Trade, be it barter exchange or buying and selling of goods and services has been prevalent for centuries. No one can be self-sufficient. And this brings out the need for demand and supply of goods and services.
E-commerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.
E-commerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet.
Whereas e-business refers to all aspects of operating an online business, e-commerce refers specifically to the transaction of goods and services.
The history of e-commerce begins with the first ever online sale: on August 11, 1994, a man sold a CD by the band Sting to his friend through his website NetMarket, an American retail platform. This is the first example of a consumer purchasing a product from business through the World Wide Web—or “e-commerce” as we commonly know it today.
Since then, e-commerce has evolved to make products easier to discover and purchase through online retailers and marketplaces. Independent freelancers, small businesses, and large corporations have all benefited from e-commerce, which enables them to sell their goods and services at a scale that was not possible with traditional offline retail.
Global retail e-commerce sales are projected to reach $27 trillion by 2020.
Types of E-commerce Models
There are four main types of e-commerce models that can describe almost every transaction that takes place between consumers and businesses.
1. Business to Consumer (B2C):
When a business sells a good or service to an individual consumer (e.g. You buy a pair of shoes from an online retailer).
2. Business to Business (B2B):
When a business sells a good or service to another business (e.g. A business sells software-as-a-service for other businesses to use)
3. Consumer to Consumer (C2C):
When a consumer sells a good or service to another consumer (e.g. You sell your old furniture on eBay to another consumer).
4. Consumer to Business (C2B):
When a consumer sells their own products or services to a business or organization (e.g. An influencer offers exposure to their online audience in exchange for a fee, or a photographer licenses their photo for a business to use).
Examples of E-commerce
E-commerce can take on a variety of forms involving different transactional relationships between businesses and consumers, as well as different objects being exchanged as part of these transactions.
1. Retail:
The sale of a product by business directly to a customer without any intermediary.
2. Wholesale:
The sale of products in bulk, often to a retailer that then sells them directly to consumers.
3. Dropshipping:
The sale of a product, which is manufactured and shipped to the consumer by a third party.
4. Crowdfunding:
The collection of money from consumers in advance of a product being available in order to raise the startup capital necessary to bring it to market.
5. Subscription:
The automatic recurring purchase of a product or service on a regular basis until the subscriber chooses to cancel.
6. Physical products:
Any tangible good that requires inventory to be replenished and orders to be physically shipped to customers as sales are made.
7. Digital products:
Downloadable digital goods, templates, and courses, or media that must be purchased for consumption or licensed for use.
8. Services:
A skill or set of skills provided in exchange for compensation. The service provider’s time can be purchased for a fee.
All depends on what you are willing to offer.
Here at Create Build Optimize, our offerings include:
Discovery:
Deep exploration of a brand’s existing digital ecosystem including tech stack, operational readiness and revenue sources, design optimization, and customers. We generate projections to help our clients see the big picture, as well as the nuanced mile-markers of their eCommerce business with reports that cover media, product, financials, and customer lifecycle forecasts for 3 years.
Marketplace Optimization:
Consider us your go-to consultants for increasing visibility, conversions, and reviews on the marketplaces most important to your brand—from Amazon A+ pages to custom solutions for Target, Walmart, and beyond.
CRM Strategy & Implementation:
Customer Relationship Management has become increasingly important for generating ROI from the customer funnel. We have the strategic, creative, and analytical tools to help launch, grow, and nurture customers to increase their loyalty and action.
Revenue Strategy:
A detailed plan that spells out the appropriate mix of media channels to meet a brand’s revenue goals as well as the media expertise to implement it.
Direct to Consumer Site Builds and Infrastructure Development:
From identifying the appropriate selling platform to ensuring backend logistics are structured to support the business, we will create a direct to consumer site that’s optimized for conversion and primed to collect valuable data.
Affiliate Strategy & Management:
We evaluate a brand’s current presence and recommend enhancements, or set it up from scratch with the publisher networks that will create a new revenue stream for their business—all while optimizing along the way for growth.
Traffic Generation & Growth:
We evaluate the analytics and the traffic that is generated to your current website, optimizing the traffic generation, and increasing the conversion rates.
Here at Create Build Optimize we specialize in creating digital assets for your e-commerce website including the creation of the concepts of the brand, traffic generation to product pages or your website utilizing paid media, or organic search traffic.
Here our website we help create compelling campaigns that will assist you in generating more leads and making more sales.
Whether it’s generating more traffic to a specific product, constructing a structured ad campaign, or developing a strategic plan to get more prospects proud to purchase what you have to offer.
…or if it’s developing your E-commerce website and brand from scratch we can assist with that too.
The entire foundation of Create Build Optimize is to assist with any process that you may have in your e-commerce business or website. This includes either creating the website from scratch, generating strategies to make more sales, and optimizing your pages to improve conversions.
Converting more of the traffic that you are currently getting to
…more sales.
…more business.
…more growth.
