What Kind Of Websites Is To Sell Goods And Services

Wesley Chai,
Brian Holak, Site Editor
Ben Cole, Executive Editor

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the ownership and selling of appurtenances and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business organisation transactions occur either equally business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business organisation. The terms eastward-commerce and e-business are frequently used interchangeably. The term east-tail is too sometimes used in reference to the transactional processes that brand upwards online retail shopping.

In the last decade, widespread use of e-commerce platforms such every bit Amazon and eBay has contributed to substantial growth in online retail. In 2007, e-commerce deemed for 5.1% of total retail sales; in 2019, eastward-commerce made up 16.0%.

How does e-commerce work?

E-commerce is powered past the internet, where customers tin access an online store to browse through, and place orders for products or services via their own devices.

Every bit the order is placed, the client's web browser will communicate back and forth with the server hosting the online shop website. Information pertaining to the club will and then be relayed to a central calculator known every bit the order manager -- then forwarded to databases that manage inventory levels, a merchant system that manages payment information (using applications such as PayPal), and a banking concern reckoner -- before circling back to the club manager. This is to brand sure that store inventory and customer funds are sufficient for the club to be candy. After the order is validated, the order manager will notify the store's web server, which will then display a message notifying the customer that their club has been successfully processed. The order manager will and so send gild data to the warehouse or fulfillment department, in order for the product or service to be successfully dispatched to the customer. At this signal tangible and/or digital products may exist shipped to a customer, or access to a service may be granted.

Platforms that host e-commerce transactions may include online marketplaces that sellers simply sign upwardly for, such as Amazon.com; software as a service (SaaS) tools that allow customers to 'rent' online store infrastructures; or open source tools for companies to use in-house development to manage.

Types of due east-commerce

Business-to-business (B2B) east-commerce refers to the electronic exchange of products, services or data between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. Examples include online directories and product and supply exchange websites that allow businesses to search for products, services and information and to initiate transactions through e-procurement interfaces.

In 2017, Forrester Enquiry predicted that the B2B e-commerce market will meridian $1.1 trillion in the U.S. past 2021, bookkeeping for 13% of all B2B sales in the nation.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) is the retail part of e-commerce on the cyberspace. It is when businesses sell products, services or information directly to consumers. The term was pop during the dot-com boom of the tardily 1990s, when online retailers and sellers of goods were a novelty.

Today, at that place are innumerable virtual stores and malls on the net selling all types of consumer goods. The well-nigh recognized example of these sites is Amazon, which dominates the B2C market.

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) is a type of e-commerce in which consumers trade products, services and information with each other online. These transactions are generally conducted through a third party that provides an online platform on which the transactions are carried out.

Online auctions and classified advertisements are two examples of C2C platforms, with eBay and Craigslist existence two of the most popular of these platforms. Because eBay is a business, this course of eastward-commerce could also be called C2B2C -- consumer-to-business-to-consumer.

Consumer-to-business (C2B) is a blazon of east-commerce in which consumers make their products and services bachelor online for companies to bid on and purchase. This is the opposite of the traditional commerce model of B2C.

A popular example of a C2B platform is a marketplace that sells royalty-gratuitous photographs, images, media and design elements, such equally iStock. Some other instance would be a job board.

Business organisation-to-assistants (B2A) refers to transactions conducted online between companies and public administration or regime bodies. Many branches of authorities are dependent on e-services or products in one way or another, especially when it comes to legal documents, registers, social security, fiscals and employment. Businesses can supply these electronically. B2A services have grown considerably in recent years as investments have been made in e-government capabilities.

Consumer-to-administration (C2A) refers to transactions conducted online between individual consumers and public administration or government bodies. The government rarely buys products or services from citizens, but individuals ofttimes use electronic means in the following areas:

Education. Disseminating data, distance learning/online lectures, etc.
Social security. Distributing data, making payments, etc.
Taxes. filing taxation returns, making payments, etc.
Health. Making appointments, providing information about illnesses, making health services payments, etc.

