E-commerce - History, Fundamentals And Trends Simplified!

By Author: Lucy Newman
Total Articles: 25
Comment this article

E-Commerce is the acronym that stands for Electronic Commerce in general. E-Commerce is chiefly facilitated by technologies like; Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Fund Transfer. Both these two technologies were introduced way back in the late 1970s and a lot has been changed during these four decades. In 1980s, the growing popularity of credit card, automated teller machines and telephonic banking had added one more success-story to the E-Commerce. The concept of online shopping was first invented and introduced in 1979 by UK based Michael Aldrich. Although the early developments in E-Commerce Technology appears to be a fairytale like, yet a lot of research, manpower, experiment have been put into bring the best possible E-Commerce Solutions out. With growing number of hacking attempts, Secure E-Commerce Solution has been an expensive business, yet in comparison to physical business module, E-Commerce is pretty cheaper and secured. E-commerce is simply a virtual version of commerce that operates on the World Wide Web. Some of the best possible examples would be to have a look at online book retailers (Amazon.com), ...
... computer retailers (HP), and so on. All of these online sellers own very large e-commerce store fronts. E-commerce is made up of the same factions and components that make up commerce fundamentals; i.e. buyers, sellers, and producers. E-commerce involves all the similar aspects of regular commerce, but the only distinction can be made that it takes place on the Internet. Let's explore some of the major features of E-Commerce imparted in recent times.
During these days, most of the online sellers prefer to manage their business through various other channels including their own web store. Online market places like eBay, Amazon and Kelkoo; Shopping Search Engines like Google Base, eDirectory, Shop.com; and Comparison Shopping sites like Shopzilla.com and Google Products are some of the most preferred destinations for shoppers to shop at. That's why online sellers prefer to make their presence felt at these channels as well as their own web stores. This is one of the reasons that has made E-Commerce applications with multi channel selling features are high in demand. There are numerous e-commerce solution providers available online; you can choose any of them as per requirements.
Though it appears pretty easy from customer point of view, yet E-Commerce can be truly a complex technology to develop. To offer a world class customer experience, sellers must incorporate and integrate technologies and functionality that exceeds growing customer expectations.
Your complacency may cost dearer if your website does not meet customer expectations as well as search engine guidelines. If your web store satisfies both the requirements, the conversion average of your website traffic will go up. Here follows some of the insights:
Think Fast
Broadband has made data transfer a quicker business, but quite a number of potential customers still use dial-up connection. So while developing a web store for your business, ensure that page loading time should be within 9 seconds. Your failure may be an advantage for your competitors. Recommended page size should be within 60kb to 70kb. Try to avoid flash. Images are very important and mostly neglected by seller. Product images should be of high resolution and larger with multiple size variants.
Shopping in general is a part of entertainment activity and online shopping carries the similar taste and trend. A customer should not be forced to make transaction as this may affect your business. Your web store should have multiple order facility like; Order through Phone and Checkout as Guest or Registered User.