E-Commerce

E-commerce involves the buying and selling of goods and services, as well as the transfer of money and data over the internet. The terms electronic commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably. E-Commerce is a translation of the term electronic commerce from English and encompasses all types of transactions conducted over the internet. The concept of electronic commerce includes retail stores selling physical products like clothing and the sale of various services ranging from cybersecurity to hotel reservations.

How Does E-Commerce Work?

Customers access online stores through the relevant pages of the website using their devices. They can browse and order the products and services offered by these stores.

When an order is placed, the customer's web browser communicates with the e-commerce website's server. Order information is sent to a central computer known as the order manager. The information is then transmitted to a database that manages inventory levels.

Once the order is confirmed, the order manager informs the store's web server. A message is displayed to the customer indicating that their order has been confirmed. The order manager then sends the order information to the warehouse or fulfillment department, notifying that the product or service will be delivered to the customer. At this point, tangible and digital products are shipped to the customer or access to a service is provided.

Platforms that host e-commerce transactions include sites like Amazon; additionally, SaaS software tools are used that allow customers to rent online store infrastructure.

Steps to Start an E-Commerce Business

If you want to start an e-commerce business, you must first decide what you want to sell. Here are some steps you can follow to get started:

• Research various ideas
• Ensure there is demand for the products you want to sell
• Determine how you will sell and ship the products to customers
• Find suppliers and manufacturers
• Choose which online channels you will sell through (e.g., Amazon store)
• Create an e-commerce website or online store, upload the products
• Develop a plan for your execution strategy
• Start attracting customers with promotions

Top 10 E-Commerce Companies

Amazon:

Market Value: $867.58 billion

Location: United States

Retail giant Amazon leads the pack with an impressive market value. Its revenue has consistently grown over the years, reaching $524.9 billion in the 12 months ending in the first quarter of 2023.

Walmart:

Market Value: $387.72 billion

Location: United States

U.S.-based Walmart ranks second. Although its market value is less than half of Amazon’s, it remains a significant player in the e-commerce industry.

Home Depot:

Market Value: $324.85 billion

Location: United States

Third place goes to another American company, The Home Depot. It is a major player in the retail sector and holds significant market value.

Alibaba:

Market Value: $226.76 billion

Location: China

The fourth place belongs to the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma. The company has seen rapid growth, tripling its net income from 2018 to 2022.

Reliance Industries:

Market Value: $206.31 billion

Location: India

Based in Mumbai, India, Reliance Industries ranks as the fifth largest online retail company globally. It holds significant value in the e-commerce sector.

Prosus:

Market Value: $206.01 billion

Location: Netherlands

Sixth place is occupied by the Dutch company Prosus. It operates in various sectors, including e-commerce, and has a strong market strategy.

Costco Wholesale Corporation:

Market Value: $205.34 billion

Location: United States

U.S.-based Costco Wholesale Corporation ranks seventh. Known for its membership-based retail model, it has achieved significant market value.

Meituan Dianping:

Market Value: $145.31 billion

Location: China

Chinese firm Meituan Dianping is in eighth place. It specializes in providing various services, including food delivery and hotel bookings, through its e-commerce platform.

Pinduoduo:

Market Value: $106.25 billion

Location: China

Another Chinese company, Pinduoduo, ranks ninth. It has gained popularity with its group buying model and affordable products.

JD.com:

Market Value: $88.36 billion

Location: China

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com rounds out the list. It is known for its logistics capabilities and a wide range of products.

Top 5 E-Commerce Website Builder Programs

Shopify:

Shopify stands out among its competitors for its fast and easy operation and is a preferred builder program.

Advantages of Shopify: It is easy to set up and offers all the tools you need. It is popular and effective, so support and resources are top-notch.

Disadvantages of Shopify: If you add many additional programs, your budget may increase significantly.

Shopify has been operating for over 17 years with millions of stores, making it difficult to find a better option for most small businesses looking to quickly launch an online store.

