With more than 4 billion active Internet users worldwide, the e-commerce market is more competitive than ever. That number, reported by Statista for June 2019, implies that there are various opportunities for brands to develop their sales online. Indeed, the average internet user spends about 4 hours and 25 minutes online on daily basis and during this time, online shopping is once of the most common activity.

There is still a large number of entrepreneurs who are looking for online opportunities and Asia represents an interesting market to launch shop, but how to get started?

Build a platform

Most individuals usually kill the idea of launching an e-commerce platform because of the cost and the complexity of having the platform online. However, technologies have evolved over the last few years and website builders like Wix, Shopify or Squarespace are becoming more and more trendy. With the will to spread a positive image and to reach different generations of entrepreneurs, they have succedded in increasing the number of online shops.

Launching an online store is not cheap but is more affordable than in the past since these companies will allow entrepreneurs to benefit from all-inclusive offers, with:

• The hosting and the SSL certificate.
• The sales channel and the unlimited products.
• The payment system and fraud analysis features.
• The theme that can be customized.

E-commerce builders offer more than that and are also well designed to handle some marketing strategies to get customers such has the integration of the store to a Facebook page so that customers can buy directly from Facebook instead of being redirected to the platform. Also, most of these companies have large communities of consumers who develop new features and apps that can be plugged to the platform to go beyond the initial features.

Source products

The second big fear from those who would like to get their own e-commerce shop is sourcing the products. Hong Kong is close to Mainland China and is only two hours away from the largest factories of the world, an asset when it comes to find products to sell online. However, dealing with the negociation part and the logistic can be reluctant for some.

In that case, Shopify proposes dropshipping solutions that can seduce the remaining unsure wannabe entrepreneurs. Dropshipping is a retail fulfilment method where a store doesn't stock up the products it sells. However, what it simply does is to purchase such an item from a third party and have it shipped to the customer. In summary, it simply fulfils orders.

Such platforms are quite easy to set up and the need for investment capital on an up-front inventory is not required. Managing a warehouse which would necessitate management efforts and various bills like the rent, the electricity, and that damages are avoided too.

However, if you prefer to source products by yourself, AliExpress or Made in China are among the most popular platforms and are specialized in wholesale. From a commercial standpoint, having exclusive products is always the best options but dropshipping represents an interesting alternative for those with minimun ressources and high ambitions.

Promote your brand

There are certain steps to engage your audience in ways that are intimate and authentic. Turning your customers into ambassadors is the ultimate marketing step that will help a brand rising. But, how to reach that step?

In Hong Kong especially, that kind of strategy is mandatory. Have you ever seen customers taking of picture of their new product and posting it on social networks right after the purchase? It looks liki nothing, but that's actually a smart combination of content, social network and key influence leader marketing. By making sure that customers will be at the center of the buying process, brands will be able to develop their loyalty. Asking them for feedbacks, engaging them in games to earn a prize, create referral program or personalizing the user-experience are among the best-practices that should be replicated online.

E-commerce builders also propose some marketing features that should help brands to develop their exposure and to start selling. From extensions to build a database for EMD purposes to apps for SEO that will help marketer defining the right keywords, there are various possibilities to develop traffic on a newly launched platform.