The first step toward establishing your eCommerce shop is to decide the method through which you will sell your products. Unless you are aware of all forms of selling formats, you can’t take a right decision. So let’s see what all options are available for you.
Online auction:
When you sell your item online through a bidding system, it’s called online auction. There are various benefits attached to this selling format, first and foremost being lack of geographical barriers. You can tap into wide global market with minimum costs and maximum return on investment. Online auctions are typically popular for:
- Cost effectiveness
- Global reach
- Powerful marketing
As the rewards reaped through online auctions outdo the costs involved, several websites, including eBay, are implementing online auction selling format. Online auctions can be further bifurcated in two:
- Forward Auctions: Forward auctions are very effective for acquiring new customers and enhancing geo reach. Auction holders can cut their operational costs through this method because the need for marketing and promotions will be reduced.
- Reverse Auctions: In this type of auctions, the roles of buyers and sellers are reversed, with sellers competing to obtain business from buyers. The principle of keeping the bids is same as in forward auctions.
Shopping Carts:
Shopping carts are your virtual shopping baskets in which you add the products that you want to buy from the online stores. These baskets will get cleared once you pay for them and are ready to be shipped. When it comes to shopping carts format, you again have two options:
- Licensed Software: If you are using licensed software, you will just need to pay one-time fee to get it installed on your local server.
- Hosted Service: When you opt for hosted service, the shopping cart software are installed on web servers that can't be downloaded. You will need to pay monthly or yearly fees as charged by the application service provider.
Generally eCommerce merchants prefer to use hosted services because this option will allow them to use licensed software without getting it installed on the local server.
There are two major aspects of shopping cart:
- Storefront: This aspect is accessible only by visitors who will buy your products.
- Administration: This aspect is only available to administrators, and through this, they can manage all parts of the store such as products, categories, discounts, shipping details and much more.
Multi-store eCommerce:
One of the best ways to expand your audience reach is to sell through multiple eCommerce stores. This type of selling format is particularly useful when you are selling in multiple countries, serving multiple niche market and selling through several eCommerce platforms. There are many benefits attached with multiple store eCommerce. Some of them are as follows:
- Single optimized database
- Full control over frontend operations
- Customized functionalities
- Automatic taxes calculation
- Synchronized inventory operations
- Customized configuration
Depending on your business model, target audience and product specifications, you can select the selling format. Do you need more help? Contact us and we will be happy to help you.
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