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1. Fascinating Tips to Succeed in E-commerce Business in 2019
Today I will discuss some of the learnings I have had by consulting with
many companies in e-commerce. Let us examine the key success drivers of
e-commerce:
Value Proposition- Does E-commerce have any strong value proposition
that all? E-Commerce has a lot of value as it gives a lot of variety for people
to choose from particularly for users living in Tier II and Tier III towns
where they don’t have access to a huge variety of merchandise. In such
situations, E-Commerce comes to the rescue.
Level Playing Field- E-Commerce creates a level playing field as it does not
distinguish between customers who have deep pockets and are very
sophisticated or smartly dressed when they walk into a showroom on a
person who is coming from Tier III Town or rural background.
Transparent- E-Commerce is also completely transparent about the prices
as prices given upfront so there is no room for haggling or negotiation
which brings a lot of peace of mind to the consumer.
B2B E-commerce- The growth driver for E-Commerce in 2019 will be B2B
and not B2C. Do you know 68% of the business in the world is B2B and
B2C is only 32%? In B2B the consumers which are traditionally your
retailers or wholesalers are more traditional with low adoption of
technology. But does B2B E-commerce offer any advantages? Yes of
course. E-Commerce can drive better operational efficiencies in business
to business. Many E-Commerce companies are not able to grow because
people in B2B have trust issues because the ticket size is bigger and there
is a higher level of the stake so people want to do the negotiation. E-
commerce companies need to develop trust among their customers. They
need to provide a social media platform wherein customers can discuss,
chat, negotiate in B2B. E-Commerce transactions offline are largely based
on credit. The intermediaries are not used to buying on upfront payment.
So can B2B internet companies assess the creditworthiness of the
customers based on transactions that are happening on the platform? So
here artificial intelligence and machine learning and big data can play a
role.

2. Long Term Vision- E-Commerce needs long term vision. E-Commerce is
not for marketers who are there for the short term. Initially, it’s all about
deep discounting, it’s about a thin margin because the market is not ready
to pay for convenience, the market is not ready to pay a lot for shipping
which means the marketer has to make some losses. It may be funded by
VC money. What it means is that there will be few players who will
dominate the market because you can’t make a lot of money on a small
volume of transactions but what you can do is you can make small money
on a large volume of transactions.
In future E-Commerce, companies will be highly tech-driven so you will
need a solid recommendation engine that will assess the past purchase
behaviour of customers and show them similar products and do a cross-
sell and upsell. Internal search should be very powerful so that customers
are able to find exactly what they are looking for.
The next important thing for success in the e-commerce is customer-
centricity. You must be highly obsessed with customer satisfaction. So, you
must have an easy returns policy, charge a small margin, do fast delivery.
Another pertinent question is should you have a marketplace, or should
you go for the inventory model. Marketplace is full of challenges. In
Marketplace, customer satisfaction is low because you are basically acting
as an interface between the seller who has the Merchandise or the
inventory and the buyer. There is absolutely no control over the quality of
material, there is no control over the process which makes it very difficult
to keep the customer satisfied. Moreover, the suppliers are highly
unorganized which leads to late deliveries and fulfilment. But if you go for
an inventory-based model you have complete control on the quality of
merchandise, on timely delivery but it will require investment.
What about big players like Google shopping on Facebook Marketplace
who are entering into The E-Commerce space and you can buy products
from their portal so competition is only going to intensify in E-Commerce.
Do you know that E-commerce is also a search engine where people are
searching for products? So, what it means if that as a marketer you can do
SEO On The E-Commerce platforms. What it also means is that E-
Commerce is emerging as an advertising platform.
If you wish you can also watch
video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pUTgx5Vvpc

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