What is E-Commerce?

E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. In practice, this term and a newer term, e-business, are often used interchangeably. For online retail selling, the term e-tailing is sometimes used. Best examples of E-tailer are Amazon.com and Dell.com who don't have a physical store. 

                                                        

While e-commerce once required an expensive interface and personal security certificate, this is no longer the case. Virtual storefronts are offered by a variety of hosting services and large Internet presences such as eBay and Yahoo!, which offer turnkey solutions to vendors with little or no online experience. Tools for running successful e-commerce websites are built into the hosting servers, eliminating the need for the individual merchant to redesign the wheel. These tools include benefits like shopping carts, inventory and sales logs, and the ability to accept a variety of payment options including secure credit card transactions.

E-commerce includes retail shopping, banking, stocks and bonds trading, auctions, real estate transactions, airline booking, movie rentals—nearly anything you can imagine in the real world. Even personal services such as hair and nail salons can benefit from e-commerce by providing a website for the sale of related health and beauty products, normally available to local customers exclusively

The growing popularity of e-commerce is understandable considering the time and hassle involved in running from store to store, searching for an item in the real world. It not only takes valuable time and energy, but gasoline. With today’s crowded cities and high gas prices, shopping online whenever the mood strikes—even in the middle of the night—has unarguable, unbeatable advantages. Not only is it convenient to shop at a myriad of vendors from the comfort of your computer chair, it’s also a snap to find the best deal by allowing sites like confuse.com and gocompare.com sift through hundreds of sellers for you.

E-commerce also has other advantages. Employee overhead is virtually nonexistent, and the yearly fee for an e-commerce website is nominal. Compare this to rental of storefront property, particularly in a busy mall. To top it off, most transactions are handled by software processes, never requiring a real person until the item is ready to be packed and shipped. This translates into real savings to the customer. As a result, real world businesses often cannot compete with their e-commerce counterparts, though one does have to watch for inflated shipping fees that might negate savings.

Though early e-commerce was stunted by security fears, improved technology has made millions of people worldwide feel comfortable buying online. Seeing the vast potential in e-commerce, most credit card companies helped allay fears by guaranteeing cardholders would not be held responsible for fraudulent charges as a result of online shopping. All of these factors have helped e-commerce become the booming industry it is today.

An online shopper looks for

Credibility –Initial check to see that the seller is credible through review and Blogs through search engine.

Security – A secured server is identified by checking the URL which starts with https where “s” means the information flowing between your computer and the website will be securely encrypted.

Trust – obviously is gained if a customer is satisfied with above two factors.

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