The Saudi e-commerce market is growing strongly these days, especially with the increase in consumers enthusiastic about online shopping. Furthermore, the idea of creating an online store targeting the Saudi market has become attractive to investors and entrepreneurs around the world, given the facilities and support provided to them by the government.
Market reports on e-commerce in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been extremely positive recently, both in terms of growth and future prospects. This has encouraged many young people and entrepreneurs to invest part of their money in creating an online store, especially after the emergence of e-commerce store design companies with the lowest possible costs, such as the Salla platform. You too can create a buying and selling website at the lowest possible costs through Salla, as it is the perfect way to generate some extra income.
In this article, we will take you on a detailed tour of how to create a professional online store that you can use to sell your products.
To help you follow this guide easily, we have divided it into 7 different sections:
1- What is an online store?
2- Online store business plan
3- Steps to create an online store
4- Designing a professional online store for free
5- Steps to market your online store
6- How to activate the best Saudi payment gateways on your store
7- How to choose the best shipping companies for your store
1- What is an online store?
Known in English as an Online Store or Ecommerce Website, it is an integral part of online marketing operations. It is a website for displaying services or products on the internet in a dynamic and interactive way.
It enables people to view products and learn about their details through attractive images and accurate descriptions, in order to induce consumers to purchase them. The store also commissions shipping companies to deliver purchases to the customer.
Creating a professional online store for your trade or business is no longer a luxury, but an effective way to improve your sales and increase their revenue.
Advantages of an online store for the customer
- They can buy anything that comes to mind while sitting on their couch at home. The customer enters the online store, browses through its various sections, chooses the product that suits them, places it in the cart, and then completes the purchase process, all in just a few minutes.
- It helps them discover offers and the best prices easily. The customer deals with more than one store or platform without moving from their place to find the best prices and the best places. In fact, there are sites now whose main idea is to display the price of a single product from multiple online stores.
- It gives them the opportunity to review different options within multiple stores before completing the purchase.
- It provides them with diverse, guaranteed, secure, and easy payment options.
- It clarifies previous customer ratings for any product before purchasing it.
- It facilitates the process of searching and shopping for specific products.
Statistics on e-commerce in Saudi Arabia
E-commerce sales are expected to account for 17.5% of retail sales worldwide by 2021.
It is also expected that revenues will show an annual growth rate during (2020-2024) of 7.1%, leading to a projected market volume of US$ 8,290 million by 2024.
Are you still hesitant about entering the world of e-commerce?!
I know many people have great ideas about building an online store and entering the e-commerce field, yet they fail in the execution,
because they lack the knowledge of how to create a site optimized for sales rather than just for show.
"Knowing what you want to sell online is one thing, and knowing how to do it successfully is quite another."
2- E-commerce Business Plan
With global developments, changing consumer patterns and behaviors, and a strong shift toward online shopping, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the emergence of modern theories and trends in trade and marketing, creating a private online store has become an urgent desire for many entrepreneurs and young people who want to break free from their boring and limiting jobs,
and set out toward a better investment of their time, money, and ideas.
However, before taking the executive step, there are some points you must consider first. It is worth spending some time thinking about a business plan.
In this section, we will cover the essential components of an e-commerce business plan.
How to develop a business plan to build a professional online store
At the beginning of the planning stages, it is good to develop a framework for your store. This business model will continue to evolve as you create each section, so do not strive for a complete and perfect plan on the first attempt.
You will make adjustments to the plan in specific steps along the way.
There are many ways to sell products online, as well as different business models. The exact business model that you and your team follow should be the one that makes the most sense given your resources, skills, and interests.
In order to create the best business plan for your store, you need to define the following items:
1- Overview:
This section includes detailed information about your business, covering some features such as:
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Brand name (your store) and the names of the founder and partners.
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Domain: This is your URL address. It should be short, simple, unique, preferably reflecting the nature of your store, and contain no numbers.
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Mission: A short statement that demonstrates the clarity of your idea.
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Goals: The reasons behind the existence of your business.
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Vision: The long-term objectives you want to achieve; they must be realistic and ambitious to be motivating.
2- Market Analysis:
Everything regarding the target market, its size, and the nature and characteristics of the target audience.
3- Products and Services:
What you sell, and the key features of your products or services. It is preferable to conduct a detailed analysis including:
- -Strengths.
- -Weaknesses.
- -Opportunities.
- -Threats/Challenges.
- -The competitive advantage of your store and products over the rest of the market.
4- Marketing Plan:
How you intend to introduce people to your store, the steps you will follow, the marketing channels you will rely on, advertisements, etc.
(Learn the steps to build a marketing plan for your online store).
5- Pricing Plan:
What plan will you rely on to price your products?
This guide will help you with pricing products using professional pricing tools and strategies.
6- Operations and Execution:
The steps that will take place, starting from product quality testing to delivery to the customer and receiving feedback.
7- Financial Plan:
It is important to take a look at your current financial projections. This section includes three key financial statements: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the return on investment (ROI).
3- Steps to Create an Online Store
To build a professional online store, you must give sufficient attention to every step you take; to ensure you have a shopping site capable of attracting consumers and selling your products.