Even if you have never created a website before, there is no difficulty in using Shopify's web program. Everything is clearly labeled, and the setup guide is comprehensive. Operations such as designing your store, adding products, creating discounts, configuring payment options, and checking your sales numbers are straightforward and mostly well-explained. Shopify offers 12 free themes and 160 paid themes starting at $150. Shopify is very popular, and you can find many themes here. Just visit apps.shopify.com and find the program you need.

Like many programs, Shopify has added deeply integrated AI features called Magic to its program. Some functions, such as generating product descriptions or text for your site, are more accessible with this website.

Square Online:

Square Online is an easy-to-use and affordable e-commerce website builder. You can derive great value from Square Online’s sales features and customer support, although its design flexibility is somewhat limited.

In 2018, Square acquired Weebly, one of the highest-rated website builders. Having conquered the payments world, Square now has everything needed to set up e-commerce stores. This site is very similar to Weebly in many features. However, it has some new features and a free e-commerce plan.

Ecwid by Lightspeed:

Ecwid is easy to use and has enough features and functionality for small businesses. If you want to minimize your initial costs, starting with Ecwid is the best option. When you sign up, Ecwid allows you to integrate your store with your existing website – the program supports most platforms like WordPress, Weebly, Drupal, and others.

BigCommerce:

BigCommerce operates on the Saas model, a centralized, subscription-based system. Founded in 2009 in Austin, it has over 600 employees. While it shares many similarities with its closest competitor Shopify, there are significant differences in the services offered by the two companies.

With over 100 modern themes and hundreds of successful plugins across sectors, BigCommerce strives to provide users with highly functional program support in e-commerce. One of its newest features allows live intervention and development of the website theme from the control panel. Additionally, themes automatically ensure compatibility with mobile and tablet devices.

BigCommerce, the choice of global companies like Kodak, Toyota, and many others, offers its users excellent movement and usage systems. The preference of large e-commerce giants for BigCommerce is proof of the program's robustness and the strength of its support services.

Adobe Commerce:

Adobe Commerce is a platform that offers IT-customized trading experiences easily, quickly, and securely.

Based on an open ecosystem and spanning from B2C to B2B, Adobe Commerce provides solutions to create any shopping experience using digital commerce tools. It allows you to benefit from a fast and easy order management process thanks to order management and predictive artificial intelligence integration.

What is E-Commerce SEO?

E-Commerce SEO is a marketing technique used to increase traffic to your store by making it appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). A higher-ranked page will receive more traffic, so you must ensure your page ranks as high as possible.

Unlike paid ads that drive traffic to your web store through pay-per-click, SEO allows you to gain high-quality traffic with virtually no cost. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo rank your web store based on SEO. To improve SEO, you should pay attention to the content on your web store. It is possible to enhance e-commerce SEO further by having comprehensive web store product pages, optimized product descriptions, implementing a blog, and conducting a technical audit of your website.

Here are the main factors affecting your e-commerce site:

• The keywords you use to ensure your pages rank at the top
• The technical organization of your website
• Whether your website is mobile-friendly
• Internal links (within your e-commerce website) and external links (from other sources) leading to your site

All of these impact your e-commerce SEO and whether your web pages will appear on Google search engines.

Benefits of Having a Blog Page for E-Commerce

Blogs increase your e-commerce site's SEO ranking and positively contribute to user experience. There are about 200 elements that affect SEO ranking. Blog posts are an essential factor in this regard. You can achieve better rankings with keyword optimization. Additionally, you strengthen your site structure with internal links and attract the attention of search engines by regularly adding new content.

Blog posts increase organic and social media traffic and impact your brand's expertise and reliability. Blogs inform users, answer frequently asked questions, and positively influence CTAs (Call to Action) that increase conversions.

Regularly updated blogs make your brand's voice heard by users. They can be shared in email newsletters and increase sales through new product launches. Well-written blogs attract long-term traffic and keep the content up-to-date by refreshing old posts, which positively affects SEO.

