What is 'Electronic Commerce - ecommerce'

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a type of business model, or segment of a larger business model, that enables a firm or individual to conduct business over an electronic network, typically the internet. Electronic commerce operates in all four of the major market segments:

business to business,
business to consumer,
consumer to consumer and
consumer to business.

It can be thought of as a more advanced form of mail-order purchasing through a catalog. Almost any product or service can be offered via e-commerce, from books and music to financial services and plane tickets.

E-commerce has allowed firms to establish a market presence, or to enhance an existing market position, by providing a cheaper and more efficient distribution chain for their products or services.
When you purchase a good or service online, you are participating in e-commerce.
Some advantages of e-commerce for consumers are:

- Convenience. E-commerce can take place 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Selection. Many stores offer a wider array of products online than they do in their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

And stores that exist only online may offer consumers a selection of goods that they otherwise could not access.

E-commerce is conducted using a variety of applications, such as:

Email
Online catalogs and shopping carts
EDI
File Transfer Protocol
and web services.

This includes business-to-business activities and outreach such as using email for unsolicited ads (usually viewed as spam) to consumers and other business prospects, as well as to send out e-newsletters to subscribers.

More companies now try to entice consumers directly online, using tools such as digital coupons, social media marketing and targeted advertisements.

Give us a try .............. and join the train of E-commerce money makers.

The trending source of income in the current economy is ICT.....Basically web design, Graphics, Animation and so on.

It is a skill that one can develop independently only when the individual puts in enough effort, read books, practice, and research professionals.

Most times the help of a professional/ training centers and coach can be of great help, they go along way in guiding the person to achieving that target.

There are certain firms that are good at this and others are alot better

Transacting or facilitating business on the Internet is called ecommerce.

Ecommerce is short for "electronic commerce." But the ecommerce universe contains other types of activities as well.

Any form of business transaction conducted electronically is ecommerce.

Examples of E-commerce

Online shopping:
Buying and selling goods on the Internet is one of the most popular examples of e-commerce. Sellers create storefronts that are the online equivalents of retail outlets. Buyers browse and purchase products with mouse clicks.

Electronic Payments
When you are buying goods online, there needs to be a mechanism to pay online too. That is where payment processors and payment gateways come into the picture.

Electronic payments reduce the inefficiency associated with writing and mailing checks. It also does away with many of the safety issues that arise due to payment made in currency notes.

There are lots of benefits and i would post them in my other posts.

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E-commerce
First of ………. What is E-commerce

Transacting or facilitating business on the Internet is called ecommerce. Ecommerce is short for "electronic commerce."

E-commerce is a transaction of buying or selling online. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

Types of Ecommerce

Ecommerce can be classified based on the type of participants in the transaction:
Business to Business (B2B)
B2B ecommerce transactions are those where both the transacting parties are businesses, e.g., manufacturers, traders, retailers and the like.

Business to Consumer (B2C)
When businesses sell electronically to end-consumers, it is called B2C ecommerce.

Consumer to Consumer (C2C)
Some of the earliest transactions in the global economic system involved barter -- a type of C2C transaction. But C2C transactions were virtually non-existent in recent times until the advent of ecommerce. Auction sites are a good example of C2C ecommerce.

Benefits of E-commerce

The primary benefits of ecommerce revolve around the fact that it eliminates limitations of time and geographical distance. In the process, ecommerce usually streamlines operations and lowers costs.

Convenience & Easiness:
For many people in the world, e-Commerce becomes one of the preferred ways of shopping as they enjoy their online because of its easiness and convenience. They are allowed to buy products or services from their home at any time of day or night.
The best thing about it is buying options that are quick, convenient and user-friendly with the ability to transfer funds online. Because of its convenience, consumers can save their lots of time as well as money by searching their products easily and making purchasing online.

