Does almost everyone know today? what is an online store and what functions it performs. First of all, an online store is a business tool for selling goods. And this is his main task. But, it is worth noting that an online store is not only an electronic showcase of goods, but also a huge electronic catalog with a convenient search for goods, which makes it easier for people to find a particular product.
Considering an online store as a sales tool is not entirely correct. After all, the functionality of this kind of store is almost limitless. Consider an online store like a bulletin board in a huge hypermarket.
When you enter an unfamiliar hypermarket. You see a lot of boutiques with different products, and to find the right product. You go around the whole complex in search of the product you need, when you can simply go to the information board and quickly find the desired boutique.
An online store is a large hypermarket, but only in electronic form, and the search for goods in it is much more convenient and faster. So, your potential clients will instantly find what they are looking for.
An online store should be considered as a tool to facilitate the search for goods for your potential buyers, and having found the right product, the client himself decides whether to buy or not. And only after he buys the product, your site will take on the status of an online store, and before that it is just a product search engine.
The popularity of online stores in the market of Kazakhstan
The popularity of Internet commerce in Kazakhstan is growing every year. But this does not mean that all people without exception move from the real world to the virtual world to buy goods. But, certain growth trends are still present in some aspects of the business. These are online stores with products such as:
1. electronic versions of books
2. PC software
3. PC games
4. phone accessories
5. electronic gadgets
6. PC accessories
7. Why are these particular items selling more than fertilizer bags or home furnishings?
Electronic versions of books, software, games, these are all virtual goods. That is: goods without a physical shell, which can be simply downloaded from an online store, and it is not necessary to go to the store for them and check by touch.
Imagine - your grandmother loves to plant flowers and she often buys bagged fertilizer. Where do you think she will buy? She will go to the store and buy there and carry the fertilizer herself. If she asks her grandson to go buy fertilizer, then most likely, he will immediately sit down at the computer and look for an online store with home delivery.
And this is where the secrets of the growing popularity of online stores in Kazakhstan lie. People over 50 are still on "YOU" with a computer, and the younger generation on "YOU", and they are guaranteed to look for the product they are interested in on the Internet. Compare prices, look for alternative solutions. And as soon as they find it, they will definitely buy it. The only question is how he will buy. In a physical store or in an online store with delivery? And this already depends on the type of goods. But the fact is that the search for goods is carried out on the Internet, and if the seller does not have a catalog of goods on the Internet, then no one will find his products.
Should you open an online store?
The popularity of online stores in Kazakhstan is growing and will grow every year along with the new generation. I suspect that within 3-5 years, the demand for e-commerce will increase dramatically.
Judge for yourself, at the beginning of the 2000s, computer technologies in Kazakhstan began to be used in every large and small company. Today, it is impossible to imagine doing business without them. Children born in those years began to own computers from an early age, and this generation is just beginning to arrange their life after graduation. This is already a new wave of sellers and buyers, and soon we will have a completely new level of business and turnover in Internet platforms.
In Kazakhstan, many sellers are already switching to e-commerce, but they also have physical stores. In the United States and in other developed Western countries, e-commerce is no longer an innovation and is very popular. Even the once large chain stores have completely switched to a virtual platform, closing the chain of stores. Because it is beneficial to them and their clients. There is no need to pay for rent of premises, there is no need to maintain a large number of employees, and therefore, costs and prices for goods for end customers are reduced.
Kazakhstan and some CIS countries, in general, lag behind Western countries, and this is explained by many factors: the slow development of Internet accessibility, the educational system, the financial and banking sectors.
The latter also directly affects the development of Internet commerce, since the banking sector provides support for payment systems, and it is only now that people have started to use bank cards everywhere, but have not yet learned how to pay online bills with them. You can clearly see this when you go to the supermarket for groceries, pay attention to the queue near ATMs, people prefer to withdraw cash and pay in cash at the checkout rather than with a bank card. Our people simply do not trust, they always expect to be deceived, cheated, and this is a question of mentality - one of the main factors slowing down the development of Internet commerce in Kazakhstan.
Everything is changing, people are changing, progress is inevitable, and the development of Internet commerce in Kazakhstan is a matter of time, another question is who will be the first to go to it and who will be the last.