What is e-commerce? What to know before you sell online

With technology advancing so fast, almost every activity Marketing online is now moving strongly online. The 4.0 revolution has made e-commerce a lasting trend. So what is e-commerce? What do you need to know about e-commerce? This article from MONA Media will answer all your questions.

What is e-commerce?

E-commerce is simply an online space where sellers and consumers buy and sell.
As information technology grows, e-commerce has become an essential business platform for companies and for traditional offline sellers too.

E-commerce is now an important part of daily life and something many people need. But each platform has its own characteristics: interface, management policies, customer care, commission, extra fees and more.

Popular e-commerce platforms in Vietnam

Shopee e-commerce platform

Launched nearly 8 years ago, Shopee has achieved a great deal and has very high brand recognition in Vietnam. From a "young" e-commerce site, Shopee has become a "giant" leading the e-commerce field.

Shopee runs effective marketing policies that hit Vietnamese users' psychology, such as monthly promotions and free shipping for orders over 50k or 100k. Having won over users in Vietnam, the platform has also received large investments from leading financial groups worldwide.

TiKi

After 10 years in the market, TiKi is now among the top 5 e-commerce giants. It used to be known as an online bookstore. 

After years of growth and a warm reception from book lovers, Tiki expanded its sales channels to other product groups such as home appliances, fashion and electronics.

Lazada e-commerce platform

Launched in 2012, with more than 10 years of growth and development. Lazada e-commerce platform still has a strong following among users in Vietnam. In 2015 the group was acquired by Alibaba, which sped up its growth.

Sendo

Sendo is an e-commerce platform owned by Sen Đỏ Technology Joint Stock Company and launched in 2012. Today Sendo is one of the leading e-commerce platforms in Vietnam.

Ecommerce vs. e-business

E-business is broader in scope E commerce because it covers more than the internet: it also includes exchanging services with customers and working with business partners.

E-commerce is considered just one part of e-business. The two concepts complement each other in business operations.

Here is what managers need to know to tell the two concepts apart:

• E-commerce is the exchange of information and business transactions over computers and networks. It means buying and selling through digital channels.
• E-business covers activities that involve money and alliances (transactions within one organization).

Key features of an e-commerce website

Online shopping

Each e-commerce platform has its own search and browsing interface, on a website or in an app. With smart AI, platforms suggest the products that suit you best based on your interests and your history on the platform (which products you looked at longest, which ones you hesitated between, and so on).

Online purchase

Buying online used to have many limits before e-commerce and online stores became common. The biggest issues were trust, purchase and return policies, and shipping. As e-commerce spread and settled these issues, it brought big benefits to both sellers and consumers.

E-commerce also makes it much easier to sell digital products such as courses, e-books, audio files and videos.

Shipping (delivery and returns)

Shipping and returns are essential parts of selling online. Customers pay with more confidence because the platform guarantees refunds and returns if something goes wrong.

This is an advantage that attracts many individual sellers from social media to the platform, since customers want guaranteed delivery policies.

Inventory management

A professional inventory management tool is one of the most important factors that helps

• Casual individual sellers can grow their business model and manage goods more professionally, with fewer mistakes and better profit.
• Professional sellers save a great deal of time, staff and money on a tool that is essential to running a business.

Promotion

Promotions are something every business relies on. Each e-commerce platform has agreements and support policies that let sellers offer the best prices to their customers (for example Shopee's price-match refund policy).

*However, this policy only applies to businesses and professional sellers with a registered brand and full documents.

>>> See also: E-commerce website design service

Types of e-commerce operations

Email

This is a very common form of e-commerce activity, used by many companies and organizations in their transactions.

Electronic payment

Payment through internet-based online services, covering several areas: e-wallets, purchase payments, digital banking and FEDI (financial electronic data interchange).

Electronic data interchange

EDI (electronic data interchange) is the exchange of data from one computer to another using an agreed standard for how the information is structured.

Content delivery

Digital goods whose content can be exchanged online. Their value lies in the content itself.

Business models in e-commerce

E-commerce brings together many different business models, because the platform handles key business processes well: the shopping app system, payment methods, shipping and more.

The main e-commerce models today are:

• B2B (Business to Business): buying and selling between businesses, or between a manufacturer and its agents and retailers.
• B2C (Business to Customer): buying and selling between a seller and consumers. If you sell on a platform as a registered business with full documents, you get more benefits and priority.
• C2C (Consumer To Consumer): commercial transactions between consumers through a third party, usually online. The third party is a website that acts as an intermediary for sales or auctions.
• C2B (Consumer To Business): a model where consumers create value and then sell it to businesses.
• B2E (Business To Employee): a model where a business uses its internal network to provide products and services to its own employees.
• B2G (Business To Government): a model where businesses sell their products to national government bodies. It is more complex than the models above and calls for a lot of experience and knowledge of the policies of many countries.
• G2G (Government To Government): cooperation between levels, departments and agencies of one government and another, not commercial in nature.
• G2B (Government To Business): non-commercial online interaction between the government and businesses. In Vietnam this model is used through communication campaigns or direct mail.
• G2C (Government To Citizen): simply put, government services delivered to citizens. 

