The evolving e-commerce landscape: Opportunities for BaseKit Partners
Today e-commerce isn’t just a trend – it’s a revolution transforming how we shop and do business. Convenience and accessibility are now fundamental aspects of the modern shopping experience.
Global e-commerce sales are expected to reach $6.09 trillion in 2024, reflecting an 8.4% annual increase. This upward trend, driven by technology and evolving consumer behaviours, shows no signs of slowing, with forecasts suggesting that e-commerce sales will grow to $8.09 trillion by 2028, making up 24% of global retail sales.
Let’s explore the opportunities and challenges that e-commerce presents for small businesses, and how BaseKit’s white label e-commerce software BaseKit Store – can empower our partners to help their customers sell successfully online.
Factors contributing to the growth of e-commerce
There are many factors contributing to the significant growth of e-commerce., Here are three of the most influential:
Technological advancements – AI and machine learning are improving customer experiences through personalised product recommendations and chatbots. Advanced payment options, such as digital wallets and buy-now-pay-later services, are expanding payment choices, making it crucial to offer a variety of secure payment methods.
Mobile commerce – Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is rapidly growing, making up 57% of e-commerce sales in 2024, expected to climb to 63% by 2028. The convenience of mobile shopping is a significant driver. For small businesses to succeed, they must optimise for mobile by using responsive designs, mobile-friendly checkouts and payment options.
Social Commerce – Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are becoming key sales channels for e-commerce businesses. It is estimated that In 2024, an estimated 110.4 million people will shop through these sites in the US alone. Integrating e-commerce with social media allows businesses, especially small independents, to reach customers where they spend a lot of their time online.
Key challenges for providers and small businesses
While the e-commerce landscape offers immense potential, it also presents challenges for those providing services to small businesses:
Competition – Businesses must adopt innovative strategies with unique value propositions to stand out in a competitive marketplace. Small businesses often find it challenging to compete with larger retailers because of limited resources and lower brand recognition. As the e-commerce market becomes increasingly saturated, it is crucial for those supporting SMBs to help them to effectively differentiate their offerings and target the right audiences at the right time.
Technology adoption – The fast-paced evolution of technology makes it challenging for SMBs and the providers that serve them, to stay current, with approximately 25% of SMBs confirming this is a major concern. Service providers often struggle to effectively communicate the value of technology to small business owners, many of whom view adopting new technology as complicated and risky.
Customer expectations – Consumers today expect seamless and personalised shopping experiences across all devices and channels. However, SMBs can sometimes struggle to meet these expectations due to limited resources and technical capabilities.
Resource constraints – Small businesses often operate with limited budgets and manpower, making investing in comprehensive e-commerce solutions challenging. Service providers need to offer affordable, user-friendly solutions that don’t require extensive time and technical expertise.
Scalability – As service providers look to expand, their e-commerce platforms need to be fit to scale with them. Discover how our BaseKit Platform is built for robustness, enabling partners to easily and securely scale globally.
How BaseKit Store addresses these challenges
Versatile API – The BaseKit API offers a range of integration options making it fast and simple to integrate our BaseKit Store into your platform for immediate and customisable site and store onboarding options for customers.
AI and simplicity – BaseKit Store is an intuitive e-commerce solution designed with small businesses in mind. A fast five-step setup allows non-tech-savvy business owners to start selling in minutes from their desktop or mobile phone. AI-generated product descriptions help users create engaging product content quickly.
Checkout convenience – BaseKit Store has over 15 payment gateways, including Paypal, Stripe and Klana as well as bank transfer and cash options. Coming early in 2025, customised product discounts will also be released to the product.
Mobile optimisation – The product is mobile-first by design to make life easy for busy business owners who are always time poor and often on the go. This ensures not only seamless site functionality and shopping experience across all devices, but easy mobile site editing as well.
Social media reach – Customers using BaseKit Store can directly publish store items to Facebook and Instagram to increase awareness. They can also link directly to their Store as a simple shop-front from social media, without the need for a website if they choose.
Customers application – The store includes a single place to view and export all customer details and transactional data. This is very valuable data to help market offers and discounts, or personalised products to customers for repeat purchases.
Zapier integration – Customers can automate store transactions between BaseKit and over 5K other applications they could use to run their business and streamline operations for small businesses that need to manage multiple applications and spreadsheets.
Store customer login – Arriving in early 2025, we’re excited to be in the final stages of creating a new customer login to BaseKit Store. This will give store visitors the option to create their own account on the small business owner’s website, prompted before and during their product purchase process. The account will allow customers to set a default delivery address for current and repeat orders.
By 2027, ecommerce is expected to make up 41% of global retail sales, up from just 18% in 2017. This change shows that businesses of all sizes must have a strong online presence. BaseKit partners are at the forefront of the e-commerce revolution, empowering SMBs to thrive in the digital economy. By offering BaseKit Store, they’re enabling businesses to harness the potential of the booming e-commerce market and be part of this exciting transformation.
BaseKit Store is available to be sold with our white-label website builder or as a stand alone product, so customers can seamlessly add it to a BaseKit Site, any other website, or use it as a simple shop-front. It’s the quickest way to start selling online for small businesses without e-commerce experience.
We’re on a mission for tech democracy for small businesses.
If you’re an existing BaseKit partner and need further information about any features mentioned in this article or are interested in discussing more ways to position BaseKit Store, please contact your account manager.