There is no doubt that the current era we live in is the era of integrated and intertwined technology in all different aspects of life, so it is not important today to have a store on the ground in order to buy and sell, as you can do this without it and even without the presence of tangible goods, but you can also, dear customer, sell your services and all this by creating an online store, so what is the online store and how do you benefit from it? This is what we will learn about in this article, so get ready to dive with us in this great sea.
What is an online store?
We can define the online store as a platform for buying and selling various goods or services via the Internet, so we can say that the online store is a platform to display goods, products and also services, and this field has developed recently, as you can simply and smoothly and with the click of a button to sell, buy and reach you products until the door of the house and you are in your home did not move from your place one step.
What is the difference between a website and an online store?
Of course, there are many differences between them, and here we compare them in terms of goals, method of use, and finally cost.
The difference between the website and the online store in terms of objectives
The goals of the spread of the website to obtain more presence There is no better way than the Internet in terms of expansion, as it provides a public space and unlimited fame, it is a necessary step for successful institutions, in websites the most important communication tool and a strong marketing ally, and influential .The online store is the main goal of achieving the greatest spread among a large category of customers that are easy to reach or achieve the greatest amount of return in the short and long term and finally the property of the business.
The difference in terms of method of use
For you, dear customer, the way to use the website is completely different from the way you use the online store, and here I mean the owner of the website or the online store itself.
The website is more used than the online store, as it can be a personal blog to write various topics or articles, and display images, and it may be a platform to link users to each other, and perhaps this is the real essence in which lies the difference between the online store and the website, in short, the site or the electronic platform connects users such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others, knowing that the buying and selling process can take place through them, but they are not considered electronic stores.
As for the online store, it is used to display goods or services on the Internet, and this product is extracted from the stores and delivered to him, and therefore the store does not link users to each other, but the relationship is between the user and the store only and directly.
Difference in cost?
There are some platforms that allow users to buy and sell, but they are not considered stores at all because they do not hold products and do not market them, but rather promote products for each user within his platform, such as Facebook and Instagram, so the cost of creating a website is much lower than the cost of creating an online store that needs a lot of money to operate.
What is the difference between online stores and brick-and-mortar stores?
E-commerce has occupied its place for everyone, especially after the recent Corona virus Covid 19 crisis, and the purchasing habits of many consumers around the world have changed and their trend to online shopping, and at a time when e-commerce stocks are rising, traditional stores still retain a significant position in attracting consumers, and we have learned about what is electronic previously, as for traditional stores, it is a retail place that requires physical space to display existing products that can be the list By themselves or tenants in malls or shopping mall Traditional stores employ employees or sales representatives in the difference between electronic stores and traditional stores In traditional stores, you can touch the products Immediate receipt without additional administrative expenses such as shipping, ease of replacement and return, but also has disadvantages, which are the high costs of rent Specific working hours.
What are the types of online stores?
1- A store selling services or products
It is an online store that provides services for sale, whether from institution to institution or from institution to individual such as Future Vision Marketing Company, or from individual to individual or store selling products such as Amazon or Alibaba.
2- The store for wholesale, also called Beto B, refers to e-commerce between business organizations and each other, such as factories and wholesalers, and includes a number of certain products such as software, raw materials, spare parts, and various electronic services such as accounting services, electronic payment services, and others.
3- Affiliate Marketing Store
Selling by commission has become one of the best ways to profit from the Internet, which has helped many marketers to achieve many profits and rely on it as a source of income It is necessary to deal with reliable commission stores as soon as you run advertising campaigns to promote the goods and services they promote in an easy and safe manner away from any risks, in short, the role of the commission marketing store is such as brokers, whether real estate, cars or the stock exchange, as their work connects the seller and the buyer to facilitate the transaction between them, in exchange for obtaining a previously agreed commission.
Examples of online stores
In the current year, different ideas have increased for many types of electronic stores, including, but not limited to:
1-A store selling veiled clothes and modest clothes
Thinking about the work of an online store to sell various goods, it is necessary to look at what consumers need, for example, the increase in the demand for clothes for veiled and veiled women is increasing in recent times, and if we look at the clothes in traditional stores, we see that they do not meet the needs of women required.
2- A store selling pet food and supplies.
It is noticeable in recent times that some people tend to raise and care for pets in homes, so it is wonderful to provide products and food for these animals and ease of delivery to customers.
3- A shop to supply restaurants with different products
This type of store is considered from company stores to B2B company, it does not have dealings with individuals, but the institution to its institution and be supplying wholesale products.
