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2 PHASES & 12 STEPS TO BUILD YOUR FIRST ONLINE PHARMACY
Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry has proven the potential of transitioning from offline to online pharmacy. In the United States, the number of remote health consultations surged by 2,600% in March 2020 (during the peak of COVID-19 in the U.S.) compared to the same month in 2019. According to Statista, the global pharmaceutical eCommerce sector is projected to reach 32 billion USD by the end of 2023.
Several brands have successfully embraced eCommerce early on, achieving unexpected successes. Examples include Apollo Pharmacy (India), FPT Long Châu (Vietnam), CVS Health (USA), and Droga Raia (Brazil). The common thread among these brands lies in their comprehensive eCommerce platforms, catering to the shopping needs of customers for healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical products.
With nearly 10 years of experience in the eCommerce sector, SECOMM has outlined the journey of building pharmaceutical eCommerce websites for the Vietnamese market.
Phase 1: Building a basic online pharmacy
Identify objectives
The first thing to do is identify and prioritize goals to plan the pharmacy eCommerce website development for each phase.
In the long run, businesses can consider goals like branding, generating potential customers, and optimizing online and offline operations.
For short-term goals, businesses should prioritize objectives like monitoring and analyzing customer behavior, evaluating marketing campaigns, and revenue growth.
In the first phase, businesses can decide to deploy quickly to enter the market or proceed gradually to test and adapt to this eCommerce world.
Select eCommerce platform
There are two types of platforms to help businesses facilitate pharmacy eCommerce websites: SaaS (Software as a Service) and open source.
Some popular SaaS eCommerce platforms include
- Haravan: Founded in 2014 based on Shopify, Haravan has become popular in the Vietnamese eCommerce community for B2C businesses or those dealing with low-involvement products. It offers quick deployment with reasonable fees.
- Shopify: It is a widely used eCommerce platform allowing businesses to build, develop, and manage their online stores. Shopify offers an intuitive interface, making it easy for users with limited technical skills to operate eCommerce efficiently.
- BigCommerce: Designed to be easy to use, BigCommerce empowers businesses of all sizes and technical skills to start their journey to build a professional eCommerce website.
Some outstanding open-source eCommerce platforms include
- Adobe Commerce (Magento): Adobe Commerce is an open-source eCommerce platform designed specifically for businesses ranging from medium to large scale, with high growth and extensive customization and expansion needs. It includes two main versions: Magento Open Source (free) and Adobe Commerce (paid).
- WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that allows brands to set up eCommerce websites by adding eCommerce functionality to an existing WordPress website.
- OpenCart: OpenCart is an open-source eCommerce platform based on the PHP programming language, developed by Daniel Kerr in 1998, with two versions: Free (Open Source) and Cloud Store (Paid).
Typically, new eCommerce businesses will choose SaaS platforms to save time and budget in the initial phase of building a basic eCommerce website or an online pharmacy. Then, businesses will re-platform to an open-source platform to develop more advanced eCommerce systems.
However, some businesses decide to build their eCommerce websites in the basic phase on an open-source platform and then upgrade the system over time to remove the re-platforming step in the later phase.
Design UI/UX
When designing the interface, businesses need to meet basic criteria such as UI/UX standards, showcasing the brand’s characteristics, maintaining consistent product presentation, providing sufficient user guidance, etc.
When it comes to UI/UX design, it’s important to showcase the brand image, products, user guide, etc.
There are three ways to design UI/UX:
- Using ready-made themes: This way helps businesses optimize design costs but may limit brand positioning as it can lead to theme duplication with other websites
- Customizing themes: Balancing cost savings and adding some brand identity elements such as color, font, layout, etc. However, to customize themes effectively, a specialized and experienced team is required.
- Designing a custom theme: Businesses will have a website tailored to their brand. However, this approach requires more investment in design costs and time.
In this phase, businesses often choose ready-made themes to minimize costs, but some financially robust businesses may opt for the other two methods to better position their brand.
Develop core features
In the basic development phase, businesses should prioritize developing core features for an online pharmacy.
Some essential features that a pharmacy eCommerce website should have include
- Catalog Management: Control product data, features, categories, prices, inventory quantities, and images/videos for smooth operations and optimal business performance.
- Store Management: Handle product inventory, control the business activities, and manage personnel for each branch.
- Cart & Checkout: Manage the shopping cart and customer checkout information.
- Customer Management: Manage customer information to improve marketing effectiveness, shopping experience, and overall customer satisfaction.