Offer Product Datasheets:
Consumers can also get description and details from an online product catalog. For your customers, it is very much important to get information about the product no matter whether the time of day and day of the week. Through information, your customers and prospects are making decision to purchase your products or not.
Attract New Customers with Search Engine Visibility:
As we all know that physical retail is run by branding and relationships. But, online retail is also driving by traffic that comes from search engines. For customers, it is not very so common to follow a link in the search engine results and land up on an ecommerce website that they never heard of.

Comprise Warranty Information:
No matter whether you are looking to choose including warranty information with product descriptions and datasheets or providing it from within an ecommerce shopping cart, you need to make sure that customers must be aware of important terms and conditions that are associated with their purchase.

Decreasing cost of inventory Management:
With e-commerce business, the suppliers can decrease the cost of managing their inventory of goods that they can automate the inventory management using web-based management system. Indirectly, they can save their operational costs.

Keep Eye on Consumers’ Buying Habit:
The best thing is e-commerce retailers can easily keep a constant eye on consumers’ buying habits and interests to tailors their offer suit to consumers’ requirements. By satisfying their needs constantly, you can improve your ongoing relationship with them and build long-lasting relationships.

What you need to know about how E-commerce works

E-commerce is a strange animal. On the one hand, it seems like it is the new kid on the block -- one that will revolutionize the way business is transacted online. On the other, its business model often seems identical to physical retail that has been around for centuries.

Here is how e-commerce works.

1. A Product or Service Needs to Be Sold:
This goes to the heart of commerce. There has to be an exchange of value. If one of the parties to the transaction is paying money, the other one should provide a product or service in return. We have reached a point where almost all goods that sell in physical stores also sell on e-commerce websites -- gadgets, books, automobiles, grocery, toys, and apparel among others.

2. There Should Be a Mechanism to Accept Orders:
When the customer has browsed through your e-commerce website and decided that they would like to buy, there has to be a process that accepts their order.

The software that runs this process is called a shopping cart.

In addition to making a note of what is being purchased and updating the order database, the shopping cart performs several other tasks:

computation of taxes and other levies.
processing of coupons and other discounts.
capturing the billing and delivery address of the customer.
up-selling to the customer.
ensuring user acceptance of terms of service and other conditions of sale.
creation of codes, such as invoice numbers, order number, tracking number and the like.
presenting customers with delivery options and adding the corresponding fee.
forwarding customers to the payment gateway.
(in the case of downloadable digital goods) redirecting paid customers to the download page.

Ecommerce Security Is of Paramount Importance
High ecommerce volumes are here to stay. The B2C ecommerce segment itself has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
But you know what could derail this entire gravy train: ecommerce security issues. And that's why you need to read this article closely.
In the Business to Consumer (B2C) space, ecommerce is about shopping.
In the Business to Business (B2B) space, ecommerce is about conducting/facilitating business processes electronically.
If even a small fraction of B2C or B2B transactions faced security threats, the effect could be detrimental to the very existence of ecommerce.
Even today, we have pundits who forecast that the ecommerce's total reliance on its website perpetually keeps it on the edge of a precipice.
And if someone thinks that cyber security issues are blown up disproportionately, recollect the famous Google attack by Chinese hackers.
That is a pretty compelling argument for making the ecommerce environment highly secure.
Security Threats to Ecommerce Websites
Security threats arise either because of somebody's malicious actions or because of incorrect technical setup. As a result, there cannot be an exhaustive listing of all ecommerce security issues. But here are the most common causes of security breaches:
Malware
Viruses, Trojans, and other forms of malware can infect ecommerce website servers. Such malware infects users of the website by executing unintended actions such as downloading software without permission.
Unauthorized Data Access
Online discussion forums are flooded with criminals (what else could I call them?) offering databases of credit card information.
They promise that these databases contain accurate and complete information. Isn't that scary?
Using backdoors, cross site scripting (XSS), or other methods, hackers gain access to private information stored in the databases of ecommerce sites. Imagine the havoc that can be caused by someone who has such sensitive financial and identity information!
Denial of Service
Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is a method used by hackers to send a large number of automated requests to an ecommerce website. To the website server, these requests seem to originate from genuine visitors. So the website server attempts to respond to the requests. But the sheer volume overwhelms the server.
The high volume of artificial traffic has the same effect as high volume of genuine traffic would, i.e., the server slows down, or worse, completely blocks out genuine visitors.
Most ecommerce businesses are cyclic. Imagine if hackers were to cause an ecommerce website to shut down on an important shopping day such as Cyber Monday! Even a few minutes of downtime could cause huge losses.
Phishing