4- A store selling wedding products and wedding planner
These stores are recently considered one of the sought-after stores and their idea is based on planning various engagement and wedding parties and also providing the required products for these parties.
5- A store for organic products of fruits and vegetables on request
Attention to public health has become pervasive and the culture of societies has changed so that organic products are in demand in these markets.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the online store
It is known that everything has advantages and disadvantages, so what are the disadvantages and advantages of the online store? So let’s review the most important advantages and disadvantages in the following lines.
What are the advantages of the online store for the consumer
1- Buy from anywhere in the world
One of the most important features of the online store is that it allows the user to buy or sell from anywhere in the world, provided that the store provides the delivery of products to this country, and some stores provide the ability to reserve the product, and notify the user of its availability so that he can buy it directly with ease and without many complications.
2- Different and varied payment methods
Many online stores provide a range of different payment methods, such as credit card payment, or payment on shipping, which gives flexibility to the user when buying from the online store, and allows the customer to choose the most appropriate method for him.
3-Save time and effort for the consumer
Based on No. 1 and No. 2, it is natural that e-commerce is a saving of time and effort for the consumer to buy through the store at any time and from anywhere in the world, and this gives them great flexibility, as the customer does not have to go to the store to buy his needs, and adhere to working hours that may not suit his circumstances, and replace this with shopping through the computer, or even the smart phone applications of the online store.
What are the disadvantages of an online store that should be avoided when creating online stores?
1- Slow loading of the store, which pushes the consumer to use it.
2- The quality and size of the product images is not suitable to illustrate the product well.
3- Copy the product descriptions from other stores.
4- The store is not compatible with search engines.
5- The incompatibility of the online store with smartphones.
6- Limited different electronic payment methods.
7- Lack of after-sales service.
Therefore, for the success of the online store, it is necessary at the beginning to avoid these disadvantages to ensure a satisfactory result and great gains.
How online stores work
Here are some steps you need to create an online store
1. Select your products
Before thinking about making an online store, you must determine the product that you will sell, keep in mind that in products that can be sold online and products that cannot be sold such as cars, it is not normal for customers to buy cars through electronic stores without the consumer seeing them himself.
2- Pricing and profit rate
One of the important things is to determine the pricing of the product sold and also the profit rate required by you by setting the required operating costs and take these important factors into account:
• Production costs whether you manufacture the product yourself or contract with another manufacturer.
• Shipping costs.
• Taxes imposed in your country.
• Employee salaries if your business needs the presence of employees.
• Costs of booking store hosting and private domain name.
3-Identify the brand name
There is no doubt that choosing a name for your online store and your brand is one of the most important factors that determine the identity of your online store and clarify what are your products that you sell, as it expresses your products or services that you provide, so the trade name is the first simple definition of products that reaches customers and its spread is fast on all social media, and when you choose a brand name, it must be easy and short.
4-Choose domain and hosting
Choosing a place is one of the most important factors for the success of the business, so choosing a website is also one of the most important factors for the success of your online store, so you have to choose the optimal hosting for a store for your online store, and some important factors for this hosting must be available, but in the beginning, let’s know what hosting or host: Hosting means the service of saving and archiving files and images on the site, as well as databases in order to appear to users on your online store, and hosting provides spaces to receive a large number of visitors per month, and here Companies differ in hosting service in terms of providing space and the appropriate speed for your online store, as search engines depend on the speed of the site in classifying it within the search results, as well as visitors are bored of sites that take great time to display the content they provide to customers.
5- Start creating the online store
Not all people have the technical knowledge that enables them to create an online store and access the e-commerce market themselves, so you can rely on Future Vision in designing your online store and following up on everything related to the store from technical techniques in addition to customer service throughout the day.
6- Store Design
Your online store is the interface to display the various products and services that you intend to provide, so it is important that the store has an attractive design, but without exaggeration because exaggeration in design will make your site slow and distract visitors from the main products It is important that the store is responsive to smartphone screens, as statistics have shown that 60% of online store users who use smartphones There are components that must be available in electronic stores, for example:
1. Product Pages
They are the pages where you display your products, and they are very important, because they are where visitors make the purchase. Therefore, you should pay special attention and improve its design, which contains:
Name and description of the product It is important in the name of the product description to observe the rules of SEO when writing it in order to bring visits to the store. Pictures of the product: It is important to put pictures of the products you offer and they are real pictures, taking into account not to put many pictures and taking into account the sizes of the images so as not to slow down the site. Reviews and customer opinions about products: Customer opinions are very important in trusting your products and your online store, studies indicate that more than 84% of online reviews are trusted by people, just like personal recommendations.