- Marketing Management: Optimize SEO and implement marketing programs using supporting tools to boost sales for the business.
- Sales Management: Establish and operate sales processes, orders, payments, and shipping.
- Content Management: Develop and optimize all content-related aspects for CMS pages, image storage, theme customization, and website design.
- System Management: Administer user roles, and explore best practices in terms of security, maintenance, and system care for the website.
- Analysis & Reporting: Support to track, and measure the performance of the eCommerce system, and plan for future strategies
Fulfill legal procedures
After developing features and ensuring a successful testing and website launch, businesses are obligated to complete the legal procedures associated with eCommerce operations.
According to Decree 52/2013/ND-CP by the Government of Vietnam, any individual or organization owning an e-commerce website for sales is required to notify or register with the Ministry of Industry and Trade through the online public service portal of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Note: Websites that operate beyond the specified period or fail to register/notify the authorized management agency within the designated timeframe may be subject to administrative penalties as per regulations.
Phase 2: Developing an advanced online pharmacy
Redefine objectives
In the process of business development and amidst significant market changes, it’s important to realign goals to suit the evolving landscape. This time for business leaders to redefine objectives regarding the overall strategy, timeline, and budget for investing in the pharmacy eCommerce website.
During this phase, businesses often focus on short-term and long-term goals related to expanding the online pharmacy
For long-term goals, businesses may consider goals such as expanding market segments, establishing a loyalty program, and cultivating shopping habits for healthcare products, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment.
For long-term goals, businesses may prioritize goals related to tapping into new potential customers, revenue growth, and supporting eCommerce marketing strategies such as livestreaming, gamification, affiliate marketing, and influencer marketing.
Select a platform for switching
When SaaS platforms can’t support businesses to expand the system anymore, re-platforming to another robust platform is a top choice. Platforms like Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, and BigCommerce Enterprise can help businesses facilitate a deeply custom pharmacy eCommerce website.
When re-platforming, businesses have challenges such as switching costs, time to train personnel, and data loss throughout the platform migration process.
Select development resources
To build a high-complexity online pharmacy on a professional platform, businesses need resources to facilitate it effectively.
Businesses can decide to build an in-house team or seek a development agency. Regardless of the choice, it requires businesses to have practical experience on the selected platform.
For building an in-house team, businesses need to recruit and train IT and eCommerce personnel to develop on the selected platform. This option may take time and budget to establish a high-performing team but it allows the business to have better control over resources and actively adjust or develop the website system.
In case businesses hire a development agency, here are some criteria to consider:
- Deep Experience in eCommerce: Number of years of experience; Quantity and quality of completed projects; Complexity level of the finished projects.
- Professional Team: Solution consulting specialists; eCommerce specialists; IT personnel; and Customer support.
- Straightforward Process: Analysis; Proposal of solutions; Development timeline; Testing and system maintenance.
- Handling Capabilities: Prompt support; Commitment to warranty and maintenance.
Partnering with a professional development agency will help businesses gain specialized knowledge, enhance experience, and create an online pharmacy tailored to the specific needs of the industry.
Redesign UI/UX
During the platform migration process, businesses can keep the current website design without making any changes. However, some businesses tend to redesign their websites to align with new strategies and the new platform.
Similar to the previous phase, businesses have three options to design their pharmacy eCommerce websites: using ready-made themes, customizing themes, or designing a unique interface.
However, in phase 2, businesses often decide to customize themes or design a unique interface to express the brand image and the pharmaceutical eCommerce industry.
Switch eCommerce platform
After the right eCommerce platform for migrating, businesses should carry out the process to minimize the risk of data loss or errors. Typically, the migration process is automated as much as possible to avoid potential issues.
The migration process includes the following steps:
- System Analysis: Evaluate the current system in detail, including the database, interface design, integrations, and implemented customizations.
- Migration Planning: Develop a detailed plan for the conversion process, including timelines, resources, and participants.
- Integration and Data Migration: Extract data from the old system and transfer it to the new system, including information about products, orders, customers, and other relevant data.
- Testing and Quality Assurance: Conduct comprehensive testing to identify and rectify errors, ensuring that the website operates smoothly and securely.
After re-platforming, the business needs to perform thorough checks to ensure that the data has been migrated completely and accurately according to the plan.
Upgrade eCommerce features
Beyond core features, businesses should focus on building a system with more complex features, including advanced and industry-specific functionalities for pharmaceutical eCommerce.
