E-Commerce Platform
Every day, thousands of publishers benefit from a recurring cash inflow by partnering up with
other companies via Affiliate Programs and ECommerce platform.
Hi! I’m Von Lim – Founder of MyVpsGroup, Von Vps Management, and Von Production.
Here we are the E-Commerce platform to sell on this website MyVpsGroup, with no little money down and do any single action.
We will help you drive lead to your business back-end with 1 Stop Solution. What you need to do is just
provide us your quality products and services, and agreed on the document and submit to us.
Every day, thousands of publishers benefit from a recurring cash inflow by partnering up with
other companies via Affiliate Programs and E-Commerce platform.
CONTENT TABLE
ECOMMERCE
ECO-SYSTEM
What exactly is ecommerce?
What is Ecommerce and the types of e commerce?
How do I start an ecommerce business?
Why Ecommerce is the future?
How do eCommerce sites work?
What do people buy most online?
Is E Commerce profitable?
What’s Happening in Malaysian eCommerce in 2020
What Exactly Is Ecommerce?
E-commerce (Electronic commerce) is defined as an umbrella term covering all performances of online buying and selling as well as transmitting of funds or data electronically at anywhere and anytime.
E-commerce plays a big role in affecting our economy and standard of living. It impacts the productivity and inflation rate through increasing competition and enhancing cost savings. As Information Technology has changed the product development, marketing, process of selling and buying, and communication channels, it revolutionized the ways of people doing business and customer shopping experience.
When online market continues to develop and evolve, it changed the global market and brings many new opportunities for businesses. E-commerce facilitates the flows of goods from suppliers to customers. It also allows more types of goods and services to be exchanged via Internet. Not only tangible products, other products such as digital products, services and affiliates can also be deal through electronic support.
As e-commerce expands, businesses are also able to partner with one another globally to reach out more new potential clients and customers. E-commerce has made several big players in global market including Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Google as well as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. These major marketplaces enable all individuals begin to conduct businesses in their platform efficiently. Meanwhile, they also continue to enhance the customers’ shopping experience by investing time and funds into development of technologies.
These days, people are becoming less prefer to withdraw money or make cash transactions. Consumers tend to adopt online payment transaction and e-wallet transaction to avoid time-consuming and enhance conveniences. Thus, ensuring safe cashless digital payment transactions by developing innovative payment solutions has become one of the main challenges for businesses in e-commerce while creating outstanding online stores in global marketplace.
What Is Ecommerce And The Types Of E-Commerce?
Business-to-business (B2B)
B2B refers to the electronic transactions of exchanging goods or services between organisations, instead of individual consumers. Nowadays, organisations that fail to invest in digital channels or less pay attention to e-commerce platform can easily loss of competitiveness. B2B model is relatively complex and it requires higher investment for operation. The transactions have to deal with complex taxes, barriers and regulatory impediments. The prices for B2B transactions are highly variable due to high volume of goods and services and many complicated shipping requirements. Organisations also take longer times such as several days, weeks or months in their purchase decision-making process. Organisations adopting e-commerce model mostly are manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. These organizations will have their own enterprise ecommerce platforms as to work directly with clients in a closed environment.
Business-to-consumer (B2C)
B2C refers to the electronic transactions of exchanging goods or services between businesses and consumers. People tends to shop online and becoming less prefer to visit physical stores as to save time and cost of transportation. B2C model allows businesses to sell products and services directly to the consumers. With B2C business model, businesses can save their investment on operating physical stores. Meanwhile, the payment transactions have been replaced by online payment methods and e-wallet transaction to avoid large amount of cash in hand. Consumers can just easily visit to their websites to view their products catalogues, read the reviews, comparing products and prices as well as make transactions. By using B2C e-commerce, businesses could tap into more business opportunities as the online stores are operated all the times thereby able to reach more potential customers. B2C businesses can also segment and analyse customer shopping behaviours by conducting various marketing strategies.
Consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
C2C refers to the e-commerce among individuals in trading products, services and information via Internet. C2C transactions generally highly depend on a third-party marketplace such as Shopee, Lazada, Carousel and etc. These marketplaces have own payment gateway and safe payment process which increase the confidence of individuals to conduct buying and selling at these marketplaces. There are also many transactions have been conducted through social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram due to relatively higher traffics. Individuals can now sell either new or used goods by posting product listings on online platform as to easily capture the mutual buyers who are looking for the products. Individual sellers can directly interact with the final consumers which has shortened the time length used in communication flow. In addition, individual sellers are no longer restricted by local regions and able to reach international audiences, and vice versa.
