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Home appliances and gadgets have become our indispensable companions. They make life easier and save time Therefore, electronics stores are top-rated. Any equipment breaks down eventually, and buyers then look for a replacement. In addition, manufacturers are constantly releasing new and improved models, which instantly scatter among buyers. Also, in a world where almost every purchase can include delivery, online stores are gradually surpassing conventional outlets in popularity.
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Therefore, the question arises: How do you open an online electronics store and earn a good profit from it? Our experience consists of numerous e-commerce sites developed on the Magento and Shopware platforms, so we offer recommendations that will simplify the process of opening an online electronics store or marketplace. The curtain is going up! Let’s start!
According to a study, with a 22% share of the market, online sales of electronic goods account for the largest share of e-commerce retail. Also, US e-commerce retail sales are projected to reach $709.78 billion in 2022. The total electronic goods market will be $1 trillion in 2022.
A significant stimulation of the electronic goods market is expected for several reasons:
Despite the pandemic and the crisis, electronic goods sales remain on the rise and continue to increase every year. This is the perfect time to make money by selling electronics online. However, several factors could impede the growth of the electronic product market in the future.
Before tackling the practical steps, you need to know the main concepts and business processes that drive any online store. Trading is always a risk and operates in a highly competitive environment, so you need to think through every step, down to the smallest detail, for your business to be successful. So, what should you plan before opening an electronic device store?
Electronics is a loose concept. For convenience, we will divide it into several types of devices:
Whereas the typical shopper in an online electronics retailer used to be a savvy young person or a computer nerd, now the criteria have shifted. Many members of the older generation have learned how to order goods on the Internet.
Let's recall the types of electronics and imagine which target audience would be the main one for each category of goods. Smartphones and laptops appeal to any target audience, from school children to retired people. Smart gadgets, new items, and unusual objects are of interest, as a rule, to fashionable, modern people. This means that the target audience is narrowing. Therefore, it’s essential to understand the audience to whom you will sell your goods and, based on this, to build strategies for promoting your online electronics store.
Competition is the driving force of the market, due to which stores constantly improve their services and find new ways to attract customers. Below are tips on finding your place in the sun in this crowded market and standing out from other stores.
To open an online electronics store, you first need to know your closest competitors, become acquainted with their sites, browse their categories, and examine their goods and terms of payment and delivery. The main task is to do better because you intend to earn money, not just possess a domain name online.
It’s important! Follow the prices of competitors. No one says that you need to sell your goods half-price, but if the neighboring shop owners offer a week of holiday discounts, you also need the treat to indulge your customers with. An excellent way to stand out from the competition is to use clinging chips on the site.
Perform these seven tricks that always work:
You probably think that now, with the colossal expansion of the market, it is impossible to develop a new product. However, every day, online store owners find ways to surprise pampered customers. Try original packaging—for example, printed with the customer’s name—and an individual approach that is evident in every detail. Pursue the zest for which your site will be known!
To survive in the competitive electronics manufacturing environment and succeed, companies need to move quickly and be innovative. Businesses need to find solutions to emerging problems in the industry in order to stand the test of time. Yet the issues in the electronics industry may directly relate not only to goods. Here are some of the significant challenges that the electronics industry may face.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, difficulties sometimes arise with the supply of electronic devices, which leads to additional problems and the allocation of significant resources. Since most electronic goods are produced in Asia, where factories have suspended production, shipments worldwide have declined sharply. Gradually, as the epidemiological situation improves, factories are picking up the pace that they lost, but there is another catch. Due to quarantine restrictions, governments do not always allow planes or cargo transportation through borders into countries, which slows down the sale of electronic goods.
In this market environment, electronic device stores should focus their resources on the accurate and long-term planning of materials, including supply chain management, at the highest level. This will allow them to fulfill their obligations in a planned manner and minimize the risk of delivery delays. An equally important aspect of supply planning to ensure smooth operation is the consolidation of orders, which reduces shipping costs.
Recently, more and more, people have begun to think about environmental safety; this has become critical when choosing a product or company to support. Concern about ecological safety in a business is very essential. Understanding environmental change has prompted companies to seek greener assembly solutions, especially in the electronics industry. Practices like carbon top and carbon exchange are being investigated as solutions in green electronics manufacturing. An electronic device store that genuinely pays attention to the environment and makes efforts to minimize the negative impact on it will do its best to meet the standards in this area, such as those found in ISO 14001 and ISO 26000.
