E-Commerce In Covid-19 Times

Gone are the times when e-commerce was for dreamers, 2020 has changed our lives, the way we interact and of course the way we work, many companies that bet on face-to-face sales channels have seen their economy affected and the entrepreneurs that based their business on online models have had a great success, an example of this is the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos who obtained profits of 13,000 million dollars in one day. Internet and e-commerce have become the best (and sometimes the only) option for the acquisition of goods during quarantine periods, it has accelerated the penetration of online commerce and user acquisition to levels never seen before.

People have been forced to discover a new world and a new experience when buying, they have discovered the advantages of buying from their homes, but logistics operators and carriers have also been put to the test to meet the high demand . In many countries that had no practice in this area, there has been a greater economic impact compared to developed countries in which a large percentage of transactions were already done online.

Selling online has become a necessity for any business or company regardless of its size, customers seek immediate information, prices, availability, schedules, delivery times, all with a few clicks, it is essential to develop a strategy that provides customers what they need quickly, easily and at any time, this is one of the great benefits of selling products and services over the internet, users can access the website 24 hours a day and buy with the same freedom, compare, ask and inquire about specific information, therefore you must be clear with the specifications, offer detailed and generous images, all to motivate the customer to choose your product.

How and where to sell online?

There are many channels that can serve people who start in e-commerce, starting with social networks such as Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, they offer exposure and clients without great investment or technical knowledge, you just have to register, adjust the profile to the corporate image including logo and colors that identify the business and share your profile with clients, friends or family. This can be complemented with free classifieds pages that allow you to quickly post and include information to direct potential customers to your social networks.

Up the ladder we find pages to publish products and services, in these you must have a greater knowledge of internet management, inventory management, ratings, fees, highlights, etc. They offer a more specialized audience with greater purchasing potential. It also requires registration, incorporation of logos and colors according to the company and detailed elaboration of descriptions of the products or services to be offered, the idea in these pages is that the purchase or hiring is made directly, without having to redirect to social networks. most charge commissions when selling however some are free, such as AnuncioYA.

When the business has a sufficiently positioned brand, has an appropriate customer base and you want to make a large investment, it is time to create your own website, this option requires investments for the creation and maintenance of the site as well marketing and advertising to attract new customers. You must also have a software administrator who performs security and maintenance updates to the server and / or the software platform.

There are two basic fixed costs in websites, the hosting and the domain (the address or name of the page), hosting is a space in which the website is uploaded, something similar to the land in which it is build a house, the domain is the address to get to the house, the latter is paid annually although you can reserve it for several years. The hosting can be contracted monthly or annually depending on the type and resources that are needed, the prices are diverse, It should be analyzed according to the type of software that will be used and the number of clients that will visit your site.

The best websites to sell online.

One website is better than another according to your particular need, for example a small business that starts can be greatly benefited with sites such craigslist in the USA, OLX in Latin America or Gumtree in Australia, they offer a simple registration and you can publish quickly, interested users will contact you by mail or by registered phone number and you will be in charge of making the sale, the commissions are zero or very low.

If you want to manage auctions, control inventory, ratings and others, you can use pages like Ebay, Amazon, Mercadolibre and of course, Auncio YA. They are more robust platforms with hundreds of functions, you must assign inventories in each publication and they are designed so that the purchase is made inside website. Some manage the payments of the transactions, however this brings some problems since they take away some of the freedom from the sellers and exposes them to many more claims, for this reason Anuncio YA has been designed to offer all the functionalities but with the freedom for customers to agree directly with the seller. a website to sell for free online.

In the case of creating your own website you can go to world-renowned hosting companies with plans according to your economy, some of them are: Godaddy, Hostgator, Bluehost, Inmotion hosting, SiteGround or Liquidweb, there are also local hosting companies that can offer low prices but when you require professional hosting it is better to go to world-renowned companies. This should be consulted with your web designer or with the company you hire to create your website.

This has been a brief introduction to e-commerce, a wide and diverse world to which all people should use it, know about and handle, since with the correct information it can bring immense benefits in current and future times.