- Prescription Medication: Provide prescription medications based on the doctor’s indications and instructions.
- Consultation Services from Doctors/Pharmacists: Offer health consultation services and online medical examinations as needed.
- Detailed Product Information Display: Provide comprehensive product information, including the name of the medication, ingredients, indications, dosage, usage instructions, side effects, warnings, expiration date, and pricing.
- Usage Guidelines: Provide instructions for the use and dosage adjustment for all medical products, with a reference to the advice of doctors/pharmacists.
- Online Medical Records: Store patient medical records and test results on the system’s information portal.
In addition, businesses need to consistently update and enhance these features to meet user needs and keep pace with market trends.
Operate & maintain system
When testing the eCommerce system, businesses need to thoroughly check the entire website and its features over a specific period to ensure order processing speed and website stability. If any issues arise, businesses should immediately contact the in-house team or development partner to adjust and improve the website accordingly before officially going live.
Once the pharmacy eCommerce website system is stable, businesses should focus on eCommerce marketing strategies or Omnichannel approaches to enhance their online pharmacy.
Additionally, regular maintenance, updates, and continuous system upgrades are essential to sustain growth and quickly adapt to changes in the eCommerce market in general and the healthcare market in particular.
The Bottom Line
In general, the journey of building a pharmacy eCommerce website in Vietnam is not an easy task. This work demands substantial investments of time and budget from businesses to research the most suitable eCommerce strategy for each stage of their development.
Understanding the challenges that businesses may encounter when building an online pharmacy, SECOMM is ready to provide custom solutions for developing an eCommerce system.
Contact SECOMM or call the hotline at 028 7108 9908 for a free consultation.
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THE 5 BEST ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS TO BUILD ONLINE PHARMACY
According to The Business Research Company, the global pharmaceutical eCommerce market is projected to reach $732.3 billion by 2027. This represents a significant opportunity for pharmacies, healthcare service providers, or hospitals/clinics to implement eCommerce and reach a broader range of potential customers. To achieve this, building an online pharmacy on a professional platform is a great idea to address industry-specific challenges.
Things to keep in mind when building an online pharmacy
When building a pharmacy eCommerce website, businesses must meet numerous criteria to ensure professionalism, safety, and legal compliance within this industry.
Intuitive user interface
The typical customer profile in the pharmaceutical eCommerce sector consists of individuals seeking to purchase medications, medical equipment, and other healthcare products for themselves, family, or friends.
Thus, the website interface needs to be visually appealing, and user-friendly, and prioritize colors such as blue or white to create a sense of safety and cleanliness.
Other factors, such as layout, font choice, and imagery, should be carefully selected and coordinated to deliver the most professional user experience.
Bespoke features
When building an online pharmacy, beyond default eCommerce features, businesses should focus on developing the following features to address industry-specific needs:
- Prescription Medications: Provide prescription medications based on the doctor’s indications and instructions.
- Consultation Services from Doctors/Pharmacists: Offer health consultation services and online medical examinations on demand.
- Detailed Product Information Display: Furnish comprehensive information about products, including drug names, ingredients, indications, dosage, usage instructions, side effects, warnings, expiration dates, and prices.
- Usage Guidelines: Provide usage instructions and dosage adjustments for all medical products, about the advice of doctors/pharmacists.
- Online Medical Records: Store patient medical records and test results on the system’s information portal.
High security
An online pharmacy is a system that contains various crucial information including personal details, payment information, and the health status of customers. Therefore, the security system of the website needs to be built and deployed carefully to ensure the safety of customer data.
Compliance with legal regulations
Pharmaceutical eCommerce is a specialized business area subject to the regulations of the healthcare/pharmaceutical industry. eCommerce pharmaceutical businesses need to comply with these regulations to ensure that their operations are legal and safe for customers.
Below are some key legal regulations that e-commerce pharmaceutical businesses need to adhere to in Vietnam:
- Pharmaceutical Law: The Pharmaceutical Law regulates the conditions for pharmaceutical business, including requirements for pharmaceutical business licenses, facilities, equipment, personnel, and drug quality.
- Decree 54/2017/NĐ-CP: Decree 54/2017/NĐ-CP provides detailed regulations on pharmaceutical business activities.
- Circular 07/2018/TT-BYT: Circular 07/2018/TT-BYT guides the advertising of drugs, drug ingredients, medical equipment, and cosmetics.