During this process, you will go through a number of essential stages and sub-steps.
3 Key Stages You Go Through While Building an Online Store
1- Preparation Stage: In this stage, you prepare for the activity and type of the store.
2- Implementation Stage: This concerns how to build an online store, set it up completely, and then display your products.
3- Testing Stage: After preparation and launch, you need to test every page and every strategy you are working on in your store to ensure the continuous development of your business.
In the next part of the article, we will try to cover some of these stages in as much detail as possible, while for others, we will dedicate separate articles that you can refer to after reading this piece.
Preparing to Build a Professional Online Store
In this stage, you are certainly one of two people:
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A merchant with an existing business already operating offline.
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Someone taking their first step into the world of e-commerce.
– You are a merchant with an existing business already operating offline
If you fall into this category, you are likely looking for the best way to build an online store, or for the steps to build a professional one to move your trade from a physical location to the online world.
This step is the best thing you have considered recently. But be careful; there is a common mistake most merchants in this category make: not taking the online store seriously enough, which leads their business to fail.
Building a professional online store is not just a supplementary service to your physical shop; it could be the fundamental step that guarantees your store's continued success and doubles its profits. Therefore, you must pay special attention to the following points:
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Updating products regularly: Syncing the number of items in inventory with all sales operations, whether in your physical store or your online store, helps you maintain success.
There are many software programs you can invest in to perform this task automatically. -
Focusing on marketing: Many merchants think that marketing is not as necessary a factor for increasing sales as direct advertising (brochures).
An online store requires various marketing operations, such as paid ads, content marketing, search engine marketing, and more.
(Learn how to market online store products and achieve the highest return on investment).
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Order delivery: Delivering orders will be one of the newest things for you. Previously, the customer would come to the store, choose, pay, and then take their items with them.
However, with online stores, it is completely different. If you think your employees can handle delivery to save on costs, this will not be a practical solution, especially during peak seasons and occasions.
It is better to rely on delivery agents or companies specialized in shipping and delivery to ensure a good experience for your store users (we will dedicate a whole section to this point shortly).
– You are taking your first step into the world of e-commerce and thinking about building a professional online store
Although the previous merchant—the owner of the traditional store—may be a few steps ahead in the field of trade and perhaps has more experience in dealing with consumers, the emerging merchant has a unique opportunity for success that the traditional merchant does not have, because:
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They are often young, more connected to technology, up-to-date with its latest developments, and flexible in adapting to it.
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They do not have fixed mental patterns or styles regarding trade and sales.
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They are keen to provide good service that surpasses that of a traditional merchant.
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They are eager to learn and discover gaps in their work to address them.
A startup merchant might be hindered by limited financial resources, which leads them to believe they cannot create a professional online store, especially when researching the costs or the best companies for building an e-commerce site.
However, this illusion has long since passed. Now, you can create a professional online store for free in just a few minutes through the Salla platform.
Whether this is your first time setting up a shopping site or you have been playing the game for a while, you need to focus on several things at the beginning of your online business.
– Preparing an executive business plan before creating your online store
Before you start building an online store, there are several fundamental things you need to know and study carefully:
What are you selling on your online store?
This is the first executive step before creating an online store because identifying the products is a fundamental element upon which the rest of the steps will be taken, and it will also significantly affect the project's success.
The last thing any merchant wants is to build a store from which no one buys, especially with the availability of millions of products online. Therefore, you must choose the products you will specialize in selling with great caution.
You can choose from many categories to determine what you will sell in your store, including:
Physical products: Clothing, footwear, and household goods.
Digital products: Software as a Service (SaaS), online courses, and e-books.
Services: Consulting services, home cleaning.
You can start by researching the best-selling products in major stores and tracking reviews for these products to discover the problems facing the target audience, and whether you can provide solutions for them or alternatives to them.
Who will you sell your store's products to?
The world today has become more open than before; you can reside in Africa and manage an entire business in Europe or America, and vice versa. Everything is possible with the internet. But is the method of selling and marketing the same in all these places?
Does choosing the most appropriate strategy for your store depend only on geographic location?
Of course not; there are hundreds of factors that can change the map or strategy of your online store's business. One of the most important of these is determining the sales strategy you will follow in your store:
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Business to Business (B2B): Your store will specialize in selling to organizations, companies, and non-profits rather than individual customers.
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Business to Consumer (B2C): This means your online store will sell directly to individual consumers rather than companies.
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Marketplace: Meaning your store will act as an intermediary by bringing companies and customers (B2B or B2C) to a single website.
How will you obtain the products?
Owning capital is no longer a prerequisite for creating a buying and selling site on the internet. A little is enough to get you started, but this will entail important choices and decisions regarding your store's products and how you will obtain them. Will you rely on:
In-house product manufacturing:
You will manufacture your product or service internally by owning a workshop or factory specialized in manufacturing your store's products.
Third-party manufacturer:
You outsource the manufacturing of your product or service by reaching agreements with factories or workshops owned by others to supply the products you will offer for sale on your online store.