The life cycle is the period during which a product is on the market. It consists of four stages:
The duration of the product life cycle depends on the dynamics of the sales market. In the case of the consumer electronics market, it is not slowing down. On the contrary—consumer trends and preferences are changing rapidly, and the market is quickly absorbing either new versions of already known solutions or entirely new products. As a result, product life cycles are shortening, so well-managed, efficient electronics stores should learn to quickly and cost-effectively retool their production lines to meet the current needs of their customers.
Lets talk about itHave a project in mind?
Setting up an online store is a rewarding and challenging job. You need to process payments, deal with customers, and manage balances. However, the first hurdle you will face is the choice of the platform you intend to use. Choosing the best e-commerce platform makes inventory and payment processing much easier.
Given our expertise in e-commerce development, we want to talk about the Magento and Shopware platforms. They are both open-source platforms, offering endless customization and scalability as your business grows, and both have communities of developers and store owners. On the other hand, they each have many unique characteristics.
Magento aims mainly at large-scale enterprises in the USA and UK markets. When it comes to flexibility, Magento is far ahead of the competition in the e-commerce space. It is a powerful platform that allows you to create both small and large online stores. For example, it has built-in SEO functionalities, it is very secure, and it allows you to use themes and plugins.
Shopware is suitable for the German-speaking market. When developing an online store from scratch, our Shopware development team focuses on providing innovative and effective solutions for our client’s business needs. Even if you already have an existing online business, with our experience in developing e-commerce platforms, we can make additional improvements to your website. Among the main advantages of Shopware, we would like to highlight the easy setup and administration, high flexibility, and supportive Shopware community.
The following can help you decide: Shopware 6 vs Magento 2: Can the New Player Dethrone the Leading CMS?
Your online electronics store must contain certain built-in features. They make interacting with the product much easier and more understandable for the user, which should ultimately lead to higher sales in your store. We've put together a list of basic functionalities for an electronics store.
Here are the user types of web pages we recommend for electronics stores:
Sign-in and sign-up and a personal profile
You will need user authorization and registration to compile information about customers and motivate them to return to the website. A personal profile is a way of communicating with your client.
Homepage
The homepage of the electronics website should catch the user's eye immediately. It should be universal in order to satisfy all clients and to make them stay on the website and view the catalog. It is better if you place on the homepage information or a slider so that every gadget enthusiast can find a gadget for themselves in your store.
Product catalog
A product catalog is a marketing material that lists essential product details that help customers purchase. You should focus on user-friendly filter options and sorting options for the electronics store to help the customer find their desired items in a few clicks. Remember to display all relevant information about the product in the catalog, such as the electronics brand and model, dimensions, price, weight, availability, images, and so on.
Product detail page
The product detail page should be very informative and well organized. The details displayed often comprise the product description, price, delivery information, feedback options, and other relevant information customers may want to know before purchasing. Therefore, it is useful to display documents related to the item on the product detail page so as to provide as much information as possible for the customer. Also, related products and products that can be bought together can significantly increase the number of purchases in your store.
Shopping cart and checkout
The shopping cart page is the goal of the customer journey in terms of conversions. The user interface on the cart page of your electronics store should be customer-centric. A quick view of the cart, a pop-up window, or a mini-cart is a winning tactic because these elements keep the customers informed throughout the shopping process. The checkout page is an extension of the cart page, which is even more important for conversions to sales. Therefore, it should be as user-friendly as the previous steps on the conversion pass.
Here are the basic functionalities for administrators so that they can work on effectively serving site visitors, creating comfortable conditions for them on the website:
Shopping cart price rules and catalog price rules
You can easily create the sale price conditions for your website. They can cover all products in the catalog and all users, or you can set specific requirements and customer groups who can buy products at a certain price. You can set the duration of each sale condition so that you don’t need to change or update it manually.
Order management
With the powerful order management functionality, you will see the list of all your orders, manage the orders (change the order status, send information to the user, create an invoice, organize shipment, cancel the order, etc.). You can verify the order at all its steps and ensure that the customer is satisfied with your store’s service.
Content management
Easily manage your content. You can add new pages to the website, edit existing ones, or delete them if needed. You can manage all the website content and update it without developer help.
Product management
The administrator can manage all the products that the website sells. You can easily add, update, and delete products, create category structures, and assign products to categories.
You can use import and export features to add products to or update them in the system. You can set related products and cross-sale products and add all content and photos.
Customer management
The administrator can see all the website’s registered users and detailed information about each user and their activities on the website. This information will help you understand your customers better and update the website based on their needs.
Settings and configuration
Many settings and configurations are already set up as defaults so that your store can function immediately after purchase. You won’t need a developer to change any basic settings or improve your store.