To the accomplished criminal (once again the only appropriate term I can come up with), it is easy to set up a website that looks exactly like your ecommerce website. Then it is only a matter of inviting a large number of users to this fake site. Some of them will fall for it and wrongly assume that they are on your ecommerce website while in reality they are on the criminal's site.

If you assume that you are on a genuine site, you will be more likely to part with information such as credit card information, personal identification information, user names, passwords, and the like.
Once such sensitive information reaches the wrong hands, there is no telling how it will be misused.

These are just some of the security hazards that ecommerce websites face all the time. As an ecommerce business, it is your job to ensure that your customers feel safe to shop online. Relevant legislation that understands digital crime and creates strong deterrents will also go a long way in reducing the incidence of cyber crime.

Conclusion
While there is no silver bullet, recognizing the menace is a good first step. Then using methods such as two-factor authentication, or good old regular-backups, you could significantly increase the level of security of your ecommerce website.

Attract New Customers with Search Engine Visibility:
As we all know that physical retail is run by branding and relationships. But, online retail is also driving by traffic that comes from search engines. For customers, it is not very so common to follow a link in the search engine results and land up on an ecommerce website that they never heard of.

Comprise Warranty Information:
No matter whether you are looking to choose including warranty information with product descriptions and datasheets or providing it from within an ecommerce shopping cart, you need to make sure that customers must be aware of important terms and conditions that are associated with their purchase.

Decreasing cost of inventory Management:
With e-commerce business, the suppliers can decrease the cost of managing their inventory of goods that they can automate the inventory management using web-based management system. Indirectly, they can save their operational costs.

Keep Eye on Consumers’ Buying Habit:
The best thing is e-commerce retailers can easily keep a constant eye on consumers’ buying habits and interests to tailors their offer suit to consumers’ requirements. By satisfying their needs constantly, you can improve your ongoing relationship with them and build long-lasting relationships.

Competence:
For effective business transactions, e-commerce is an efficient and competence method. Setting-up cost is extremely low as compare to expanding your business with more brick and mortar locations. Very few licenses and permits are required to start-up an online business than physical store. You can save your lots of money by using fewer employees to perform operations like billing customers, managing inventory and more.

Allow Happy Customers to Sell Your Products:
With lots of customers’ reviews and product ratings, you can easily increase your sells as new customers find that your products are good and effective. Make sure that you mention your clients’ testimonials, reviews and product ratings as such things can help your new customers to purchase your products.

Selling Products Across the World:
If you are running a physical store, it will be limited by the geographical area that you can service, but with an e-Commerce website, you can sell your products and services across the world. The entire world is your playground, where you can sell your complete range of products without any geographical limits. Moreover, the remaining limitation of geography has dissolved by mcommerce that is also known as mobile commerce.

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Advantages of E-commerce.

Faster buying/selling procedure, as well as easy to find products.
More reach to customers, there is no theoretical geographic limitations.
Low operational costs and better quality of services

and lots more these are a few of the tools we empower on your E-commerce website at Ultra Media Solution.

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Aside from making money and advertising your products on the E-commerce website, e-commerce saves a lot of time for both the clients and the customer.

Instead of talking with customers one on one as they walk in and out of the firm, the site provides:

Adequate information

The Internet is used as the main vehicle to conduct transactions in e-business.

Internet allows customers to search for product information, compare the prices and benefits and finally evaluate its value before committing purchase.

Through the internet, customers can get their queries clarified and track their delivery status when the goods are being sent to them. If any doubts arise while handling the products, the customers can easily contact the business through internet.

check out my banner to have yours upgraded or to develop your if you have none.