Key Steps for E-Commerce SEO Keyword Research Strategy

First, you need to be aware of the term "keyword." Keywords are the words or phrases users use to search for something, also known as "search queries." When a search is conducted, the search engine decides to show the results to the user. We all know that the primary priority of a search engine is to show the best results to its users. For this, search engines periodically update their algorithms to determine relevant results for each search query. Therefore, it is crucial to choose keywords carefully.

When a user searches for something, the search engine finds the best result in its database to display to the user by identifying web pages containing the searched keyword.

Using the right keywords on your website's pages is vital to rank high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for relevant search terms. Ranking high on the SERP can increase the traffic to your site. Before conducting keyword research for e-commerce SEO, it is essential to understand terms such as search volume, long-tail keywords, and competition.

• Know your target audience, i.e., research what they are searching for
• Use keyword tools to find the best and most relevant keywords
• Choose keywords that will convert searchers into regular users
• Include at least 3-4 keywords in your list for each category you have
• Try to select keywords with low competition and high search volume

To conduct keyword research, you can visit any e-commerce site and enter the relevant keyword into the search system; the suggested words will be the most searched keywords by users. For example, after entering the Trendyol site and typing "women's shoes," other relevant keywords will appear.

Google offers a tool called "Google Suggest" to help you find the most suitable e-commerce SEO keywords. Let’s show how it works with an example:

Suppose you are searching for the keyword "women's bag" on Google suggest. After typing your search query, Google will show you some keywords that people use for searches.

SEO Competitor Analysis for E-Commerce Sites - Keyword Strategy

This is the easiest way to find keywords that will work well for your niche. Here’s how you can do it:

Go to the Google search section and search for your target keywords

Filter out the websites that sell similar products that appear in the SERP (to find the relevant version)

Go to SEMrush or Ahrefs, enter the URL of the competitor's website, and check the list of keywords they rank for in e-commerce SEO

There are two main approaches to conducting proper e-commerce SEO keyword research.

First, start from scratch and compile a list of relevant keywords that potential customers might use. Second, analyze your competitors' keywords to gain new ideas and leverage their success.

By combining these approaches, you increase your chances of attracting the right audience and converting them into customers. You can optimize your website and content.

Search intent is crucial for today's search results. Google's old algorithm prioritized keyword placement. Currently, the use of long-tail keywords is essential for beginners.

Long-tail keywords: These are keywords consisting of three or more words. Better conversions can be achieved with these types of keywords when targeting specific product and service searches.

Search volume: This refers to the number of searches a keyword receives each month. To attract more potential traffic and conversions, it is recommended to target keywords with higher search volumes. However, if the site is newly created, attention should also be paid to the competition rate.

Competition: It is important to consider the competition of keywords. Targeting keywords with high search volume and low competition is ideal for e-commerce SEO. Tools like Ahrefs.com, Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest are used to conduct effective keyword research for e-commerce.

How Do Google Bots Visit a Page? Fundamental Principles for Creating E-Commerce SEO

Search occurs in three stages, and not all pages go through each stage:

Crawling: Google downloads text, images, and videos from the pages it finds on the internet with automated programs called crawlers and visits each page.

Indexing: Google analyzes the text, images, and video files on the page and stores the information in a large database known as the Google index.

Serving Search Results: When a user searches on Google, Google returns information relevant to the user's query.

Crawling

The first stage is to discover which pages exist on the internet. There is no central registry for all web pages, so Google must continually search for new and updated pages and add them to the list of known pages. This process is called "URL discovery." Pages already visited by Google are recognized because when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page, other pages are also discovered: for example, a central page like a category page links to a new blog post. When you submit a list of pages (a site map) for Google to crawl, other pages are discovered.

Once Google discovers a URL for a page, it may visit the page to find out what’s on it. We use many computers to crawl billions of pages on the internet. The program that performs the crawl is called Google bot (also known as a crawler, robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. This bot is programmed to try not to overload the site by crawling pages too quickly. This mechanism is based on the site's responses (for example, HTTP 500 errors mean "slow down").