Additional modules will help your online electronics store expand its functionalities and provide your users with the best possible user experience. Therefore, we propose to integrate the following extensions in order to supplement the capabilities of your website on Magento.
The Product Pre Order extension is used to draw the attention of buyers to products that will soon be available on the website. This is a handy extension for electronics stores if you have various products to choose from. It is difficult for store owners to have the full set of electronics in stock simultaneously, but the pre-order function solves this problem very easily. Customers leave a request and the store receives a pre-order and waits a few days for the product to be available and delivered. After that, the customer receives an e-mail stating that the product has been shipped. The administrator can request a full or partial order prepayment (the customer will pay the remaining amount at the post office). Adding a pre-order extension is a safe bet. Customers get their product, and the business does not lose a customer even if the product is out of stock.
Customers are always looking for a bargain price, and sometimes they are even willing to wait until the goods are delivered if the price is lower than that of competitors. If the product that the customer wants is out of stock, you can offer the customer the opportunity to reserve the product and to receive a notification when it appears in stock and can be purchased. In this way, a business does not lose a customer; this provides an excellent opportunity to collect statistics on user behavior.
The Out of Stock Notification module allows the administrator to send notifications to customers or site visitors when an item is replenished. This extension helps store owners notify shoppers and helps them better understand shopper preferences and manage inventory in response to demand.
This extension is ideal if you have a warehouse or a virtual store where customers can view or select a product. The pickup store offers your customers two choices: online shopping or in-store pickup. With this module, shoppers can pick the store, date, and hour to fetch their order; you don't have to worry about it and can plan your time.
To succeed in the electronics business, it is essential to consider all users’ wishes and satisfy their needs. If a website offers only shipping options with no pickup option, most of the time the customer chooses a different store. Electronics can be heavy, and shipping costs can be high, so pick up as a shipping option can increase sales.
You have the option of customizing the display of your locations to show specific information about each point of sale (e.g., opening times, postal and website addresses, phone numbers, etc.).
Even though Shopware 6's features are already able to satisfy many of the users’ needs, you can easily plug third-party solutions into your project to personalize it even more. Here are some wonderful add-ons for your electronic device store on Shopware.
With this extension, you can track customers who have abandoned their carts and notify them via e-mail that they have an unfinished order. In addition, it means that the administrator can view all customers who left their cart after adding items and encourage them to return by mail and complete the order.
This way, your store will not lose customers on its website, and it is an excellent way to collect information about what your customers most often want to buy on your website of electronic goods.
With the Shopware 6 Store PickUp plugin, your customers can now also collect goods from the store themselves—the so-called Click & Collect. This is especially important for customers who want to receive goods as quickly as possible. Your customers can now choose how to pick up their items (by pickup or order delivery). One-click of the mouse opens a map with a list of places where this product is stored—the availability of the product is immediately displayed. In addition, there is a convenient search by radius, including store information such as maps, opening hours, and contacts.
You may also like: Best Magento and Shopware Electronics Themes for E-commerce Website
The cost of developing an electronic device store depends on the functionalities desired. The table below states the approximate minimum price for basic functionalities. The price is higher if you need additional ready-made or custom features to develop a full-fledged, functional product.
|
Team member |
Activity |
Average cost ($) |
|
Business analyst |
SRS for the project |
$360—680 |
|
DevOps |
Hosting |
$40—80 |
|
Server setup and tuning |
$300—400 |
|
|
Service (Cloud Flare, SSL, etc.) setup |
$300—350 |
|
|
Set up automation deployment |
$120—200 |
|
|
Go live |
$120—180 |
|
|
Designer |
Solution 1: Ready-made electronics store theme |
$360—400 |
|
Solution 2: Custom electronics store theme |
$2,200—2,600 |
|
|
Solution 3: Custom responsive theme |
$3,000—3,400 |
|
|
Technical lead |
Code review |
$200—300 |
|
Electronics store database architecture design |
$1,200—1,400 |
|
|
Project deployment |
$40 |
|
|
Go live (support) |
$60 |
|
|
Developer |
Set up Magento or Shopware environment |
$240—260 |
|
Set up configuration out of the box |
$300—360 |
|
|
Install and configure additional extensions |
$180—240 |
|
|
Ready-made theme style and layout customization |
$600—800 |
|
|
Electronics store content pages creation |
$120—180 |
|
|
Quality assurance |
Proper project testing |
$800—1,000 |
|
Additional services |
Project management |
$700—1,000 |
The marketplace business model has made a splash in the e-commerce market. According to experts, consumers are actively using this format.