Dropshipping:
Sell without bearing shipping or storage costs. This means you will partner with a manufacturer; they produce, package, and ship the product directly to your customer, while your store acts as the direct intermediary with the customer.
The customer orders the product from your store and pays in advance. Afterward, you purchase the product from the large retailer or manufacturer at a special price, adding your profit margin. This profit margin represents your earnings from the transaction.
Wholesale:
You buy goods or services from other companies in large quantities and resell them on your online store. You will pay for these products in advance before listing them on your store. After purchasing these products, you determine a profit margin after adding transport, shipping, and other overhead costs.
This method is considered one of the best in e-commerce; the more you invest, the higher your profit margin.
– Types of Products in Your Online Store
When we talk about products, you will find two types of online stores:
Multi-Product Online Stores
You will find this type of store selling many diverse products that fall under several categories. For example, you might find the same store selling clothes, home tools, and decor, such as the global Amazon store.
Single-Product Online Stores
You will find this type of store selling only one type of product or a single product. Examples include stores specializing in mobile phones or coffee, such as: Alhomaidhi Watches store.
Features provided by companies specialized in designing online stores like Salla:
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Enables you to purchase a domain name directly and link it to the platform in minutes.
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Grants you an easy dashboard suitable for non-specialists to create your store.
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Allows you to modify your store's design via this dashboard so that it is unique in shape and color.
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Provides you with ready-made templates to create a professional and distinguished store in minutes.
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Enables you to set up payment methods with ease.
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Provides you with support service.
Steps to Market Your Online Store
Marketing in the e-commerce world is a practice aimed at improving traffic to the online store and the ability to convert it into actual sales and customers.
If you aim to improve your business, you must observe the general landscape of the online market before acting, build a strong foundation for it in the market, and learn how to market an online store professionally.
Statistics indicate that revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (2020-2024) of 7.1%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$8,290 million by 2024.
Things you must do before creating and executing an e-commerce marketing plan:
Competition online these days has become very fierce, but with a detailed, effective, and flexible marketing strategy, you can improve your results and profits
significantly, and enter the competition with strength and solidity. The important thing is to build your plan on a strong foundation. Here are the 3 most important steps to take before starting to create your marketing plan:
1– Look for Competitors and Mentors
Look for companies or individuals who have already built and scaled their businesses in e-commerce, then start analyzing their businesses and development path. You can also ask for their advice and recommendations.
2– Be Honest with Yourself
Your results will certainly depend on the quality of your products, the size of your funding, and the strength of your team. There is no shame in starting small and doing the digital marketing yourself in the short term, but it is important to set realistic expectations and define a roadmap for growth.
3– Optimizing Product Pages
Product pages must be perfect because the goal of marketing is to drive potential customers to these pages and increase sales. If your marketing efforts are top-notch but your product pages are not user-focused, you will not be able to sell products.
Learn in detail about the steps to build an effective marketing plan for your online store.
6- How to activate the best Saudi payment gateways on your store
Payment gateways are an electronic intermediary between two parties whose task is to facilitate payment processes, ensuring that both parties can pay money in a smooth, fast, and secure way, away from theft and fraud, as they also provide data security.
They are the backbone of any online buying or selling operation; without them, purchases from online stores cannot be completed. The main role of electronic payment gateways is to facilitate the process of paying money in online stores.
They are considered an electronic intermediary between the buyer and the merchant to receive and deliver money easily and securely for both parties. The beauty of it is that they also protect payment card data by encrypting all sensitive information they hold.
How do you choose the best payment gateways for your online store?
Choosing the right payment gateways for your online store is based on the e-commerce platform you built it on, and it also varies from one country to another, and what are the best payment gateways suitable for e-commerce within it,
Therefore, some payment gateways may be available to you, while others may not. All of this is done regardless of the field or specialty of your store.
7- How to choose the best shipping companies for your store
Shipping companies are a fundamental cornerstone of e-commerce and are a key component of the online shopping process, regardless of the size, nature, or type of your store's activity.
Your choice of the best shipping companies in Saudi Arabia significantly reflects the success of your online store and the provision of a distinguished sales service to its customers around the world.
Shipping companies are those companies that provide shipping and delivery services for items, whether within the same country or abroad, from the store to the doorstep.
Shipping companies in e-commerce are the intermediary between the seller and the buyer. They also collect the amount due from the customer in case of cash on delivery, then hand it over to the merchant.
Types of shipping companies in Saudi Arabia:
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Land shipping companies
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Air shipping companies
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International shipping companies
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Sea shipping companies
What are the best shipping companies in Saudi Arabia?
Learn through the following example about a group of the best shipping companies in Saudi Arabia
In summary:
Creating a professional online store is no longer as difficult as it was in the old days; today, you can design a professional online store at the lowest costs and in the fastest time. The important thing is to focus on the fine details of working in e-commerce.
If you would like to hire any of the professional digital marketing and social media advertising agencies, you can contact the Venets team, as we offer you a group of specialists in professional website design services, social media services, SEO, and various other digital marketing services.
Hurry and contact us through our various digital platforms, or visit the official Venets website.
Mohamed Ghanem Al-Sawas
Marketing Manager
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