What is a B2C Online Store?
A B2C online store is an ecommerce set up where customers buy products or services from an online business. In a B2C set-up business is done directly between a business entity and multiple end customers. The products and services sold on the B2C website can be manufactured by the owner or sourced from various other vendors.
B2C ecommerce store is also referred to as B2C online shop for retail. With buyers gravitating more an more towards online buying setting up online B2C shopping portal has become even more important for businesses of every scale and size. With the Indian online retail market size of $73 billion in 2022, building B2C websites in India is a pragmatic business move.
What are the benefits of starting a B2C online store?
With the pandemic-induced disruptions the need for a B2C website became even more pronounced for SMEs as well as enterprise brands that had to keep big outlets closed during the lockdown. Businesses that had an online presence bounced back as soon as restrictions were eased. Conditioned by the pandemic push, improved internet penetration and access to smartphones Indian ecommerce has grown rapidly with a 25.5% average growth rate.
Building B2C websites in India can benefit businesses in the following ways:
Reach new markets and customers without investing in the actual shop set up in multiple locations
Cost-effective way to keep the business open 24X7 for buyers across the country
Setting up B2C online store helps in diversifying to new product lines by dropshipping
Speed up the ordering process by strategically designing your product pages and checkout
Experiment with different business models for rapid growth
Leverage personalization to attract, engage, convert and retain buyers
Better control and understanding of business with all data and analytics available at one place
Easy to market B2C website across digital channels and get organic as well as paid traffic
Can scale to any number of products or buyers without investing much ( as compared to physical store expansion)
Opportunity to expand to global markets by partnering with local vendors and logistics partners
To get the maximum benefit from building a B2C website brands should go with an ecommerce platform that offers 360-degree solutions to build, run and grow their business. StoreHippo ecommerce platform comes with 300+ inbuilt features, 120+ integrations, built-in marketing tools, 60+ integrated payment gateways and 30+ pre-integrated shipping partners to offer a one-stop solution for building B2C online store.
What are the points to consider while building a B2C online store?
A business cannot be successful just by building a B2C online shop for retail. To make your business attractive to your buyers you need to build a conversion oriented store and promote it using strategically personalised discounts.
Here is a list of top-10 features you need to incorporate in your B2C online store to make it successful:
Design a beautiful storefront that gently nudges your buyers towards conversion
Build hig-performance B2C website that loads quickly
Upload clear and high-quality product images that help buyers make informed decisions
Build PWA stores and mobile apps to help your B2C online store buyers buy from anywhere, anytime
Add review and ratings to product pages to portray your brand as customer-centric
Incorporate multi-level discounts, upsell, and cross-sell features to boost your order size
Make search faster and granular for exact matches that help with faster checkouts
Offer a variety of payment options for faster, frictionless checkouts
Implement pricing strategy and loyalty rewards to attract and keep customers loyal
Make shipping costs transparent and offer free shipping wherever possible
To implement all the above on their online B2C shopping portal, brands need a well-rounded ecommerce platform that helps in building a user-friendly, attractive and future-ready B2C online store. StoreHippo ecommerce platform comes with 100+ customizable, device-optimized themes to build wow storefronts.
Built using SPA stores built on StoreHippo are lightweight and load faster to engage buyers. The mobile-first approach of the platform helps in building mobile ready B2C online stores that can be turned into PWAs in a few steps. StoreHippo also has an inbuilt mobile apps builder to create Android and iOS apps for B2C websites.
A gamut of inbuilt marketing tools make it easy for B2C brands to implement a variety of deals and discounts. With pre-integrated payment and shipping solutions StoreHippo makes it easy to ensure seamless fulfilment across 26000+ PIN codes in India and 220+ global destinations.
Why is StoreHippo the best B2C online store builder?
StoreHippo offers a cutting-edge solution to build B2C websites in India and in global markets. Built on the MACH architecture, StoreHippo gives B2C brands the power, flexibility and agility to build innovative and future-ready solutions. StoreHippo’s pure headless architecture enables brands to go omnichannel by adding multiple sales channels using the same backend logic and APIs of their B2C website.
With support for a variety of ecommerce models like multi vendor marketplace, location based multi store network, hyperlocal ecommerce, quick commerce, D2C, B2B, B2B2C and any other hybrid business model StoreHippo makes it easy for B2C websites in India to pivot to any new business model for rapid growth.
Penetrating the international markets is also easy as StoreHippo offers go global solutions like multilingual website, support for multiple languages in mobile apps, multilingual theme support, multi-currency payments and invoicing and a powerful tax engine to implement multi-level taxation for different countries.
StoreHippo has powered online B2C shopping portal cross a variety of industries and business models. It allows brands to build future-ready solutions with potential for disruptive growth.
Ready to build your B2C online store to grow your business? Check out B2C websites powered by StoreHippo ecommerce platform.Explore our rich features and start your free trial right away.