*Note: in Vietnam there are currently 3 main business models on e-commerce platforms: B2B, B2C and C2C.

How do you run a store on e-commerce platforms? MONA Media gives businesses a way to grow revenue on digital platforms with a Professional e-commerce operations service.

Our full-package e-commerce management service at MONA includes:

• Shopee store setup service, Lazada and TikTok Shop stores set up to SEO standards for interface, content, images and more.
• Optimizing the marketing channels that suit your brand
• Support with multi-channel, multi-platform ad content
• Full management and operations, including: Shopee management service, TikTok Shop management service,…
• Reporting and optimizing the store plan based on real-time data

Click the link below to start working with MONA Media on your e-commerce business.

Benefits of an e-commerce platform

Benefits of e-commerce for businesses

E-commerce gives small sellers and large companies more opportunities and tools to sell more products at the lowest cost:

• Reach an unlimited number of customers, with no limits from distance or store location. Customers can view every specification and photo of a product in your store.
• Cut costs sharply by using the platform's own operating system, which has tools for the whole sales process from inventory to payment and shipping.
• Grow your brand through the events and promotions run by the platform, which draw large numbers of consumers.

Benefits of e-commerce for consumers

For consumers, e-commerce platforms let them:

• Save time on shopping. You can sit at home with a phone or computer and browse until you find what you want.
• Choose freely among goods and products and compare prices across sellers.
• Have a courier deliver goods to the door without carrying them home from the store.

The role of e-commerce services in society

For society, e-commerce is an effective way to do business that fits the fast-growing market in the era of technology 4.0.

E-commerce also creates a new playing field for businesses. It requires them to adapt, change and renew their business methods, and above all to compete well. This drives the growth of the economy as a whole and of individual businesses.

So e-commerce matters a great deal to individuals, businesses and society as a whole. It also brings big challenges, and things need to change to get good results. In particular:

For government regulators, it is often hard to build or apply policies. For individuals and organizations, it is hard to build trust between buyers and sellers. Sellers worry about buyers refusing delivery, "bombing" orders and not paying, while buyers worry about product quality because of bad actors taking advantage.

Businesses also need to adjust their structure, workflows and staffing when moving into e-commerce. Building a technology platform is not easy, so you need a suitable strategy that balances e-commerce and offline business.

Even though e-commerce draws a large customer base and brings many benefits to businesses, this model still has management challenges.

What are the limitations of e-commerce?

• Sellers struggle whenever the platform changes its policies, fees or commission percentages, and their profit takes the hit
• If you are a small seller without a registered brand and not certified as an "official store" (such as Lazada Mall or Shopee Mall), your reach to customers is limited, and it gets harder as more competitors join.
• Support for sellers is still thin, and sellers are often at a disadvantage in disputes with buyers.
• If you hit a technical problem or can no longer sell on the platform, your past customers will not know how to find you, because of the platform's strict information privacy policy.

If you decide to build your own e-commerce website, the platform most people choose today is WooCommerce. See the plans WooCommerce online store MONA offers to get a sense of the scope and cost.

Why do you get "knocked out" on e-commerce platforms?

Not investing enough in visuals

Good-looking visuals are one of the most important competitive factors. People scan information quickly these days, and if your images do not make a good impression within 2 seconds, customers will scroll past, let alone click and buy.

If you invest in your images, you already beat 60% of ordinary sellers who all use the same pictures (usually stock product photos or photos taken from other sellers).

So how do you improve?

• If you cannot design, you can hire a freelance designer at a moderate fee, or a design company if you want a more professional, polished result.
• If you have a small budget and want to do it yourself, you can use a simple design tool such as Canva.

Difficulty running marketing campaigns

Platform subsidies and free shipping are getting rarer and less attractive. If you have not registered a brand or put money into ads, it is very hard to reach buyers.

So you need to plan your marketing yourself and combine several sales channels to run the most attractive, efficient campaigns. The most common and easiest options are promoting through social media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) or running an affiliate marketing campaign to save money.

Not enough skill in finance and cash flow management

Ordinary sellers often pay little attention to finance, because all they want is more orders today than yesterday and more tomorrow than today. That is a mistake that makes it hard to grow and can even cause losses if you are not careful with the numbers. On e-commerce platforms you can easily have thousands of orders and negative revenue.

Management software and Excel alone are not enough to manage finances well. To grow steadily and sustainably, you need to study and learn the professional and academic knowledge.

Not learning how to use tracking and measurement tools

Learn to use tracking and measurement tools. The numbers are a partner that helps you build an effective marketing plan, keep costs down and target the right audience for strong revenue.

Each platform shares different data and offers different tools, so you need to look into all of them and get used to them.

E-commerce is no longer just a trend. It has become a foundation for lasting business growth. Investing properly in online selling on e-commerce platforms helps a brand expand its market, reach potential customers quickly and keep marketing costs down. Now is the time for your business to seize the opportunity and step by step establish its position on today's marketplaces in the digital era.

Moving from understanding e-commerce to doing it often stalls at choosing a platform: marketplace, your own website, or both. Marketplaces bring ready-made traffic, but you pay commission and do not keep the customer data. A website of your own is the other way around. If you are undecided, give the question to the MONA Media team to look at.