Consumer-to-business (C2B)
C2B refers to the transactions conducted between consumers, acting as sellers in trading products, services and information with businesses via Internet. C2B transactions has changed a complete reversal of traditional business model. In a C2B relationship, end user could be any individual who innovating and creating ideas, skills and solutions to businesses and organisations buying them. C2B transactions usually conducted by freelancers selling their services or intangible products such as designs or software to organisations. Bloggers can also sell advertisement space on their blogs while video creators can conduct trials. C2B business model allows businesses to understand consumer insights and adopt a consumer-centric solution which adding value to its businesses.
Business-to-administration (B2A)
B2A refers to the transactions conducted between businesses and public administration or government bodies via Internet. Nowadays, many government departments are highly dependent on e-services, products or information especially for legal documents, registrations, social securities, fiscals, employments and any other government-related operations. The government agencies use central websites to exchange and trade information with different business organisation while organisations play the role of supplying these services electronically to government agencies. B2A business is not easy to be conducted and it can be very competitive in e-commerce market as all businesses can see the potential of bidding for government contracts. The bidding can be difficult due to the previous transactions can be seen by all businesses thereby bid on the new RFQs and RFPs easily. If a business can provide right product in right quantity, within the delivery time frame and offer a lower bid price than the previous, then it will be awarded the contract automatically as a lowest bidder.
Consumer-to-administration (C2A)
C2A refers to the transactions conducted between individuals and public administration or government bodies via Internet. The operation of C2A business model has been vastly developed and improved thereby open up resources for both consumers and large administration to allocated more effectively. Governments are seldom trade with citizens unless the business involves education, social security, taxes and health. For example, an online service system is required for scheduling appointments for government health services. Another example, e-learning is very important for students at all stages due to Covid-19 outbreak caused social distancing. C2A transactions allow consumers to conduct business efficiently with large public administration.
How Do I Start An Ecommerce Business?
Choose product or service and select suppliers
The most fundamental step of starting a business is knowing what product/service to sell. Choosing the right product/service is the most challenging part of starting an online business. Instead of thinking what product can make money, you should think of what do people need and willing to pay for it. Therefore, it is vital to evaluate the idea of selecting product. A potential product/service can be a daily need item, or a trendy item as long as it meets the market demand.
After deciding a product, you can start to seek for manufacturer to supply goods. Finding a manufacturer is not difficult however choosing a reliable manufacturer for long-term can become crucial for business. Especially when the manufacturer is located overseas thus you will have less ability to manage quality control. Communication with manufacturer should always well maintained to avoid misunderstanding or cause mistake to be happened. Terms and conditions of every trade should also be clearly stated.
Another supplier should be concerned for an e-commerce business is courier service provider. Selecting a long-term courier service can help to increase the conversion rate and business growth rate. A courier company should be able to ensure the safety of items and make sure the items reach to customer within a specific time. However, it is hard to evaluate the quality of a courier company. Thus, it is necessary to try out a number of different courier companies to better know which is the most suitable one.
Research on competition and determine price
After deciding product and selecting suppliers, you can begin to thoroughly analyse the market competition and set price of product. Always keep an eye on the competitors as they could helps to anticipate the shifts in the market, spot latest trends and explore successful tactics. Through conducting business competitive analysis, you able to know your competitive advantage and understand how to define your branding and positioning in the market. Not only monitoring the competitors’ ongoing basis, but also should updating your view of competitive landscape.
Setting an optimum price is a critical part as it can influence consumers’ purchasing decision and your profit. You need to investigate the market price and identify how much the consumers willing to pay for it in the meanwhile, calculate all the cost spent on goods. After evaluating the cost and market price, you can decide an optimum price within a price range for the products. Determining a price can be either lower than competitor, or slightly higher price with providing additional services or better quality of product to consumers. Price should be determined wisely as it will be applied for long-term unless during promotion or special sales.
