Ebusiness BA 685: Starting An Online Business

Starting an Online Business
Armstead Deas eBusiness BA 685
Grantham University

To start an online business, it is best to find a niche product that consumers have difficulty finding in anywhere like malls or any other brick and mortar places. You must figure how are you going to get your product to the customer so, you have to take shipping into consideration. Then you need an ecommerce enabled website. This can either be a new site developed from scratch, or an existing site to which you can add ecommerce shopping cart capabilities. Next is determining how are going to accept payments online. This usually entails obtaining a merchant account and accepting credit cards through an online payment gateway. PayPal seems to be

How about starting a business where you sell your products online? If so, then you'll be joining the millions of entrepreneurs who have carved out a niche in the world of e-commerce. At its core, e-commerce refers to the purchase and sale of goods and/or services via electronic channels such as the Internet. E-commerce was founded in the early 60s via an electronic data interchange (EDI) on value-added networks (VANs). It was by innovation that this medium grew with the increased availability of internet access and the advent of popular online sellers in the 90s and early 2000s. Amazon started as a book-shipping business in Jeff Bezos' garage in 1995. EBay, which enables consumers to sell to each other online, introduced online auctions in 1995 and exploded with the 1997 Beanie Babies frenzy (Arline,

The innovation of mobile devices became more popular and with the use of applications or Apps mobile commerce has become its own market. With Facebook and Pinterest being a largest of the social media sites each has become an important catalyst for e-commerce. As of 2014, Facebook drove 85 percent of social media-originating sales on e-commerce platform Shopify, according to Paymill (Arline, 2015). The ever so rapid changing market represents a vast opportunity for businesses to improve their relevance and expand their market online and across the world. In 2013, worldwide e-commerce sales reached $1.2 trillion, and U.S. mobile sales reached $38 billion, according to Statista (2016). In recent years, mobile shopping has been on the rise, with customers increasingly using their mobile devices for various online shopping activities. According to a 2015 study regarding mobile shopping penetration worldwide, 46 percent of internet users in the Asia Pacific region and 20 percent of those in North America had purchased products via a mobile device, whether smartphone or tablet computer (Statista, 2016). As of 2013, Amazon is the worldwide leading e-retailer, as well as the number one m-retailer globally. Schneider (2015) Defines the four elements of electronic commerce: B2B, B2C, C2B and C2C.
• B2B (Business to Business) - This involves companies doing business with