With the growth of the Internet
community and the limitless possibilities the Internet gives to the
single user, it didn’t take long before someone realized that the World
Wide Web is a really good place for the commercial entrepreneur…….
So,
very quickly the online market was born, offering almost all kinds of
goods to be purchased and delivered to your door. This new online
sensation was called electronic commerce, or eCommerce.
Content:
- eCommerce
- How does e-commerce work?
- The impact of eCommerce
- Setting up an eCommerce store
eCommerce
E-commerce is a complex term referring to the process of selling
and buying products and services over the Internet or other electronic
systems. Considered as the sales aspect of the e-business, the
electronic commerce has revolutionized trade as a routine activity for
the contemporary man by bringing the marketplace to your home or the
office, thus saving you time and efforts.
The development of e-commerce has given birth to new terms such
as electronic funds transfer, online transaction processing, electronic
data interchange (EDI), Internet marketing, automated data collection
systems, etc. They all designate certain key components of the
sophisticated e-commerce system.
How does e-commerce work?
The majority of processes running within the e-commerce system
are carried out on the World Wide Web. It is on the web where goods and
services are presented through variously designed e-commerce websites
to match the taste of a particular target audience. From there
customers can order the desired items and pay for them in a variety of
supported e-payment options such as credit cards, PayPal, etc. Certain e-commerce operations are executed via email
as well. These may include sending order placement confirmations or
electronic invoice notifications to the buyer’s personal mailbox after a
particular purchase.
Depending
on the nature of the offered products and services, eCommerce
operations may involve virtual and physical items. Due to the
increasing use of the Internet in our daily lives, the percentage of the
virtual items distributed through eCommerce is rapidly growing. These
include services like buying admission to limited access websites or
electronic versions of newspapers and magazines, online gaming, etc.
Nevertheless, the majority of e-commerce transactions are still related
to the purchase and transportation of physical items.
As far as the parties involved in the online transaction process
are concerned, eCommerce can be thought of as being
business-to-consumer, more popular as B2C, and business-to-business,
also known as B2B. The B2C eCommerce, conducted between business
entities and consumers, includes all online stores (e-shops) offering
retail products and services to end customers such as flower stores,
shoe stores, furniture stores, etc. The B2B commerce, on the other hand,
takes place between business entities only, such as wholesalers and
retailers, on not that widely popular web stores.
The impact of eCommerce
The rapid expansion of eCommerce has made it possible for almost
all big retail companies to set up their own online stores with
regularly updated content. Thus, it is now easier than ever to obtain an
item from the latest collection of your favorite clothes brand, or be
among the first to take advantage of a starting clearance campaign.
Moreover, the eCommerce fashion is gradually ‘infecting’ smaller retail
companies, which find it as a good chance to expand their reach to
potential customers and increase the selling volumes. This trend is
stimulated by the attractive low-cost eCommerce hosting services offered
by different hosts on the web.
Setting up an eCommerce store
If you own a store, which you wish to take online, you probably went directly to this section of the article. Setting up a brand new eCommerce store can be quite hard and at the same time, quite easy. If you have experience in creating websites involving PHP and MySQL programming, then you will not have a problem to create the store from scratch. However, if you just want your store online with no additional hassle, then there is a way to do that, and it is called – e-commerce scripts.
Globe Chamber Business Times 