- Circular 04/2016/TT-BYT: Circular 04/2016/TT-BYT guides state management of the pharmaceutical profession.
- Circular 34/2018/TT-BYT: Circular 34/2018/TT-BYT guides state management of drugs and drug ingredients.
In addition, pharmaceutical eCommerce businesses also need to comply with other legal regulations, such as Cybersecurity Law, Consumer Protection Law, and eCommerce Law.
Top 5 eCommerce Platforms to build an online pharmacy
Although this industry has many challenges to deploy, businesses always have eCommerce platforms to create their online pharmacies. Here are the 5 leading platforms for building online pharmacy that businesses may consider.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a cloud-based eCommerce platform operating on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, enabling businesses to create and manage online stores.
Currently, BigCommerce offers four main solutions, including
Pros:
- Easy to use: BigCommerce is designed to be user-friendly with a drag-and-drop builder to help businesses create and manage online stores easily without the need for technical skills.
- Multi-channel support: BigCommerce allows pharmaceutical businesses to operate across multiple platforms, including eCommerce websites, social media pages, and online marketplaces.
- Security compliance: BigCommerce is committed to adhering to high-level security standards and protects customer personal information and transaction data.
- Pharmaceutical solutions: BigCommerce offers a variety of features and interfaces specifically designed for the pharmaceutical industry.
Cons:
- Ongoing costs: As a SaaS, BigCommerce requires monthly or annual fees for usage. The value of these fee packages may increase depending on the scale of the business and transaction fees per order.
- Limited customization: While BigCommerce allows customization of eCommerce websites, it limits deeper customization. This could be an issue for businesses with specific customization requirements, such as in the pharmaceutical industry.
- Limited scalability: While BigCommerce can scale, for large businesses or those planning rapid expansion in the future, it may be necessary to consider more specialized platforms to handle these needs.
- Platform dependency: Businesses will rely on BigCommerce’s ecosystem to maintain and update their online stores. This could be a concern if a business needs complete control over its system.
Some famous pharmaceutical eCommerce businesses currently utilizing BigCommerce include Victoria Health, Molton Brown, LARQ, and Zyppah.
Shopify
Shopify is a SaaS eCommerce platform established in 2006. To date, Shopify has rapidly become one of the leading platforms in the eCommerce industry, supporting thousands of businesses worldwide to initiate and grow their online ventures.
The cost to use the Shopify platform is quite diverse, including these three solutions:
In addition, Shopify provides eCommerce solutions tailored to businesses with different needs and wants, such as:
- Starter: $5/month, leveraging payment features through social networks and messaging apps for businesses.
- Retail: $89/month, includes employee management features, inventory tracking, and loyalty programs for retail stores.
- Commerce Components: Custom pricing, offering third-party modules for integration into the eCommerce website.
- Shopify Plus: Custom pricing, designed for large enterprises.
- Shopify Hydrogen: Custom pricing, for businesses to deploy Headless Commerce.
Learn more: Top 5 benefits of Headless Commerce
Pros:
- Easy to use: Shopify is designed with an intuitive user interface, allowing non-technical users to easily create online stores.
- Diverse pricing plans: Shopify offers a wide range of choices for businesses, catering to small, medium, startup, and large enterprises with various customization needs.
- Data Security: Shopify adheres to important security standards such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) to keep customer’s personal and healthcare data safe.
- Extensive Feature Set: Shopify provides many features and extensions to meet the needs of building eCommerce websites for various industries, including the pharmaceutical sector.
Cons:
- Ongoing costs: Similar to BigCommerce, Shopify requires monthly or annual fees for service usage, and costs can escalate over time due to transaction fees, expansion of features, etc.
- Limited Customization: Shopify offers a certain level of customization for basic packages like Basic, Shopify, Advanced, Retail, and Starter. If a business requires a highly customized eCommerce website, additional fees must be paid to use other solutions or consider alternative platforms.
- SEO Limitations: While Shopify supports basic SEO optimization, there are some limitations in terms of more advanced SEO optimization and custom URL management.
Healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical businesses using Shopify include Dr.Axe, 310 Nutrition, Hiya, and BUBS Naturals.
StoreHippo
StoreHippo is a SaaS eCommerce platform established in 2014 in India. Over the years, this platform has consistently updated its technologies to meet the website-building needs of businesses, particularly those in the pharmaceutical eCommerce sector.
