offers tons of freedom and flexibility to shoppers, whether they are stuck at home, travelling, suffering from a disability, or too busy at work.

Time to Appreciate the Need and Importance of Ecommerce

Apart from all the benefits listed above, starting an ecommerce store can let you manage your time and resources as you wish, and build your brand in a more affordable way than the traditional route. Plus, trusted online payment gateway services like PayTabs can help you with hassle-free payment receipt, enable mobile payment, send invoices to customers, and make fund transfer a cakewalk. You will be able to monitor all transactions in one place, detect problem areas on time, identify opportunities, and take smarter decisions for improved profitability. So, what are you waiting for? Take your business online and see the difference!

FAQs

• What is the Importance of E-commerce Business?

The need and importance of ecommerce cannot be emphasized enough in today’s fast-paced world, as it helps businesses to expand the customer base fast, build better relationships by offering more flexibility and options to shoppers, earn from any part of the world, and grow even without setting up physical stores. Through ecommerce, businesses can also offer a customized experience to buyers, gain trust, drive more conversions, and draw them for repeat purchases.

• What Economic Factors Contribute to the Significance of Starting an Ecommerce Business in Today’s Market?

It is considerably cheaper to start an ecommerce business compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar venture, as you will just need a website and have to learn organic marketing tricks. Even paid social media marketing will cost you less than physical advertising. Moreover, millennials with higher disposable incomes are increasingly buying from e-stores these days. The cost of digital communication and transactions is also significantly less than in a physical setup. Storing and managing important data is cheaper in case of ecommerce too.

4 months ago
Your Revolutionary Payments Solution is now in Kuwait!
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

Your Revolutionary Payments Solution is now in Kuwait!

Kuwaiti merchant looking for a local and global payment solution for your online business? Look no further!

PayTabs has now launched its services in Kuwait following its efforts to expand its GCC reach. Kuwaiti merchants will now be able to enjoy a premium online payment experience using the latest technology that PayTabs offers.

Get your payments completed using local and international cards, and payment alternatives. Merchants will also be able to test out our free demo account to experience the simplicity and innovative approach PayTabs is best known for. With the support of multiple currencies, payments from anywhere in the world can be reached to your business at anytime. You can also settle all your payments in your local currency or in any currency you choose!

Furthermore, Kuwaiti merchants can enjoy our checkout services such as Express Checkout, PayPage and Recurring Payments to guarantee a truly seamless online shopping experience for your customers.

The starting process has never been simpler. All you have to do is to sign up for a free demo account, test how each function supports your business and payments, once you have been familiarized with the tools and functions, you may request to activate your account to “Go-Live” and  fully power your online business with PayTabs to start accepting payments.

Sign up today for FREE to explore the world of payments and offer your customers the best checkout experience using PayTabs. In the meantime, to keep up with the latest news and trends, you can sign up for our blog alerts here.

6 years ago
Technology: A Key Differentiator for PayTabs
Mohab Super Merchants 0

Technology: A Key Differentiator for PayTabs

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke (Author)

The world of payment solutions has evolved dramatically in recent times, given the growing need of global e-commerce. Most merchants nowadays require a comprehensive solution to take care of their payment needs, whether it is in a single store environment or a marketplace environment. Even offline merchants need payment solutions to effectively manage their orders, especially in the context of international payments. The modern day customer expects no short of magic while paying for a product online, irrespective of the environment. Thankfully, the technology has evolved drastically in recent times to create nothing sort of magic for customers, irrespective of their expectations.

The payments landscape has broadened as the world has shrunk and the need for multiple currencies, alternative payments, split payments, recurring payments rolled into one solution has become an imperative for merchants of all sizes. Apart from the different features in a payment solution, what is required is the ability of the solution to integrate in various ways and provide a wide range of integration capabilities for multiple shopping carts, in the context of e-commerce.  Apart from features of a payment solution, an ideal solution should have a secured technology backend.

In the light of the growing e-commerce landscape, PayTabs has the technology to add business value for any merchant. Key elements of the technology are as follows:

  • 160+ Currencies accepted on the platform.
  • Whether it’s multiple channels, schemes, acquiring banks, multiple shopping cart platforms, security infrastructure and systems, risk management and merchant services, we have you covered in all aspects in the context of building, operating and growing your e-commerce business.
  • Dual layers of fraud management infrastructure, dedicated fraud and account management.
  • 130+ alternative payments options designed to intelligent recommend you options that support your overall business goals.

To fully experience the power of the PayTabs solution, sign up for a free demo or contact us for more information. Feel free to provide insights or comments below.

