Selling online is not just e-commerce; however everything was born and evolved from here: from electronic commerce as a sector of the international system, no longer a mere marginal alternative to traditional sales.

When we think about e-commerce the first example that comes to mind is Amazon. Whether the judgment on the great global giant - logistics and distribution - is controversial or not, the contribution to the current development model that the production company pursues is undeniable.

Amazon model

In 26 years of activity it has written and rewritten its business, modeling itself on the needs of a constantly changing society. Maybe not everyone remembers it but in its early days the only goal was to simply sell books online.

Competitive advantage: selling online as the most developed shopping center by far

• Equipped with logistics centers spread across the globe
• It boasts millions of subscribers to Prime's exclusive services
• It records a constant and exponential growth of employees
• It offers services to people, companies and professionals through collateral businesses
  • web service services (AWS)
  • certified training courses
  • collaboration network (affiliation)
• It enjoys a high level of reliability on the stock markets (10 thousand dollars invested at the end of the 90s is today equivalent to almost 8 million dollars)

Bezos' multinational doesn't just sell products. What we want to highlight in this contribution are the factors that make it business model to take inspiration from.

“We generally change ourselves for two reasons: inspiration or desperation.”

JIM ROHN

Profit from the union

• Only recently has it started producing its own brand products (Alexa and A. Basic, for example) as it is fundamentally focused on the sale of products from private individuals or third-party companies.
• Its great strength is its distribution capacity, thanks to the highly advanced logistics chain it has set up.

Attention to the individual

• The homepage, which has always been minimal and immediate, has allowed the user to find the unobtainable.
• Fast, simple and reliable. They have never been slogans but certainties
• Even disputes, returns (and deliveries themselves) are focused on buyer supremacy.
• Constant loyalty that goes hand in hand with the services it offers, but above all with a customer-friendly supported by the 24/7 presence of assistance staff.

The online shop of all for all

• Large and small brands, artisans and local producers can join the many affiliate programs and sell directly to Amazon users.

Unmatched conversion rate

• Out of 100 subscribers to the platform's services, 74 complete a purchase.

Listen to what the market has to say

Its strength is most likely also due to the enormous quantity of data that collects and processes. We began to understand more vividly the real importance of the data we produce while browsing the web after the enactment of The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) but maybe not quite yet.

Social networks, social media and mass communication more generally are based on user-generated content while the market (companies and production rules) creates and disseminates with extreme certainty what we have clearly expressed that we want to buy (with our personal data, obviously).

Local trends and markets

It is no coincidence that the data (Big Data) is one of the most profitable sectors ever. Having the ability to predict with certainty what people will buy, how they are used to doing it, how they prefer to pay; in an ultra-competitive context like this, it means being able to predict the growth of your business with small margins of deviation.

What was previously the sole prerogative of large of the economy today is within everyone's reach. Statistics and data processing are still the ABC of project management and a good part of these can be exploited with cunning. “Google” is full of thematic sites, sector blogs and professional analysts, but first of all if you are not willing to listen this inexhaustible amount of data may be of no use.

To survive, the market is called upon to follow that same attitude of shopkeepers and traders: accept criticism, weird requests or customizations.
The Internet, social media, virtual reality and artificial intelligence are faces of the polyhedron that is the contemporary world. Distribution, sales, payments, everything has changed, we can no longer procrastinate.

What the data says about e-commerce

• People prefer to make their own purchases from mobile phone (online sales tripled in 7 years Statista, 2019)
• There is no longer any age distinction between one buyer and another, the Covid-19 accelerator has marked a point of no return from this point of view too
• They choose products more and more locals and healthy
• The 50% of them is attentive to the data Eco-friendly and looking for sustainability
• Food, fitness and electronics are the leading categories
• Contactless, digital currency and augmented reality are just the tip of the iceberg of the future (next) turning point of innovation and customer experience (Investments in AI - $7.3 billion by 2022 BusinessWire)

Business comparison he thought of all those realities that are not equipped with innovative tools or that still have difficulty imagining themselves competitive activities also on a digital level.

Bear the costs of innovation it is not something for everyone and despite interventions (public and private) there are still strong inequalities and businesses that deserve it risk (as has happened in recent periods) closing or finding themselves in difficulty.

Ours is a model inspired by that of Amazon. The rankings and products on the our portal they are deliberately developed on the influx of data that comes from the affiliation with Amazon and allow us to offer our users only the best. The consultancy services and the team's skills have allowed us to build packages to guide companies to sell online according to their own differentiable identities and specificities.