7-Storage and shipping systems
One of the biggest challenges you face when creating an online store is storage and shipping systems, and it becomes more difficult when you increase the products you sell, and you have more than one suggestion for shipping
• Free shipping: This option will give you a great competitive advantage. But you have to study it well, and it is preferable to activate this feature only when the customer’s purchases exceed a certain value, this way ensures that profits will cover the cost of shipping, and it will also encourage customers to buy to get this feature.
• Fixed Rate: In this option, the shipping cost is fixed regardless of the type of product. This option is suitable for online stores that sell things of similar size and weight.
Variable Rate: In this option, the shipping cost is calculated based on several factors such as: •
product weight and sizes, and shipping destination. This option is suitable for stores that sell products that vary in sizes and weights, or those with a customer base from geographies far apart
It is also important to know whether you will ship products or will use a third party, which are the different shipping companies, can you determine this based on the size of your online store or your electronic project, is it large or small in the beginning, if it is small, you can take care of the shipping, you will also take care of the packaging and storage until the product reaches the consumer, but if your online store is large and reaches consumers in different geographical places, you need to use the third party They are shipping companies.
8. Security Measures for Stores
After designing your online store, it comes to the turn of setting up the right payment gateways. Most e-commerce platforms provide a lot of ready-made payment options such as: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, etc., add payment gateways to the store. After setting up payment gateways, don’t forget to check that all payment gateways are working well, the best way for this is to make a test purchase, and see if everything is good, there are several main aspects that should be reviewed and verified that they work as expected:
.Store content: Review the content of the site carefully, because the presence of errors will negatively affect the user experience, and visitors may feel unprofessional.
• Responsiveness to small screens: Check that the store works well on the screens of phones and tablets.
• Work on multiple browsers: Try accessing your online store from several browsers, especially popular browsers.
We come to the most important step in the online store, securing the store, as online stores are not safe from theft attempts. Therefore, you must secure the site by purchasing a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate that will secure your location data and the personal information of your customers. All online stores are required to support this protocol to encrypt sensitive information, such as credit card data and customers’ personal information.
Your customers expect their personal information to remain secure when they buy from your store, so adopting this protocol is necessary to gain the trust of buyers, in addition to Google adopting this encryption as a ranking factor. Browsers are now warning against sites that do not support it. Please be careful not to store your customers’ credit card numbers in the site’s database, because keeping them in the server is a very dangerous source, and if they are hacked and leaked, you will be legally liable to your customers.
9- Online store marketing
There is no doubt that marketing is one of the most important success factors for your online store, so marketing must be based on an organized plan and be responsible for it by a specialized person There are several different means of marketing the online store:
• Marketing through Google Ads (Adwords).
• Social media marketing.
• Email marketing.
• Content Marketing
Direct Marketing •
What are the platforms for creating online stores?
The online store builder is a software platform that enables you to build your own integrated online store, helps you display your products, manage your sales, and help you accomplish all the basic tasks associated with the store efficiently and effectively E-store creation platforms or what is known as eCommerce Platforms vary in ease of use, flexibility, prices, and in the features and services they offer There are many e-store building platforms and sites available, some of these platforms It provides you with comprehensive services related to this store such as web hosting service, SEO optimization service for your store products, product shipping service etc. and some of them leave it to you to manage these things yourself.
There are two types of free and paid e-store creation platforms, for example, Shopify is the best platform for creating e-stores in the world, and its biggest problem is the lack of support for the Arabic language, if you are fluent in English and want to create an online store targeting foreign countries, you will not find better than Shopify, and also the basket platform is a distinct Saudi platform for creating electronic stores, providing all the solutions that must be attached to the online store, the basket platform works so far in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia only But when it comes to the professional online store away from open platforms, you must turn to paid platforms because free platforms are more vulnerable to hacking and hackers, as an example of a professional online store creation platform, Future Vision.
From the above, we knew the basics of creating an online store.
The best professional online store design company in Saudi Arabia
When talking about creating your online store, it is necessary to know the best professional online store design company, which must take into account all the factors that we talked about this is to create a professional online store, which is Future Vision.
Is the online store project profitable?
Many statistics that have been made about the establishment of an online store indicated that the percentage of online sales increased during 2020 by about 45% from the past two years.
E-commerce and online buying and selling profits accounted for about 22% of the total traditional sales profits for the same year.