Mobile e-commerce (M-commerce) is a type of e-commerce on the rise that features online sales transactions fabricated using mobile devices, such every bit smartphones and tablets. M-commerce includes mobile shopping, mobile banking and mobile payments. Mobile chatbots also provide east-commerce opportunities to businesses, allowing consumers to complete transactions with companies via vocalism or text conversations.

Advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce

Benefits of e-commerce include its around-the-clock availability, the speed of admission, the wide availability of goods and services for the consumer, easy accessibility and international reach.

Availability. Aside from outages or scheduled maintenance, e-commerce sites are available 24x7, allowing visitors to browse and store at any fourth dimension. Brick-and-mortar businesses tend to open up for a fixed number of hours and may fifty-fifty close entirely on certain days.
Speed of access. While shoppers in a physical store tin be slowed past crowds, e-commerce sites run chop-chop, which is determined by compute and bandwidth considerations on both consumer device and due east-commerce site. Production pages and shopping cart pages load in a few seconds or less. An east-commerce transaction can contain a few clicks and have less than v minutes.
Broad availability. Amazon'south kickoff slogan was "Earth'southward Biggest Bookstore." They could make this claim because they were an e-commerce site and not a concrete store that had to stock each book on its shelves. Eastward-commerce enables brands to make a wide assortment of products available, which are then shipped from a warehouse later a purchase is made. Customers will likely have more than success finding what they want.
Piece of cake accessibility. Customers shopping a physical store may accept a hard time determining which alley a item product is in. In e-commerce, visitors can browse product category pages and use the site search characteristic the notice the product immediately.
International reach. Brick-and-mortar businesses sell to customers who physically visit their stores. With e-commerce, businesses can sell to whatever customer who can access the spider web. E-commerce has the potential to extend a business organization' customer base
Lower toll. pure play due east-commerce businesses avoid the cost associated with concrete stores, such as rent, inventory and cashiers, although they may incur shipping and warehouse costs.
Personalization and product recommendations. E-commerce sites tin can track visitors' browse, search and buy history. They tin employ this information to present useful and personalized product recommendations, and obtain valuable insights nearly target markets. Examples include the sections of Amazon product pages labeled "Frequently bought together" and "Customers who viewed this item also viewed."

The perceived disadvantages of e-commerce include sometimes limited customer service, consumers not being able to run across or affect a product prior to purchase and the await time for production shipping.

Express customer service. If a customer has a question or issue in a concrete store, he or she tin can see a clerk, cashier or store director for help. In an e-commerce store, customer service may be express: The site may only provide support during sure hours of the twenty-four hours, or a telephone call to a customer service phone number may keep the customer on concord.
Not being able to touch or see. While images on a webpage can provide a expert sense almost a production, it'due south different from experiencing information technology "directly," such every bit playing music on speakers, assessing the picture quality of a television receiver or trying on a shirt or clothes. E-commerce tin can pb consumers to receive products that differ from their expectations, which leads to returns. In some scenarios, the client bears the brunt for the cost of shipping the returned item to the retailer.
Wait fourth dimension. If a customer sees an item that he or she likes in a store, the customer pays for it so goes dwelling with it. With east-commerce, at that place is a await time for the product to be shipped to the customer'southward address. Although shipping windows are decreasing every bit next solar day delivery is now quite common, information technology's not instantaneous.
Security. Skilled hackers can create authentic-looking websites that claim to sell well-known products. Instead, the site sends customers forfeit or simulated versions of those products -- or, simply collects customers' credit card information. Legitimate e-commerce sites also carry risk, especially when customers store their credit carte du jour information with the retailer to brand hereafter purchases easier. If the retailer'south site is hacked, hackers may come into the possession of customers' credit card information.

E-commerce applications

E-commerce is conducted using a variety of applications, such as Email, online catalogs and shopping carts, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the file transfer protocol, web services and mobile devices. This includes B2B activities and outreach, such every bit using email for unsolicited ads, unremarkably viewed as spam, to consumers and other business prospects, as well equally sending out east-newsletters to subscribers and SMS texts to mobile devices. More than companies now attempt to entice consumers straight online, using tools such equally digital coupons, social media marketing and targeted advertisements.