Set up the online store
After completed the paperwork required for business registration, you are now legally start your e-commerce business. First thing to do while setting up an online store is choosing your e-commerce platform. There are many ways to start your online stores. Most of the small businesses tend to start their first store on marketplaces and social media such as Lazada, Shopee, Facebook and Instagram. The main reason of choosing third-party platforms is relatively much lower investment and start-up costs. These platforms have a complete set of features and communication tools ready for sellers to utilise at their convenience. There are several common e-commerce platforms have become the major shopping platforms for consumers due to the concept of one platform with various shops and products selling. Consumers can easily compare products and prices by reading the reviews and clicking into all stores with similar products. Additionally, the payment gateway of third-party platforms can be more reliable as the release of payment can be done when only consumers click on the button of order received.
Other than selling on a third-party platform, you can also choose to set up own website. Consumers can directly browse and purchase your products at your official website. Creating a website is complicated and require time and effort to start and operate. You need to think about your domain name and it should be closely matching your business name. A good website should be attractive and user friendly. Therefore, consulting professionals like web developer and graphic design should also be prioritized. You also need to prepare your contents for your website and always maintain well communication with the professionals so as consumers can understand well about your business and products.
Adopt online marketing strategies
Your customers will not know the existence of your store if you never advertise it. Therefore, you should invest in advertising works to gain traffic, enhance brand awareness and increase sales. A strong and positive marketing strategy will have higher possibility to capture more audiences visit to your store. The most common strategies are Google Ads and social network advertising. For Google Ads, the language to be used can be challenging as it depends on who you are targeting. You also need to create effective keywords and ensure the right landing page of your site.
You can also utilise the ad campaign strategies on social media such as Facebook and Instagram. Think about your audiences are on Facebook and Instagram nowadays. These platforms have provided large advertising opportunities to businesses. Thus, your campaign should be attractive and simplified as users are just simply scrolling the page easily. Adding video into your ad can be much more fascinate and creative as people love to watch short clips. You should always monitor the campaign to make sure your ad is running well and in controlled.
Not only that, marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee have their own marketing centre and consist of several marketing strategies such as keywords ads and targeting ads. Same as on social media, you can also run a live streaming on these marketplaces to drive traffic and interact with your audiences. You should always read the comments from your audiences and reply them to retain your loyal customers. Paying attention to their feedback can enable you to self-review your performance as well. The budget of these strategies can always be altered according to your preference. Running ad campaign is a long-term effort and it should not be ceased even you have successfully gained large number of loyal customers. You should run your campaign continuously to gain new potential customers and develop new market.
Why Ecommerce Is The Future?
Easy to start
The main reason of people switching to online store is because it is relatively simple to manage an online business. It is just the same as physical store, people can sell all kind of product/service through online. Nowadays, consumers tend to online shopping as it is convenient and more variety of products. Since there are many platforms enable people start their business with minimal investment, sellers have begun to make good use of these platform to operate their online store with comprehensive features from uploading product listing and contents to managing inventory and shipping. For a small-scale business, sellers can just handle these tasks independently and less rely on other parties or hiring staffs. Besides, digital advertising is inexpensive compared to traditional channels as the ad budget can always be adjusted. Therefore, switching to online business can save the funds from operating a break-and-mortar store and invest it in running ad campaigns to boost traffic and drive conversion.
Business operation are automated
Nowadays, e-commerce has changed business operations with automation tools. The operation hour in the ecommerce business can be 24/7 as it is automatic run by internet. Different from traditional selling method, the product images are physical identity whereas the product titles and description elaborate what are the items. Customers can simply shop anytime at the online stores and make payment without notify sellers on the spot. Additionally, the process from order made until item delivered can be traced easily whenever sellers take action to perform. Sellers can also adopt chatbot or auto-reply method to increase efficiency in replying the general enquiries from customers anytime. Besides, automation software can benefit supply chain management by scheduling inventory alerts for stock reordering. Hence, sellers can focus on the advertising parts to expand the markets and capture more potential customers.
Easy to target and retain customers
E-commerce businesses can efficiently target potential audiences and retain existing customers. The most common digital marketing methods like social media advertising, search engine marketing and keyword research tools have offered the opportunity to target particular customers at specific locations. These days, e-commerce stores enable sellers to analyse the data of their target market as it can tracking the source of customers, purchasing habits, interest and locations. Other than that, sellers can easily communicate with customers and provide information on latest products and complete sales by running the ad campaigns. Sellers can always update loyal customers about special offer or promotion with emails marketing. This allows to remind customers of your brand and attract them to visit your store. Consumer forums allow customers to provide feedback regarding the products and comment to propose suggestions so that sellers able to evaluate their products and services thereby keep improving to enhance customer satisfaction.
