All
How
Blockchain
Can Help Improve Your Ecommerce Business

All

The State of Blockchain and Ecommerce

As businesses jumped into digitalization during pandemics to respond to the new normal, the popularity of both ecommerce and bitcoin grew. According to Statista, retail e-commerce sales were 4.89 trillion US dollars in 2021. Meanwhile, global blockchain spending reached 6.6 billion dollars in the same year. 

 

What happens when these two enormous industries collide? And how can ecommerce benefit from what blockchain technology has to offer? Here are seven ways blockchain can provide benefits for your ecommerce product.

BENEFIT #1 Introduce Alternative Payment Method

Cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual payment systems built on blockchain, secured by cryptography, and enabled by a peer-to-peer ecosystem. They serve as alternatives to conventional currencies and have become a more convenient, secure, decentralized, and faster payment method. Anyone can exchange crypto money using digital wallets or exchanges. 

 

Although Bitcoin is the first association coming up to the mind, there are hundreds of cryptocurrencies. And surprisingly, Bitcoin is not even the most widely used. 

 

Here are the top 10 most popular cryptocurrencies globally based on 24h volume on April 5, 2022 (in millions).

Source: Statista 

 

Cryptocurrencies are incredibly enticing for users because transactions are not monitored centrally; therefore, only people involved in the transaction can control it. There is no dependence on the bank or other authorities, so you can establish an account and perform transactions right from your home without a bureaucratic burden. Also, any purchase can occur anonymously, and there is less possibility of fraud because crypto transactions are difficult to counterfeit. 

 

Ecommerce can benefit from cryptocurrency adoption in the following ways: 

 

  • Reaching broader customer markets
  • Enabling lower transaction fees
  • Improving user experience
  • Reducing fraudulent chargebacks
  • Ensuring anonymity

BENEFIT #2 Strengthen Security and Privacy

In 2021, 51% of merchants reported security threats as the most significant challenge they faced during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But even during not so shopping-active days, ecommerce retailers are striving to ensure the safety of both their customers and their own business. By introducing blockchain-powered transactions, shops can stop worrying about their customers’ and their own anonymity, security, and privacy protection. 

 

For instance, with blockchain, the reverse of a transaction without the consent of both parties is almost impossible. So no party can scam the other. Also, cryptocurrency transactions involve an instantaneous exchange of money between parties, and as a result, fraudulent chargebacks or returns are drastically reduced.

BENEFIT #3 Improve Supply Chain Traceability and Management

According to ISO 9001:2000, traceability means being able to track a shop entity’s entire supply chain history, details, or location. In large ecommerce shops with many customers and large amounts of orders and payments, tracing becomes particularly challenging. Messy, untraceable data may disrupt supply chain management, which in turn will hinder the delivery of products, which will, in turn, cause you to lose customers due to a bad experience. 

 

Traceability issues can be resolved with blockchain technology. Blocks in a blockchain contain the data transaction’s timestamp and all the participant info involved. Such structure enables an audit trail that shows each step an asset has taken in its journey through the supply chain. 

 

By documenting updates in such an organized thread, supply chain networks can create a single shared ledger, providing complete data visibility without the mediators, just with blockchain code. 

 

Success case: Walmart tracked the provenance of food within its supply chain using blockchain in 2.2 seconds instead of 7 days by using traditional methods. In this sense, they enabled suppliers to meet dynamic customer demands and improve food safety.

BENEFIT #4 Smart Contracts for Selling or Purchasing Deals

Contracts are typically signed on paper. Each party receives a copy, and for each manuscript to be notarized and approved, an external intermediary needs to serve as the contract enabler. 

 

With a smart contract, blockchain algorithms serve as this enabler. As the name implies, smart contracts are applications that execute automatically when the agreement terms between buyer and seller are met. They are written directly into the blockchain code, which controls their execution, performs transactions, and responds to violation if it occurs.

As a result, smart contracts are less prone to unauthorized changes, human error, and conflict of interests. In B2B ecommerce, it can help secure deals so that large companies trade large quantities of products with each other safely and without wasting money and time on third entities. 

 

Perhaps, smart contracts are still not widely used for small one-time purchases. Still, they can significantly save time and spare nerves for large B2B deals, wholesale procurements, and large purchases (like that of a car, expensive equipment, or property).

BENEFIT #5 Use NFT for Ecommerce Marketing and Loyal Programs

NFTs are a form of non-interchangeable data stored in a digital ledger and can be marketed and traded. Basically, NFT tokens are digital representations of your rights to some digital content, such as photos, videos, and audio recordings. And they are quite a hit right now. 

 

Although NFTs are widely used right now to sell art or illustrations, ecommerce businesses can also find an application of this innovation to market their goods and services. For instance, they can create collectible NFTs as part of their marketing campaigns, saying that “if you purchase my product A you will get an NFT collection A1. And if you collect all NFTs we have created, you will get product H as a gift”. 

 

Or for instance, you can tokenize all of your products and create shared marketing campaigns with NFT businesses. Adidas, for example, released a collection titled ‘Into the Metaverse’ in collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club – arguably the most prestigious and exclusive brand in the Internet space. Users could purchase NFT of the official Adidas x BAYC piece of art. Alongside, Adidas created branded hoodies and tracksuits for the owners.

 

This way, NFTs create a sense of interactivity and trendiness, attracting user attention to your products and services.

