Alibaba a Chinese B2B e-commerce giant is on the roll in the recent times. The firm has been in the news for its mergers and acquisitions. It had acquired the Chinese video streaming site Youku. Currently, the firm is again in the news for having backed the payments start-up Paytm. The firm is planning to partner with Paytm, so that it can expand its reach in the Indian markets. Alibaba is planning to invest $50 Bn towards three year expansion of the firm in India.
Paytm, ecommerce payments, has plans towards expansion. It started out as a payment app, which was initially into cashless recharges. Slowly, it went on to include other categories also in the cashless network. Currently, Paytm operates similar to a online marketplace that allows various merchants to sell and buy from it. It offers cashless facility, making online commerce easy, and convenient.
With the $50 Bn investment that is being offered to the start-up, they are planning to build a fully fledged financial services group, which will offer all types of financial services. They are all set to acquire the necessary license from RBI. Paytm has taken small steps since its inception, in order to build trust, and offer capable services.
For any ecommerce app development, it is always good to choose a niche, and build their brand in it. This would prepare them for a fully fledged product/service under ecommerce development.
Here’s how you should proceed with your own similar e-commerce development at the start-up stage.
When you are creating an e-commerce site, you will need consider the following points
When you build an e-commerce store, you should always choose a single product to sell. Amazon is an excellent example of niche selling. Amazon started out with books, as the selling category. It established a name in this category, and built its brand around books. Eventually, it took off to other categories, and today sells everything that you need to buy online.
If you want to develop similar business model, you need to understand that Amazon built a relationship with its customers. It worked on building trust online, which is important. Once, Amazon became a customer-centric brand online, it started delivering products in other categories as well. To build trust, Amazon continuously worked on logistics and secure payments, which eventually led to customer satisfaction. It also worked on its site, offering good interface leading to amazing experience.
When working with a single niche, you know what the experience needs to be, and can build your brand around that experience. It becomes difficult when you are working with different products. Managing the inventory and other ecommerce tasks also become easy with a single product.
Ideally, you should start with a niche, before entering different categories. Paytm has also adopted this progressive route, which has led to its popularity in the defined segment.