How Do ECommerce Sites Work?
E-commerce works like the physical retails buying, selling and interacting with customers. One of the major differences is e-commerce run digitally which make operations efficient and effective. This drives people switch buying and selling to e-commerce as internet has commonly became accessible everywhere at all the time. To make you better understand about e-commerce, we would like to explain FIVE steps of how an e-commerce site works.
1. A product or service to be sold
An e-commerce platform enable business easily uploading product photos and descriptions and arrange them into different categories. The products and services can be sold on e-commerce platform can be referred as following examples: –
- Tangible products: clothes, groceries, electronical appliances, furniture
- Intangible products: software, music subscription, education course, travel package
- Services: car repair, tuitions, food delivery, haircuts, facial
2. A system to accept orders
Customer who are interested to purchase can make an online order by adding the items into a shopping cart. The shopping cart will then compute the taxes and process vouchers or any discounts. Then, the system will capture the billing address and ensure user acceptance of terms and conditions of a purchase. After that, it will create order numbers and lead customer to the payment gateway. If the products in a digital item, the system will direct customer to the download page.
3. Payment mechanism
All e-commerce transaction will involve transacting money and this process is called the payment gateway. A payment gateway provides several payment options by requiring identification details such as credit card numbers or CVV code to proceed payment successfully. Besides, payment gateway also enables customers to make payment through online transfer which require customer to accept payment by providing PAC code to proceed.
4. Delivery of products
A successful e-commerce business should emphasize their logistics as it can determine customer satisfaction at the final stage of purchasing process. Delay in shipping goods can cause disappointment of customers thereby lead to one-time purchase only. E-commerce business should ensure the products are delivered in good condition within a specific time range. Business should keep updating customer by clicking the button of “order shipped” as well as provide tracking numbers.
5. Pre-sales and post-sales services
E-commerce enables consumers to direct chat with sellers through a chat system on the platform. Before a sale is made, it is important of replying customers enquiries to make them better understand the products hence enhance their interest to the products. Not only to understand, some of the products that require customisation need to be communicated clearly to prevent mistakes. For after-sale part, customers might consult for the relevant usage, repair services or any enhancement of the products which they have purchased.
What Do People Buy Most Online?
As technologies becoming advanced now, people tend to shop at online stores and make booking or appointment through online platforms as it makes process easier and convenient. Purchasing at an online store can simply lower price than grabbing the products at physical stores. Here, we would like to share THREE items that people buy the most online.
Fashion items
In the beginning stage of e-commerce, consumers assumed that buying fashion items especially clothes and shoes through website are risky due to unknown of real size and not refundable policies when receiving a wrong product. As the e-commerce policies and business ideas have optimised, consumers can obtain detailed information of the products while viewing the items on an online store. Many fashion stores also adopting refund or return policies to enhance consumers’ confidence to purchase online. These improvements have increased demand of fashion products in e-commerce. Fashion is a fast-moving sector as it changes quickly every day or every season. Thus, online fashion stores nowadays have become more and more competitive. This has boost creativity of sellers to utilise video and photo tools in creating attractive images and videos as well as contents to capture customers’ attention.
Cosmetics & skincare products
Cosmetics and skincare products have become one of the necessary items and targeted by everyone especially young and middle-aged female shoppers. As beauty products have become a trend, the sales of these skincare products, makeup and beauty tools are in vast volumes and led to high demand. Not only the specific brands have their own online stores, but also third-party platforms selling cosmetics and skincare products. Therefore, beauty industry became one of the industries with the lowest customer loyalty as consumers can simply switch to competitors’ store. E-commerce allows consumers to shop at their convenience without visit at any physical store. Addition, e-commerce enables international brands accessible to reach global customers. Consumers tend to be more price-conscious as they can easily search a same product from many platforms and website to compare the price and service quality.
