A new breed of e-commerce Hubs deliver new revenue streams
As local businesses head into 2016, developing new revenue streams is on the mind of a majority of business owners looking to supplement their core business and defend themselves from the Amazons of the world. SMBs have an advantage of leveraging their loyal base of customers by simply referring them to their own e-commerce website. However, maintaining inventory levels, negotiating/managing multiple vendors, storage, handling shipping, customer order management, and processing payments has been a show stopper for many small to medium business owners.
A new breed of e-commerce Hubs have emerged to solve this problem. These platforms seamlessly link e-commerce website creation/management, access to unlimited category-specific products, payment processing, shipping, warehousing and distribution via a network of certified and approved drop shippers.
The keys to developing a successful e-commerce business, utilizing e-commerce Hubs, include:
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Creating/managing compelling ecommerce sites: e-commerce Hubs
create vertical specific, branded websites for the business owner. A live feed of all products from the drop-shippers warehouse is displayed for purchase by consumers. Business owners do nothing other than display targeted products on their own site, and drop shippers handle fulfillment and shipping. -
Establishing Reasonable Shipping Timeframes:
Online consumers expect orders will be shipped immediately, and arrive within 3-5 business days. A certified drop shippers’ primary job is to insure timely and accurate shipping. -
Inventory Management:
Connecting with a network of drop shippers provides a wide product offering because they maintain mass volumes and a broad selection of the best products on the market. An effective partnership provides a live feed from the drop shipper’s inventory to the businesses’ website. With access to a live inventory feed, the drop shippers’ inventory control system only displays available products on the businesses’ website if in stock. -
Secure Payment Processing:
An e-commerce Hub utilizes enterprise level, secure payment gateways. When a purchase is made, the drop-shipper is paid the wholesale cost of the product and the balance of the retail price is automatically deposited into the local business’ bank account.
What has been lacking in the development of the drop shipping evolution is a company who can develop, manage and launch drop ship e-commerce sites at scale. The key is being able to develop specifically tailored and branded e-commerce hubs for each merchant and their specific business category.
DevHub is the first fully integrated e-commerce Hub platform. “We see a huge opportunity to bring e- commerce revenue to thousands of local merchants in a short period of time,” says Ed O’Keefe, CEO of DevHub. Working with franchise companies has exposed DevHub to the potential impact of adding e-commerce solutions to websites that focus on areas such as health and organics, beauty products, pet supplies, sporting goods, music equipment, and more than 35 other verticals. In order to take the “pain” out of the process, and to allow for mass development of e-commerce sites, DevHub has negotiated access to over 2 million products across 35 major verticals, with 20+ drop shippers, created a centralized order management platform tied to highly converting e-commerce websites able to easily handle credit card transactions, shipping and order management. The business does not have to do anything except refer their current client base to their own branded e-commerce site. “Mid-sized digital agencies who sell digital ad solutions to small businesses and bloggers are our primary clients”