THREE STEPS TO GLOBAL ONLINE SELLING: BE IN LOCAL; GO ON GLOBAL

THIRAIKADAL ODIYUM
THIRAVIYAM THEDU

EARN YOUR FORTUNE EVEN BY
CROSSING THE SEAS-

- An old Tamil Sage by Poet Avvaiyar

This old Tamil adage is one hundred per cent true to its saying in this twenty-first century. The present-day Nano-technological breakthrough has shrunk the world marketplace into a small ball of a local market.

The projection by the statisticians is that by the year 2020 the e-commerce B to C spending shall be around 4,878 Billion and cross-border e-commerce sales shall be around 627 billion - 20% of the total e-commerce sales.

It is projected in the year 2020, in the Asia Pacific region alone the total increase in the cross-border sales shall be around 476 billion out of 1525 billion, 31% of the total sales. Taking into account, the huge amount of sales figure projection by worlds leading companies and the statisticians, it will be a safe deal for the online sellers to start their focus on the global online selling.

STEP 1. PLAN:

Before delving deep into the global selling prepare yourself in the following:

1. Registration of your company as an exporter according to your country's legal requirement.

2. Choose your product for the export. A guide map of products exported from various nations prepared by the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch is presented to you as a guide to choose.

Transforming World Atlas by by Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Transforming World Atlas by Bank of America Merrill Lynch

3. Make yourselves well aware of the legal obligations of your country's government regulations with regard to your products and export countries regulations.

4. Get the statistics of the number of exporters from your country for the product of your choice and the availability of the product. Too many players will affect the prospects of exports.

STEP 2. PREPARE:

1. Initially launch your online selling within your country to face out the obstacles, the bugs and blocks and fix them.

2. Develop a strong website, customer/ user-friendly and if possible language friendly. The world is moving towards mobile commerce and hence your site has to be adaptive to all the gadgets - mobiles, tablets and PCs.

3. Analyse the cost and fix a competitive price for your export products. Develop a dynamic pricing policy for your products.

4. Braze-up yourself to overcome the time difference you will be encountering from your export country.

5. Make arrangement for a return centre in the target export countries since return rate in the online market industry is high as 20% if we compare the same with the brick and mortar market return rate of 9%. This is being suggested because of the high cost of shipping back to your country's base.

STEP 3. LAUNCH:

Dear online sellers, you have planned, prepared and now you are ready for an easy launch.

There are two major ways to launch yourselves.

1. You can start small by attaching yourselves with the existing online marketplaces in the country of export. It will be easier and reliable and with less expenditure.

2. The alternative is to make yourselves available in the export country's local marketplace by using your website. In this type, there will be a long wait period for the business improvement with a high maintenance cost.

Tips and Tricks for sustainability:

Sustainability is the most important issue once you have gone global. Employ cost-effective solutions for easy maintenance and sustainability.
As long as you are dealing with two or three products it will be easier for you to maintain your presence. Once you have grown you have to face the inventories, uploading the images and attending to the queries etc., in untimely hours due to the time difference.
Use templates replies for immediate responses. Connect yourselves with a strong software solution to minimise the time spent in managing your sales and to maximize the quality time in improving your business.

SELLinALL has come out with this kind of solution which will manage your inventories, payment methods, order management etc., by providing a complete solution for all your business needs.

- Magic Inian -
(magicinian@magicinian.com)

5 Major challenges faced by e-Commerce sellers and ways to overcome it!

Based on a report by Google and Temasek Holdings, Southeast Asia’s (SEA) digital market could exceed US$200 billion before 2025. Southeast Asia’s digital economy is forecast to triple its size in the next 5 years. Read more on the challenges faced as a seller in the E-commerce marketplace, to help you decipher and be part of this immensely growing economy. E-commerce stores are on the rise due to a numerous reasons. As far as market association is concerned, E-commerce sites already have an existing network of buyers. So, selling your products becomes relatively easy as branding and advertising is already taken care of.As Sigmund Freud 's had rightly said “ I carefully consider my decisions as everything comes with pros and cons! ” Marketplace Management When it comes to South-East Asian E-commerce market, the most underestimated struggle is Fragmentation i.e. there are a number of e-commerce platforms in ASEAN countries attracting significant traffic, making

What you need to know about Gross Merchandise Value

Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is defined as the gross sales revenue generated over a period of time by an e-commerce platform before any deduction for fees or commission . It is used to track the growth rate of an e-commerce business since it measures the value of the total merchandise that has been sold through the site for a specific time period, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. Gross Merchandise Value = Number of Goods sold x Price of goods sold This metric is useful for e-commerce businesses that buy and store the merchandise from suppliers and delivers to customers when purchases are made. However, it cannot be used as a standalone metric for all online retail platforms. For e-commerce sites that operate as a Customer-to-Customer (C2C) business, they do not physically manage the goods. The total commissions generated and accrued expenses, such as delivery fees, advertising, return expenses incurred are more important to track for this business model. This is also known as Gro

Buy Online, Pickup in Store

A National Retail Federation study on Consumer Views in late October 2019 revealed that70% of the survey participants would pay for a Buy-online, pick-up-in-store service (BOPIS). BOPIS has emerged as a convenient option not only for consumers but retailers that invested in brick-and-mortar stores. Growth in online retail sales was overtaking traditional brick-and-mortar retail before the pandemic and BOPIS was being adopted by top retailers. With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, a Digital Commerce 360 survey in late 2020 showed results that 43.7% of the top 500 retailers with physical stores were offering BOPIS — up from 6.9% before the pandemic started. BOPIS, also known as click-and-collect or curbside- pickup provides a safe, contact-free way to shop online and pick up the ordered items. In order to implement BOPIS, a retailer needs to implement the following tools: 1) A website or app where customers can shop and place orders for the products online 2) A brick-and-mortar locatio