Online food delivery
As the lifestyle in cities become busy, the demand of food delivery of restaurant meals will continue to increase as it solved the problem of long queue especially during lunch hours. With the evolution of online delivery platforms, consumers expect the ability of a restaurant or café to allow them to place orders online and provide delivery services. Although many restaurants have their own websites or social media accounts, however depending on an online ordering platform can enable efficiency of customer and order management. This is because these platforms able to provide a complete sales dashboard shows status of new/active/cancelled orders, delivery times as well as enable customers and riders to communicate easily. Without adopting e-commerce, restaurants can just miss out great opportunities to drive customers and grow your business. Delivery platform enable business to reach right customers within right location range and at the right time. It allows businesses to boost awareness and keep a foothold in the competitive market.
Is E Commerce Profitable?
People might ask, is e-commerce risky? Is it profitable? Some people might earn RM 10,000 and above every month from their e-commerce business, whereas some people might earn zero or even facing a loss. You might be curious what happened between both results. Is it means that building and running a business is difficult and low chances to achieve success? In fact, it is very depending on all aspects of business operation. In this part, we would like to simply brief about the FOUR factors cause the success of an e-commerce business.
Product
The kind of product you selected for your business can directly determine your business profit. Choosing more variety of products to sell allow your consumers have more option. Your product should always meet your target market and market demand.
Operation
Although automated tools of e-commerce platform have optimised business process. However, you still have to put effort in operating your e-commerce business. Always keep an eye on monitoring your stocks to adjust your inventory level and meeting customer demands. Managing relationship among customers by replying your customer enquiries to ensure them better understand about your products.
Marketing
Today, there are many different kinds of digital marketing strategies to aid you in boosting your sales and drive engagement with customers. Grasp the skills of utilising these marketing tools can enable you to expand your e-commerce business and reach your consumer globally.
Investment
Higher investment can bring higher profit, and vice versa. For example, you will be able to reach higher sales and drive traffic to your online stores as if you willing to increase your budget in your digital marketing efforts.
As the result, there is no guarantee that any business for sure will getting profit. As long as you run your e-commerce business effectively, thus you will be able to achieve your business or financial goals you targeted.
What’s Happening in Malaysian ECommerce in 2020
Growth of Malaysia’s e-commerce market
With the rising of smartphone penetration, e-commerce market in Malaysia grows rapidly in recent years. Today, online stores have become the most favourite shopping channel which allow shoppers to buy globally at their convenience. Driven by high efficiency of internet, Malaysia’s e-commerce is forecasted to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent every year. E-commerce platforms like Lazada and Shopee have become the most favourite shopping sites for Malaysian. Hence, Malaysia’s e-commerce market has reached $4 billion and it is notable for its explosive growth in recent years. Despite a rapid growth in the recent years, there are still under half of the population are yet to shop online. Thus, there is still plenty of room for Malaysia’s e-commerce market to continue expanding. Malaysia’s government also intends to raise the growth rate continuously to reach 90 percent as to widen the access to online shopping.
Sales of Malaysia’s ecommerce business
Since the explosion of e-commerce in Malaysia, cross-border spending keeps increasing and reached 40% of all e-commerce transactions in Malaysia. Especially the 4th quarter of a year has become the most important sales period for e-commerce and all online retails as well as social media. In recent years, the celebration of 11.11. and 12.12. which originated from China drove the idea of providing special sales or promotion during the both dates. It has become the major sales events in Malaysia’s e-commerce market now for e-commerce businesses boost sales. This has encouraged local shoppers to spend relatively much more than normal period.
Impacts of Covid-19 crisis to Malaysia’s ecommerce market
Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 becoming serious since January 2020, it caused many brick-and-mortar stores unable to survive and end up closed down. As Covid-19 pandemic becoming serious in Malaysia, government has restricted citizens from travelling overseas. Followed by Movement Control Order announced and help for two months, most of the citizens are not allowed to travel to work or conduct any outdoor activities including dining at restaurant and entering entertainment places. In this case, the opportunity of spending outside has substantially reduced and people tend to online shopping and order delivery food online. This has become an opportunity for e-commerce businesses to boost their sales during this period. Due to the prohibition of dining outside, many restaurants and cafes become highly rely on third-party online delivery platform to reach their customers. Various rules for social distancing drive many sellers switch their business from physical stores to e-commerce business. This tendency has caused massive disruptions to both supply and demand of Malaysia’s ecommerce industry. Until now, Malaysia is reported that shoppers are mainly buying groceries, hygiene items and preventive care items and led these products become the top highest demand in the country.
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