Your Gateway to E-commerce Success for Students

Electronic commerce or e-commerce has significantly become popular during the last few years across the world and will continue to have constant growth in the future. There is no doubt online shopping has become the usual life phenomenon, and more and more people want it due to the convenience of receiving products at home. Therefore, if your brand is not yet in the digital world, you have come to the best place to learn about the compelling opportunities offered by e-commerce.

For entrepreneurs or business owners, having e-commerce stores is indeed a smart opportunity to find, attract and serve potential customers, enabling them to grow fast and earn more. Online stores can help you save costs to a greater extent while reaching places around the world you had never imagined with a much lower investment. You cannot achieve this milestone through a physical store. Sounds pretty good, right?

WeBe came into existence with the objective of creating a safe and secure platform where students can not only buy and sell second-hand items hassle-free but also connect with their peers through public and private groups. WeBe has become one of the best apps for college students, making their college life easier and more enjoyable. So, students can begin to establish a strong foothold in e-commerce by utilizing the app. Through this blog, we would like you to learn more about the core advantages offered by e-commerce. Keep reading!

Understanding E-commerce

The mid-2021 was the era when talking about e-commerce is an everyday thing. Hundreds of brands across the world allocate heavy budgets to offer the high-quality services and/ products. E-commerce has become the most preferred business model for an overwhelming number of entrepreneurs worldwide.

E-commerce refers to the system that allows you to trade or buy and sell products/services using the Internet technology. In this business model, monetary transactions are carried out through an online platform with the responsibility for managing collections.

Currently there are various options for making sales online, each with particular characteristics that offer many advantages for the consumer. Hence, talking about those characteristics and advantages is important to present a crystal-clear picture so you can make a decision.

Contrasts Between a Marketplace and an Online Store

An online store and a marketplace are the same, and this is exactly one of the main confusions when talking about e-commerce. Both platforms are different and they focus on different markets.

Marketplace

A marketplace, explained simply, is a mega store with numerous small stores. This platform operates as if it were a digital shopping center, where brands offer their products or services to customers who visit them. The three largest examples of marketplaces serving globally are Amazon, Etsy, and Walmart.

Online Store

An online store is a digital platform operating through a website with a shopping cart where a brand can sell its products round-the-clock. You can create an e-commerce website by choosing the store name and domain, hiring a hosting service or approaching Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, for example, offering a platform to create an e-commerce website in a few steps.

Explore the Key Benefits of E-commerce

Now that you know the main characteristics of online sales and the major differences between a marketplace and an online store, it is good to discover the key benefits offered by e-commerce.

Round-the-clock Service Availability 

With a physical store you have schedule restrictions and will not be able to sell at all times. With an e-commerce store, your website is 24/7 available to your customers, suggesting that you can serve them round-the-clock. Online selling is a great opportunity to boost your business dramatically.

Sales Across the World

E-commerce is infinite… literally. You can offer your products and services through an online store not only in your own local area, city, or country, but also worldwide. However, worldwide service/product delivery will require you to have the necessary logistics.

As in the previous point, you will not have any type of limitation to accept purchases from any city. Without a doubt, it’s an option for all people to know your brand no matter where they are.

Flexible Payment Options Available 

Having an online store helps you serve all customers with various forms of payment. This way, you can facilitate the user experience. By simply installing a payment gateway, you can accept cards, cash deposits, and bank transfers. You can offer a better service by focusing on the different options of payment method.

Reducing Costs

Cost reduction is one of the key advantages offered by e-commerce. Having an e-commerce store is much more economical than establishing a physical store and offers numerous benefits.

You don’t need to pay rent, charges for services, or workers’ salaries. Instead, you just need to pay more attention to offering a premium-quality product. You can spread your products by simply relying on meaningful digital advertising, a much cheaper means of promotion.

Buyer Security Assurance

Nowadays, buying and selling using digital platforms like WeBe College Student App is becoming safe and secure. Offering a secure user experience is possible through hiring reliable payment platforms. This way, you can also protect your buyers' data and avoid possible fraudulent activities.

Having a reliable platform is essential for an online store because you can make your clients feel more secure. This is also important to grow your business quickly.

Influence Potential Clients

Currently, there are more than 5 billion active Internet users. This suggests that you will have significant opportunities to attract and influence more and more customers than with a physical store.

You can achieve this by generating quality written blog content and having an interactive strategic approach for social networks. These two recommendations will help you stand out from your competition.

Social Media Outreach

As we already mentioned, social networks have become the mainstream channel to spread your e-commerce store. Be consistent in your posts, pay attention to visual details and design a strategy in which your content becomes useful to people who visit your profile.

Be careful; don't forget to combine your organic publications with advertising to achieve better results. WeBe is one of the feature-rich college student social networking apps that allow students to safely trade and communicate with confidence.

Connection With Marketplaces

Online stores are not in conflict with marketplaces. As we already explained, they have different natures but are complementary depending on the business.

By having your e-commerce on platforms, with just a few steps, you can display your products on marketplaces like Facebook Shop, Instagram Shopping, and Google Shopping, in addition to Amazon.

Tailored Client Care: Enhanced Communication

Digital media gives you the option to provide personalized attention and get to know your customers better. By receiving comments and messages on social networks you can know what people like, your areas of opportunity and with that work on more effective strategies.

Pay attention to users' purchasing habits, follow up with email marketing and adapt to the demands of your market.

Integrating E-commerce with Brick-and-Mortar Retail 

The last advantage of e-commerce is that an online store can be perfectly combined with a physical one and vice versa.

If you do not want to lose physical presence, our advice is to digitalize your business quickly and rely on your premises to deliver products, display them, and offer after-sales service.

Wrapping Up

E-commerce will continue to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years, so brands with a digital store will benefit from many growth opportunities. And you can imagine the challenges brands without an online setup would face. Consider the advantages of e-commerce that we have just shared with you. In fact, every business model requires skills, and WeBe, as the best  student buy and sell app , is a platform that can help students not only acquire online trading skills but also gain practical experience. In the end, they can benefit from both in their e-commerce stores. Install the app, practice, and bring your online entrepreneurial dreams to life!