However, Googlebot does not crawl all the pages it discovers. Some pages may be allowed to be crawled by the site owner, while others can be viewed by accessing the site.

Reasons Why Google Might Not Crawl a Site

Problems with the server managing the site

Network problems

robots.txt rules

Once the page is crawled, Google tries to understand what the page is about. This stage is called indexing and involves processing and analyzing the text content and primary content tags and attributes, such as <title> elements and alt attributes, images, videos, and others.

During the indexing process, Google determines if a page is a duplicate of another page on the internet. The canonical page is the one that can appear in search results. Having two different but content-wise identical pages on our site signals Google that the content is duplicated. Therefore, a URL link indicating the primary canonical content must be placed on each page.

The data collected about the canonical page and its cluster can be stored in the Google index, a large database housed on thousands of computers. However, there is no guarantee that every page processed by Google will be indexed. Indexing also depends on the page's content and its metadata.

E-Commerce Business Models

In most cases, there are six main e-commerce business models under which organizations can be classified:

B2C

B2B

C2C

C2B

B2A

C2A

Let's take a closer look at each type of e-commerce.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C):

B2C online business involves transactions between a business and a consumer. This is one of the most commonly used models in the online business environment. For example, when you purchase clothes from an online retail store, it is called a business-to-consumer transaction.

Business-to-Business (B2B):

B2B online business is based on transactions between organizations such as manufacturers and distributors or retailers. This type of e-commerce does not serve individual consumers, and such transactions occur only between business organizations. Regularly, business-to-business transactions proceed based on the complete creation background of the product before offering it to customers.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C):

Perhaps the fastest-growing type of online business is the C2C online business model. Here, it refers to the exchange of products or services between consumers. This includes the network of connections that direct customers to customers, allowing them to sell products directly, as seen on platforms like eBay or Amazon.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B):

The C2B model is an ordinary e-commerce model supported and developed by technological advancements in modern times. C2B refers to individual buyers making their products or services accessible to business dealers. An example of this could be a website where various photographers make their photos available online for businesses to purchase (stock photos). The photographers use these photos in their businesses, creating various works of art.

Business-to-Administration (B2A):

This model covers transactions between online businesses and organizations. Examples include implementing various intergovernmental operations and providing various medical instruments for hospitals.

Consumer-to-Administration (C2A):

This involves buyers offering web products or services to an organization. C2A examples include taxes (submitting tax returns), health (making an appointment using an online service), and paying tuition fees for higher education. Both B2A and C2A revolve around extended capabilities within the service, aided by information innovation.

Social Media E-Commerce Marketing

Social media e-commerce marketing involves promoting an online store by creating brand awareness, interest in products and services, and driving sales.

Popular social media e-commerce tactics include:

Driving traffic to the e-commerce website

Selling products directly on social networks

Engaging with customers and prospects directly on social channels

Providing pre- and post-sales support to customers

Gathering information about your industry and market

Building an online social media community around your brand

Many brands use all the above tactics to create a thriving social media e-commerce marketing strategy.

You have likely heard the terms social media e-commerce marketing, social selling, and social commerce. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing.

Let's look at how they differ.

Social Media E-Commerce Marketing:

This involves e-commerce businesses using social media as a marketing channel to promote their brand, products, or services to create more sales and customer relationships.

Social Selling:

This refers to brands using social media to identify, connect with, and develop sales prospects. It is a tactic that helps businesses achieve sales goals through social media.

Think of social selling as modern relationship building. The goal is to connect with potential customers, offer support and guidance, and when the person decides to purchase a product, they focus their decision on your product or service. It involves the role of social skills and psychological factors.

Social Commerce:

This involves brands selling products or services directly on social media platforms like Facebook Shops, Instagram Shops, Pinterest Product Pins, or TikTok Shop.

Social commerce allows customers to shop, select, and complete their purchases without leaving the social media applications.