1.1 Introduction to E-Commerce

Hello and welcome to this course on building a kickass E-commerce store on Shopify. I’m so excited to take you on this journey with me, but, before we dive into any of the teaching, take a look at these cool stores.

Like this one.‍

https://quirksmith.com/ 

Or this one:

https://www.femella.in/

Or this one.

https://www.crossbeats.com

Do you know what they all have in common? They’re brands that operate solely as eCommerce stores. But more importantly, they run on Shopify. 

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Pretty cool, right? :D

Have you wondered what goes into building something like this? I mean, over 1.7 million businesses in 175 countries, have made over $200 billion dollars in sales - using Shopify.

Hang on - not just yet. Let’s brush up our basics first. 

Let’s jump waaaay back and start at the very beginning. What is eCommerce?

It all started in 1994 when a man sold a Sting CD to his friend through the American retail website NetMarket. This was the first example of a person buying a product from a business through the World Wide Web— a process we know today as “e-Commerce”.

So to break this down, when you buy or sell anything online you’re using electronic commerce. And people are using it a lot. Global eCommerce sales are projected to hit 3.4 trillion by 2025. Yup. Trillion. 

Now, let’s walk through a couple of concepts so you’re prepared for the rest of the course.

We’ll start with the basic models that eCommerce follows. There are 4 main types. 

First, Business to Consumer, or “B2C”.

Here, a business sells stuff, that is goods and services, to a consumer. Someone like you! Say you buy a denim jacket from the Levis’ online store. That’s a straight example of B2C. Sounds simple enough, right?‍

Next, we have Business to Business, or B2B: ‍

Here, a business sells a good or a service to another business. Take this for example. Shopper is a supplier that sells to small vendors and retailers across India. Basically, individual shops sell to their own consumers after first purchasing those items from Shopper.

Next up - Consumer to Consumer, or “C2C”: ‍

This is when a consumer, again - someone like you or me, sells stuff to another consumer. Think eBay or OLX. Please note the following disclaimer from our lawyers: Don’t sell drugs online. Just. Don’t do it.

And finally, Consumer to Business or C2B.‍

Here, an individual sells their own products or services to an organization. For example, if a company needs some designs for, say, their merchandise, they could buy or license it from an artist. As the artist here is selling to the business, this is C2B.

So you might be wondering: what does all this have to do with Shopify? Great question.

E-commerce as a whole takes on a tonne of different forms, but there are some specific ways that Shopify can help.
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We’ll get into this in the next episode. I’ll see you there.