Therefore, we can conclude that the online store project is profitable, and if you own a business on the ground, you can increase your profits by designing an online store and spreading more, which achieves you more customers and increases sales.
Here are profitable online store ideas in 2022
According to the latest statistics, here are 9 different ideas for starting your online store
• Pesticide-free organic vegetables and fruits store.
• A store selling healthy food.
• A store selling natural products for hair and skin.
• Wedding Supply Store.
• Shop selling embroidered fabrics.
• Shop for the manufacture and sale of candles.
• Prints shop on demand.
• A pastry and bakery shop.
.A meter for selling children’s supplies
The cost of establishing an online store in Saudi Arabia
The question of the budget may be confusing to some, but it should be very clear, and here comes the question, what do you actually need to get started?
There are intuitive basic costs, such as store setup, hosting, and requirements. If you decide to build an online store through special programming, it may cost you from $500 to $1,000 when hiring a freelancer or $1,000 to $5,000, and there are other costs.
Purchase of templates: The price ranges from $50 to $200 paid only once.
Add-on costs: No matter how beautiful and distinctive the template is, you will need some add-ons to improve from your online store.
Platform subscriptions: If you decide to build your site on online store creation platforms, there will be a fee paid periodically.
Why is marketing important for the online store?
1. Reach millions of customers in a short time.
2. Improve market access.
3. Influencing purchasing decisions
4.Increase sales in your online store in a short time
How to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your online store
SWOT, which is the analysis that is relied upon to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the online store
SWAT analysis or as it is called “SWOT analysis tool” and also “SWOT matrix”, is a method and method of analysis that helps companies and business organizations in general to assess their competitive position in the market.
This is done by identifying its strengths and weaknesses, while discovering all the threats surrounding the company, in addition to identifying the opportunities available to it, so that it can develop effective plans and strategies based on accurate information that clarifies the company’s position.
SWOT analysis is one of the most important systems and models that companies rely on in developing their business strategy. Where building and preparing various short or long-term plans for various work activities within the organization to achieve the desired business goals and also generate accurate future visions
What are the elements of SWOT analysis?
1. Strengths
2. Weaknesses
3. Opportunities
4. Threats
The four words as described above indicate the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, as well as surrounding threats, all of which relate to the analysis of the internal and external environment.
Why entrepreneurs should own an online store?
Owning your online store is a marketing tool that allows you to make profits more quickly, in addition to the speed of reaching customers, you can sell to all over the world at any time.
Features you can find in the design of an online store through Future Vision
Let me tell you, dear customer, about the advantages that you will find when you create an online store from Future Vision Company
It provides a professional, multi-section online store design, supports electronic payment in every available way, is easy to use, classifies a secure platform on user data, supports more than one language, is a website and electronic applications on mobile and marketing has a professional meaning.
Finally, dear customer, the sea of electronic stores and e-marketing is large, and for more information about them, you can visit the Future Vision website.
Frequently Questions
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce is a new term in the world of economics that appeared with the spread of the Internet at the beginning of the nineties of the twentieth century, but some researchers pointed to its existence from the seventies in the last century through electronic information exchange systems between industrial companies.
How Much Does It Cost to Have an Online Store?
There are intuitive basic costs, such as store setup, hosting, and requirements. If you decide to build an online store through special programming, it may cost you from $500 to $1,000 when hiring a freelancer or $1,000 to $5,000.
What is an online store?
We can define an online store as a platform for buying and selling various goods or services over the Internet.
What are the advantages of online stores?
1-Buy from anywhere in the world
One of the most important features of the online store is that it allows the user to buy or sell from anywhere in the world, provided that the store provides the delivery of products to this country, and some stores provide the ability to reserve the product, and notify the user of its availability so that he can buy it directly with ease and without many complications.
2- Different and varied payment methods
Many online stores provide a range of different payment methods, such as credit card payment, or payment on shipping, which gives flexibility to the user when buying from the online store, and allows the customer to choose the most appropriate method for him.
3-Save time and effort for the consumer
Based on No. 1 and No. 2, it is natural that e-commerce is a saving of time and effort for the consumer to buy through the store at any time and from anywhere in the world, and this gives them great flexibility, as the customer does not have to go to the store to buy his needs, and adhere to working hours that may not suit his circumstances, and replace this with shopping through the computer, or even the smart phone applications of the online store.
What are the basic factors that must be available in your online store?
–Store name
-Procedures for receiving and handling complaints
-Commercial Registration Name and Number
-Privacy Policy
-Tax number