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The global market has already developed rapidly, and the pandemic has only accelerated this process. In 2021, $601.75 billion worth of goods were sold in online stores in the US alone, according to Digital Commerce 360. And this year, when most of the world’s population stays at home and buys online, the numbers will only grow.
The world has moved online, and therefore more and more entrepreneurs are interested in the opportunity to sell their products on the global network. Therefore, they are looking for high-quality ecommerce marketplace development.
E-commerce is at its peak right now. During the epidemic, people began to spend more time on the Internet, because now they study, work, and relax there, and, accordingly, buy goods. According to Datainsight, in April 2021, the average monthly turnover of popular online stores increased by 36% compared to April 2020.
This trend is set to continue as many people experience the convenience of online shopping. And if you have been thinking about starting an e-commerce business or want to enter the international market, now is the perfect time to do so.
How to sell on the Internet – your store
When entering the international market, you need to immediately decide whether you want to create your own store or use the services of ready-made online sales services. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages.
You can create your online store using existing e-commerce engines. Engines allow you to make a completely unique site and customize it “for yourself”.
What are the benefits of your online store?
- Full control. You choose the appearance of the store, set prices, manage shipping, and process orders. You have complete freedom of action and decision.
- You do not depend on intermediaries and do not pay commissions to third-party services.
- Lower costs compared to opening an offline store. You do not rent a room, do not invest in its design, do not hire staff.
- An online store allows you to reach a large audience. You do not depend on geo-referencing, but trade all over the world.
- There are no competitors within your site.
How to create your own online store? Popular “engines”
We will consider the most popular e-commerce CMS that are relevant for the CIS countries and allow you to go international.
- The most popular open source online store plugin built for WordPress.
- A completely free and open source resource for creating online stores written in PHP.
- It is also a fairly popular open source e-commerce service based on PHP and MySQL. More than 150 thousand online stores operate on this platform.
- Based on this engine, you can create an online store of any complexity. It is open source, the software is written in PHP.
How to sell online without your own online store
If uniqueness and full control over the store are not the main thing for you and you are specifically interested in sales, then it is more convenient to enter the international market using ready-made trading platforms.
This option is convenient because most of the technical issues are resolved for you by the site. Suitable for sale in small quantities of a limited number of goods.
Store as a Service: Etsy, Amazon, BigCommerce, Shopify
Conclusion
People have started to shop more online, so now is a great time to enter the international market. There are many ways to start your own business: create your own store using engines or constructors, go to global trading platforms and start making money there. Each of the methods has both advantages and disadvantages. Before starting trading, you need to carefully study all the options and specific engines/constructors/platforms.
Separately, you need to choose the method of receiving payment. In the article, we reviewed the most popular payment gateways that sellers from the CIS work with.
And even if at first everything seems complicated, over time, everyone understands and delves into the features of all the mechanisms. Promoting your business will require effort and investment, but sooner or later it will pay off.
Good luck!
