Online Tools for Enabling Purchase and Sales for B2C Businesses

With the evolution of Internet, the business environment has changed. Businesses large and small today are operationally smarter. The modes of communication have changed and so have the methodologies which many businesses apply and leverage to communicate with and engage their customers.

Purchase and Sales: critical business functions
E-commerce has literally changed the way businesses transact. As customers are increasingly checking reviews and buying online, businesses are going the extra mile to ensure that they reach out to their customers, where they are thronging.

Advantages of being online?

1. More and more customers are going online now and are increasingly making quick buy decisions online hence for businesses capturing these new age customers is easier online
2. Low Cost of customer acquisition: for Small and Medium Enterprises E-commerce is a boon.
3. Providing enhanced and better value to existing customers while reducing down transactional cost of customer service
4. Increasing customer loyalty: by reaching out and rewarding loyal customers easily
5. Ease of updated information flow to attract potential buyers
6. Market research: powerful market research to increase customer understanding

Examples of Online tools for B2C businesses:

• ebay.in

Ebay, as we know of it, is one of the largest portals globally connecting buyers and sellers. Anyone can list himself/ herself as a seller on Ebay and start selling online. Lakhs of potential buyers throng the online marketplace for fantastic deals, some of which are generally not available otherwise. Though registration on Ebay is free, but it restricts the seller in terms of the number of product categories, till you have a premium account.

• indiaplaza.in

Again an online shopping portal which has over 1 million online transacting customers globally. It provides both free and paid listings of products which buyers can go through and buy finally.

• shopping.rediff.com

One of the most trusted online shopping portals. Rediff shopping is a large online marketplace where sellers list their products freely, which are available to millions of buyers across the world. The one differentiator which Rediff shopping has is: it enables sale and purchase of majorly three services:

• products
• gifts AND
• auctions

• naaptol.com

An early entrant social shopping portal in India. Naaptol capitalizes on the concept of web 2.0 and comparison based reviews and shopping to affect the customers buying decisions. Product listing is free on this site. Naaptol is more consumer centric in its approach as it provides comparison between the various category of products which empowers the customer to take better decisions.

Such B2C online shopping networks provide lucrative options for the customer to have the same experience while shopping online as he/ she has while shopping regularly from shops and other establishments. Eg: many online shopping portals provide the facility of free delivery. Some even go to the extent of COD  (cash on delivery). Product reviews of the various listed products enable the customers to take better buying decisions.

Best deals for SMEs

Not only do these online B2C networks provide the best deals (as buyers) for SMEs, but they actually prove as fantastic platforms for small businesses to boost sales by directly reaching out to the engaged buyers. Also this creates a dialog between the seller (SME) and the buyer while the cost of acquiring new clients goes down.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!