7 years ago
Starting Your E-Commerce Business: Key Points
Mohab Ecommerce 0

Starting Your E-Commerce Business: Key Points

Worldwide e-commerce sales is projected to grow to $4.5 trillion* by 2021. That’s almost double the current value. While at the face of it, the value seems mind boggling but it doesn’t come as a surprise because globally, e-commerce has been witnessing staggering growth, propelled by the sprouting of various e-commerce startups across the world.

Considering the growth of the industry, it is a lucrative proposition to start an e-commerce enterprise. Hence, if you have an idea and are willing to navigate through the challenges of building and running your own e-commerce enterprise, here are the key points you need to keep in mind:

  • Name & Registration: Choose a name for your business that separates you from the competition. Do a corporate name search to ensure that the name you have chosen is not in use. You would need to register the name and select a business structure for your startup, it can be a sole proprietorship/partnership/LLC/Corporation.
  • Domain name & Website: Ideally, your business name should be the domain of your e-commerce site. If the domain is not available, chose a domain name, that’s easy to spell and pronounce.
  • Banking Regulations & Identification number: Make sure you have your company’s identification number, as per the respective country’s law and ensure that you open up your company’s bank account. These are generally for tax & corporate records purposes.
  • Business Licenses and Permits: Check the operating licenses that you require to run an e-commerce business in your country and ensure you have all the licenses in place before starting business operations.
  • Find the right vendor: If you are going to running a marketplace, then you wouldn’t need a vendor for products that you would sell. But if it’s a standalone e-commerce platform, you would need a long term commitment from a vendor for supplies/raw materials or products.
  • Inventory: Make sure you have stocked your inventory. It would help tremendously, when your orders come through. You should be able to provision for x number of order and ship on time.
  • Logistics and Delivery: It is imperative for any e-commerce to have the logistics and delivery sorted. It is not only delivery for your customer orders but the delivery of your supplies that need to be streamlined as well.
  • Technology & Software: Having the right shopping cart plugin or building your own shopping cart is a must for any e-commerce site, the experience of your customer while shopping on your site, depends on your cart. Additionally, you need to ensure that you gradually invest in productivity software such as email marketing, CRM, etc…
  • Marketing: To start off with, use all digital marketing mediums, especially social media to spread the word about your business and drive sales. Prepare blog posts and social media properties well in advance.
  • Compliance: Your business will grow at the speed of light, but you must be mindful of the fact that you follow the regulations as per compliance, i.e. reporting annual results or quarterly results to regulators. Even the annual fees for your business permits and licenses. Do not ignore any aspect of being a compliant and legal e-commerce site.

Last but not the least, for transactions to occur on your e-commerce site, you would need a payment gateway to be integrated with your website. Sign up for a free demo to unlock the value that we can provide for your e-commerce venture, as a comprehensive payments solution provider.

*Data Source: Statista

7 years ago
PayTabs: Adding Value to Your Business
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

PayTabs: Adding Value to Your Business

In one of our earlier post, we touched upon the factors that set PayTabs apart as a payment solutions company. We looked at the existing gaps in the payments processing industry and how does PayTabs bridge the gap.

Today, we are looking specifically at some of the business problems that PayTabs can solve for your business, as a comprehensive payments solution company:

  1. Global Business: Your business attracts customers from across the world and it is imperative for you to have a payments solution that processes multiple currencies and offers a seamless experience with your customers. Well, PayTabs has you covered as we can process 160+ currencies on our platform.
  2. Grow your business: Whether it’s multiple channels, schemes, acquiring banks, multiple shopping cart platforms, security infrastructure and systems, risk management and merchant services, we have you covered in all aspects in the context of building, operating and growing your e-commerce business.
  3. Data Security: In a world that is constantly threatened by cyber-crime, it is imperative for you to ensure that you customer’s data is protected. We have the highest level of PCI-DSS compliance apart from having dual layers of fraud management infrastructure in place.
  4. Technology Worries: When you are setting up your e-commerce business, you are determined to get the technology right, with respect to every aspect of your business. We understand technology and the need for agile delivery, hence we have the ability to quickly integrate our solution to your backend, irrespective of the type of backend you have.
  5. Build Competitiveness: We understand that the e-commerce industry is highly competitive across the world; we can help you grow your business & help you become competitive and profitable at the same time. We believe in complete transparency and hence we do not have any hidden charges.

To experience the power and the flexibility of our solution, you can sign up for a free demo or contact us. Moreover, if you wish, you can subscribe to our blog alerts to keep abreast with the latest from the world of payments and e-commerce.

7 years ago