The rise of e-commerce has forced It personnel to move across infrastructure design and maintenance to consider numerous customer-facing aspects, such as consumer information privacy and security. When developing Information technology systems and applications to adjust e-commerce activities, data governance-related regulatory compliance mandates, personally identifiable data privacy rules and data protection protocols must be considered.

E-commerce platforms and vendors

An due east-commerce platform is a tool that is used to manage an e-commerce business organization. E-commerce platform options exist for clients ranging in size from small businesses to large enterprises. These eastward-commerce platforms include online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, that just require signing upwardly for user accounts, and little to no IT implementation. Another e-commerce platform model is SaaS, where store owners tin can subscribe to "hire" infinite in a cloud-hosted service that does not crave in-house development or on-premises infrastructure. Other e-commerce platforms may come in the form of open source platforms that require a hosting surroundings (cloud or on premises), complete transmission implementation and maintenance.

A few examples of e-commerce market platforms include:

Amazon
eBay
Walmart Marketplace
Chewy
Wayfair
Newegg
Alibaba
Etsy
Overstock
Rakuten

Vendors offering e-commerce platform services for clients hosting their ain online store sites include:

Shopify
WooCommerce
Magento
Squarespace
BigCommerce
Ecwid
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (B2B and B2C options)
Oracle SuiteCommerce

Authorities regulations for e-commerce

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Payment Carte du jour Industry (PCI) Security Standards Quango are among the primary agencies that regulate e-commerce activities. The FTC monitors activities such equally online advertising, content marketing and client privacy, while the PCI Security Standards Quango develops standards and rules, including PCI Data Security Standard compliance, which outlines procedures for the proper handling and storage of consumers' financial data.

To ensure the security, privacy and effectiveness of due east-commerce, businesses should authenticate business organization transactions, control access to resources such as webpages for registered or selected users, encrypt communications, and implement security technologies, such equally the Secure Sockets Layer and two-cistron authentication.

History of e-commerce

The beginnings of due east-commerce tin can be traced to the 1960s, when businesses started using EDI to share business concern documents with other companies. In 1979, the American National Standards Institute developed ASC X12 as a universal standard for businesses to share documents through electronic networks.

After the number of individual users sharing electronic documents with each other grew in the 1980s, the rise of eBay and Amazon in the 1990s revolutionized the eastward-commerce industry. Consumers tin can now purchase endless amounts of items online, from e-tailers, typical brick-and-mortar stores with e-commerce capabilities. At present, almost all retailer companies are integrating online business practices into their business models.

Disruption to physical retail

Given the large rise in east-commerce in recent years, many analysts, economists and consumers have debated whether the online B2C market volition before long make physical, brick-and-mortar stores obsolete. There is footling question that online shopping is growing at a significant rate.

Graphic of e-commerce revenue gains — Eastward-commerce continues to grow in 2020

Research from BigCommerce has found that Americans are about evenly split on online versus offline, traditional retail shopping, with 51% of Americans preferring eastward-commerce and 49% preferring physical stores. However, 67% of millennials prefer shopping online over offline. According to Forbes, forty% of millennials are as well already using voice assistants to make purchases, with that number expected to surpass l% by 2020.

An example of the impact e-commerce has had on physical retail is the mail service-Thanksgiving Black Fri and Cyber Monday shopping days in the United States. According to Rakuten Marketing data, in 2017, Cyber Monday, which features sales that are exclusively online, saw 68% college revenues than Black Friday, which is traditionally the biggest brick-and-mortar shopping twenty-four hours of the year.

According to data from ShopperTrak in 2017, physical store traffic on Black Friday declined by 1% year over year, and the ii-day Thanksgiving-Black Fri period saw a 1.half-dozen% decline in traffic. Nigh xl% of sales on Black Friday came via a mobile device, up nearly ten% from the previous yr, an indication that e-commerce is becoming g-commerce. Along with physical retail, e-commerce is transforming supply chain management practices amidst businesses, equally distribution channels go increasingly digitized.

This was concluding updated in Dec 2020

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