Turpial Development: Build in Public — Part 2

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In this second post we will be talking about why we decided as a company to move forward in the conception, design and construction of an e-commerce platform for the Venezuelan market.

Before starting, we must begin by knowing what an e-commerce is, since probably in our audience we can find people who have already used and lived the experience with one, but do not know the term.

An eCommerce, also known as Electronic Commerce, is a term referred and defined by most people to a platform where a purchase of a product, good or service is made through the use of a digital channel; whether it is mainly a website, mobile application or even a social network;

However, the idea behind an e-commerce is that the platform should include the entire purchasing process, not only the display and search of the product, but also the processing of orders, establishing different means of payment available to the customer, electronic invoicing; as well as it should also consider the process of delivery of orders to the location established by the customer.

Another element to consider when investing in the development of an e-commerce platform is the audience and the target market to which the sale is directed. Taking this into account, there are different types of e-commerce:

• B2B: Business to Business, companies that have other companies as customers.
• B2C: Business to Consumer, which refers to companies whose products or services are aimed at consumers or end customers.
• C2B: Consumer to Business, are usually platforms where a person or consumer publishes a product or service so that a company can acquire it.
• C2C: Consumer to Consumer, are those e-commerce portals where a company facilitates the commercial exchange between a couple of people.

If we analyze global trends in this sector, it is estimated that there are around 2.14 billion people who purchased products or services through an online platform in 2021, which translates into a quarter of the world’s population. If we transpose that number to the specific case of Venezuela, it results in a potential of around 8 million people buying through e-commerce.

However, in Venezuela, e-commerce needs to scale up — and in a certain way democratize — to incorporate even more small merchants. They have driven e-commerce very strongly using mainly MercadoLibre, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram or communication channels such as Whatsapp. While these media have been adopted in a good way by the population, customers expect more and more every day that their shopping experience can be obtained and enjoyed directly with the brands they expect to consume.

There are many challenges that still face this country to give life to the e-commerce industry: virtual stores for the small businessman, improve existing payment methods, credit systems, improvements in delivery logistics services, and even continue to promote electronic invoicing that has only been enabled for certain sectors. However, the pandemic demonstrated that despite all these challenges that remain today, Venezuelans are always willing to reinvent themselves and innovate with the means available.

By 2040, there are studies that estimate that 95% of purchases will be made through e-commerce, and although it seems like a long time, the foundations must be laid in the country to reach that number.

For this reason, the vision we have in Turpial and where we want to innovate is just in that area. We are experts in the development of web and mobile applications, and we want to bring our experience to the largest number of small, medium and large merchants with an e-commerce platform conceived and designed for the Venezuelan market, which includes inventory management, purchase orders, shipments, deliveries and also incorporates various means of national and international payments that allow the owner of the store to centralize its operation in this and for a very low cost.

Based on our work methodology, all projects are divided into three phases: Discovery, Construction and Transition.

In the following posts, we will start with articles related to the Discovery process: a phase where we build a complete vision of the product concept we want to bring to the market, starting from the creation of its corporate identity, technical design, user experience and graphic interface design, requirements listing in the form of User Stories, where we will talk about agile practices.

Author: Edgar Pelayo
edgar@turpialdev.com

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