What are the benefits of marketplaces?
The business model for a marketplace covers the needs of two parties well: the seller and the buyer. So, how can you transform your online electronics store into a marketplace? Read on.
For more on this topic, see Marketplace or E-Commerce Site: What Is the Best for Business in 2021?
Lets talk about itHave a project in mind?
A marketplace’s functionalities include all options and tools that help users solve specific problems. Different components of the site's functionality ultimately lead users to the target action: buying a product or placing a service order. Your online electronic device marketplace should have these basic functionalities.
Each user can
For sellers:
The administrator can
The most significant benefits of Magento extensions for marketplaces are faster processes and time savings. We have compiled a list of the most useful utilities for your electronic device marketplace so that you extract the maximum benefit from your work and make it more efficient.
The Marketplace Vendor Attribute Manager Magento 2 module allows the administrator to create custom attributes for vendors. By using this extension, users can find the desired custom attributes created by the administrator on the vendor profile page. These can be brands, models, and so on with which the supplier works and Magento development services that the supplier provides. Of course, the more information, the better for the customer, and the easier it is to make the right choice.
The Marketplace Quote System extension allows you to include a request for a quote in your marketplace on Magento. Sellers can allow customers to quote a price for their products. This extension is particularly useful for ordering special goods. This module allows buyers to communicate with sellers about selected electronics products. Shoppers often order a set of electronic devices at once; the quote feature allows you to identify the shopper as a repeat customer and offer them a reward.
What are the best extensions for the Shopware electronic device marketplace in terms of needs? Let’s take a quick look.
The Multi-vendor Grouped Product extension allows merchants to add a grouped product to their websites. Thus, the seller expands the range of their business by adding a new product. With this extension, suppliers and administrators can benefit by selling grouped products. This extension gives the customer the ability to buy a variety of products.
The add-on helps the seller to
The Bulk Upload module helps sellers upload goods in bulk using CSV/XLS and XML files. For the electronics marketplace, it's essential because of the wide variety of products and product configurations. Adding products in bulk will save time and increase the sellers' satisfaction with the platform.
The cost of creating a marketplace can vary greatly, depending on the direction of the business and the required functionality, so it is rather difficult to give an exact development figure. When creating complex products, such as a marketplace, it is not clear how much the final product will cost, but you can calculate an approximate budget. Marketplace development can be out-of-the-box or customized. The price for the out-of-the-box marketplace solution on Magento or Shopware starts at $20,000. It costs more than that if you require additional functionalities for your business model. The development time is approximately one to two months.
Creating a trading platform costs at least $50,000, and the development time is three months or more for custom development. The cost can vary significantly depending on the business logic, design, and additional functionalities.
Below is a general list of the steps in developing any marketplace:
As you can see, creating an online electronics store or marketplace is not an easy task. You really need to assess your strengths: the availability of start-up capital, your knowledge about maintaining and promoting the site, and the correct organization of advertise campaigns. In addition, you need to be a programmer and web designer, write texts, select a semantic core, draw up a promotion plan, and much more. It is difficult for one person to cope with such a volume of tasks. Therefore, to successfully launch a project, you should hire staff or delegate tasks to specialized companies.
Dinarys’ many years of experience in building e-commerce stores and marketplaces allow us to fulfill any requests our customers may have. We know precisely what pains and needs customers have, and we know how to make a product functional, convenient, and of high quality so that users like to return to it every day. Contact us to discuss the details of the project that you have conceived. We are looking forward to new tasks and other ideas for implementation!
Read more in our blog How to Build a Dropshipping eCommerce Website.
This market will definitely be in demand in 2022 and beyond. Despite the pandemic and the crisis, electronic goods sales remain on the rise and continue to increase every year. This is the perfect time to make money selling electronics online.
The essential Magento or Shopware list of functionalities for your online electronics store for the user should include these pages: a homepage, a product catalog, a sign-in, and sign-up page, a product detail page, a shopping cart, and a checkout page.
The minimum price for creating an online electronics store on Magento or Shopware is around $15,000. Note that this is a price only for the basic functionality of the product. You may need additional custom features to create a full-fledged online store, and that will raise this price.
It is a little difficult to answer this question clearly, since the process of creating a marketplace is very laborious. The approximate price for creating a multi-vendor trading platform starts at about $20,000, and the price is higher if it is an out-of-the-box marketplace. The price depends on your business needs and marketplace functionalities. If you wish to create a unique, custom marketplace, then the price will be $50,000 or more.
Our certified specialists will find the most optimal solution for your business.