BENEFIT #6 Enable Verified Reviews

Feedback is crucial in deciding if an online shop gets new customers. The sincerity and authenticity of reviews are vital for businesses to attract potential buyers and for customers to make high-quality purchases. And blockchain has been proven in recent times to verify whether reviews are genuine or fake.

 

The blockchain allows for creating a trace of a reviewer, which then cannot be altered. This trace allows Blockchain to prove whether reviewers purchased from the site before submitting their reviews and check if the review was altered.

 

Similarly, suppose reviews are stored on Blockchain. In that case, they won’t be able to be edited without notice, and they won’t be easy to remove, so businesses won’t have the option of leaving positive reviews only.

BENEFIT #7 Enhance User Trust With Blockchain Tracking

Blockchain is a shared record of data maintained by an anonymous network of computers rather than a single central authority. So blockchain users know that no one will change the logs once they are created because the change will have to be implemented on all computers from a network which is… well, challenging. 

 

This can be used to reinforce customers’ trust in the products or services of an ecommerce business. For example, Carrefour introduced blockchain tracking to prove to its audience that its food products meet standards for ethics and general safety. Such a system allowed customers to see every detail about the product – for instance, when it was harvested or packed. This way, users could be sure that what they eat is fresh, safe, and natural.

Conclusion

Shopify and Bigcommerce allow their users to accept cryptocurrency payment methods in their admin panels, and Shopify has even created a beta program dedicated to selling NFTs. Microsoft, Home Depot, Whole Foods, and Tesla are among the major online retailers accepting cryptocurrencies within their websites.

 

The world is actively using blockchain to be ahead of the competition and entice its users with an innovative, faster, and better way to pay and exchange info. If you are not afraid of innovation and change – implement blockchain solutions into your ecommerce shop. 

SapientPro team has extensive experience working with Ethereum cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and NFT. If you would like to discuss what we can offer you – please, contact us!

 

DEVELOPMENTSaaSWEBDEVELOPMENTECOMMERCEBLOCKCHAINSEOMOBILEDEVELOPMENTBACKEND
related news
Header-Nearshore-min-1.webp
DEVELOPMENTPros & Cons Of Nearshore Outsourcing In Software

Under the conditions of globalization, more and more countries of the world are becoming IT outsourcing centers. Recent trends show that for many companies that want to delegate software development to an outsourcing company, geographic proximity, cost, and language skills are the determining factors in choosing a developer. As a result, the usual model of offshoring-onshoring is gradually giving way to nearshoring.

Kate

6 min read

php-best-practices-min.webp
BACKENDPHP Best Practices: Are Your Back-End Developers Onboard?

Programming languages (as well as their frameworks and libraries) are essentially a set of tools that provide developers with a variety of options to either take their projects to new heights or make them flop. The difference lies in the coding skills, approaches, and practices. They set aside an engineering guru from an amateur coder. Buying a car from the top manufacturer won’t help you win a rally without the right driving skills. The same holds true for development tools – even the best programming language can be highly inefficient without effectively using the best practices it provides. How does PHP – a language used by 22.54% of professional coders – implement best practices, and what business advantages does it give you by doing so? Let’s find out!

Kate

5 min read

main@2x.webp
WEBDEVELOPMENTThe 10 Best Places for Outsourcing of Your PHP Project

Outsourcing has gained a vast popularity over the past years. As of the beginning of 2022, 60% of companies outsource at least part of their software development (compared with 56% in 2021). The demand for outsourcing services is especially topical due to the issue with the talent gap, and businesses need to go digital to meet the demands of pandemics. For example, Accelerance experts predict a shortage of 1.2 million engineers in the USA by 2026. And according to the same report, PHP is among the top 5 technologies businesses seek to outsource. So the competition is fierce. Still, outsourcing has become one of the significant ways to address the talent gap and accelerate digitization. But what are the best countries for PHP outsourcing? Are there differences in outsourcing to different countries? Or has globalization evened out the destinations? Let’s find out!

Kate

6 min read

how-to-create-nft-marketplace-min.webp
BLOCKCHAINNFT Marketplace Development: What You Need To Know

Developing an NFT marketplace is a challenging task requiring a wide range of features, technologies, and expertise. SapientPro has gathered its experience to help you learn everything you need to know before creating your own marketplace.

Kate

4 min read

main-1.svg
DEVELOPMENTRequirements: How do they Impact the Project’s Success?

Mind Reading Services would definitely be popular in software development offices. Why? Because it requires much communication for developers, project managers, and clients to be on the same page regarding desired results. This communication does not always go smoothly – so teams need to guess what their client really wants. According to developers, inadequate and vague requirements from clients (or their representatives) cause significant problems in development. And they are not wrong! Specifications provide teams with insight into what they must accomplish. More than that, they influence other crucial software development processes. Consequently, the most common cause of project failure can be traced to insufficient requirement elicitation. So this process deserves greater attention!

Kate

5 min read

main@3x.webp
BLOCKCHAINWhat Is NFT and Why Is It So Popular?

Our lives in 2021 remained governed by pandemic rules, and so we immersed ourselves deeper into the digital world. One of the things that gained much popularity during that period were NFTs. We watched Jack Dorsey – a former Twitter CEO – selling his first tweet for 2,9 million dollars. We saw a meme known as Nyan Cat being sold for $600,00. NFTs seem to have plenty of money floating around but much less understanding of what they are and how they work. So let’s get a handle on what NFTs are and how you can use them for your next innovative project!

Kate

5 min read

More related news