Similar to other SaaS platforms, StoreHippo offers a variety of solutions to choose from:
Pros:
- Easy to use: StoreHippo is designed with a user-friendly interface, making it quick and easy for users to create online stores.
- Custom solutions for pharmaceutical eCommerce: StoreHippo provides dedicated solutions for various industries, including online pharmacies.
- Continuous Updates: To address specific functions for each industry, StoreHippo has consistently improved and updated the latest technologies in e-commerce, such as Headless Commerce, PWA, Angular JS, etc.
Cons:
- Limited customization: Although StoreHippo allows businesses to customize their eCommerce website interface, it still limits deeper customization compared to other eCommerce platforms.
- Limited image size: StoreHippo has limitations on the size of images that businesses can upload and use in their online stores.
- Community and Support Limitations: In comparison to larger e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, or BigCommerce, StoreHippo has a smaller user community and customer support, which may slow down the resolution of technical issues or support requests.
Some brands that built their online pharmacy with StoreHippo include WoundProfessional, Kunooz, and On A Healthy Note.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin developed for the WordPress platform, one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) globally. WooCommerce enables businesses to turn their WordPress websites into online stores or integrate eCommerce features into existing websites.
The license fee of WooCommerce depends on the complexity of each project, averaging around $1,000 for a basic eCommerce website and $10,000 for a more advanced eCommerce website.
Pros:
- Free to use: WooCommerce is an open-source platform, so it is entirely free to use and customize. However, associated costs such as hosting, domain, themes, functionality systems, and maintenance should be considered.
- Easy to use: WooCommerce is deeply integrated into WordPress, making the installation and management of online stores straightforward. Users familiar with WordPress will find WooCommerce’s interface user-friendly.
- Third-party integration: WooCommerce has a large development community and supports integration with various third-party applications and services, including features tailored for pharmaceutical eCommerce
- High customization: Businesses can customize the eCommerce website interface using both free and premium themes. WooCommerce also allows businesses to design their interface to reflect their brand.
Cons:
- WordPress dependency: WooCommerce is essentially a plugin for WordPress, meaning businesses must use the WordPress platform to use WooCommerce. This dependency can lead to challenges such as inconsistent support, slow data retrieval, conflicts between updates, etc.
- Complex customization: While WooCommerce allows customization, implementing complex customizations or integrating specific features may be time-consuming and require high technical skills or support from developers.
- Limited scalability: WooCommerce often faces difficulties in handling large online stores with thousands of products and high traffic.
Brands using WooCommerce to build online pharmacy include Dr. Scholl’s, myLAB Box, Superdrug Health Clinics, and Apothecanna.
Adobe Commerce (Magento)
Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento Commerce, is a professional and widely used eCommerce system. Adobe Commerce is part of the Adobe Experience Cloud product line and is designed to assist businesses in building eCommerce websites.
Currently, Adobe Commerce provides businesses with two main versions:
- Adobe Commerce (Magento Commerce): This is the premium version of Magento designed for large enterprises, offering two options: on-premise and on-cloud.
- Magento Open Source: Formerly known as Magento Community Edition, this is the open-source and free version of Magento.
Pros:
- High Scalability: The Magento platform is built with high scalability, allowing businesses to add features and integrate third-party applications as needed.
- High Security: Adobe Commerce prioritizes security, ensuring that customer data and payments are protected securely.
- High customization: All versions of Adobe Commerce have flexible customization capabilities, addressing the complex requirements of various industries, particularly in the pharmaceutical eCommerce sector.
- Adobe Experience Cloud Ecosystem: If a business is using other Adobe products such as Adobe Analytics or Adobe Marketing Cloud, they can integrate them with Adobe Commerce to create a comprehensive system for customer experience.
Cons:
- High initial costs: Adobe Commerce has a higher development cost compared to other eCommerce platforms, making it preferred by medium and large businesses with complex eCommerce systems or high customization needs.
- Require high technical skills: Adobe Commerce is developed using the PHP programming language, which is relatively complex, requiring technical personnel with expertise and experience to develop projects correctly and effectively.
- Long deployment time: Deploying Adobe Commerce may take more time, especially for highly customized or complex eCommerce websites.
This list is just a few examples for businesses to reference; there are many other robust eCommerce platforms that businesses can consider based on specific needs and available resources.
With extensive experience in implementing eCommerce for clients in various countries, SECOMM understands the challenges and difficulties businesses face during the deployment of pharmaceutical eCommerce.
Contact SECOMM now or call the hotline at 02871089908 today for a free consultation.
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