E-commerce ? the Future of Shopping

Most people tend to believe that e-commerce is just about buying and selling stuff over the Internet. Actually, electronic commerce is a general term describing the electronic exchange of business information between two or more organizations’ computers. For instance, consider the income tax Return electronic filing, online portals like Prodigy, online banking and online billing for services or products received. Besides, e-commerce also means buying and selling any goods or services over the Internet, electronic fund transfers and all other ways of doing business in the virtual space.

Since the Internet spread dramatically over the entire Globe, the amount of businesses done electronically has grown amazingly. A large amount of online transactions are done completely electronically for virtual services like subscriptions to premium content websites. However, most e-businesses also imply the transportation of physical goods in some way. Online retailers are also known as e-tailers and online retail known as e-tail and usually, all major retail brands have an online e-commerce presence.

Electronic means of carrying transactions between two or more businesses are referred to as business-to-business or B2B. Electronic commerce that is carried out between businesses and their consumers is known as business-to-consumer or B2C. A great example of B2C is Amazon.com. E-commerce is usually considered the sales part of the electronic business and it also consists of data exchange enabling the financing and payment of the business transactions.  

Some of the most popular applications related to electronic commerce are:

Email
Instant messaging
Newsgroups and file sharing
Online shopping and order tracking
Online banking
Online office suites
Teleconferencing
Domestic and international payment systems
ECM (Enterprise content management)
Shopping cart software

When thinking about modern electronic commerce, we are talking about everything from ordering digital content for immediate online use, to ordering traditional goods or services, to “meta” services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce. On the consumer level, e-commerce is mostly done over the Internet. A potential customer can go online and buy anything from books or different types of food, to expensive items like cars and real estate. Another great example is online banking –paying the bills online, buying or selling stocks, transferring funds from one account to another and even sending money to other countries and everything just from a few clicks away.

Although everything seems so incredibly easy and fast, there is one concern though. Security. How can you and your business stay safe from online theft? The answer is clear. Every time, before you have entered your credit card information and purchased goods over the Internet, make sure that the payment system is fully protected. Experienced users will always choose to do business and conduct secure transactions via protected and secured websites.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is an important security protocol that provides data security and privacy of communication over the Internet. Payment gateways on e-commerce websites are usually protected by SSL, so when you are being prompted for your personal credit card information via protected e-commerce websites, a cryptographic key is being generated. As the result of encryption, your authenticated session has a unique private key and there is only one transaction being conducted during authenticated session.

Going further, in order to promote trust among business providers and consumers online, the Internet Better Business Bureau introduces the Code of online business practices. Internet Better Business Bureau is dedicated to provide online businesses and consumers with highly trusted marketplace and client loyalty and confidence for best business relations. The BBU standards in online business transactions are specially created to assist the companies in providing public and private protection in e-commerce.

These days one of the biggest issues for e-commerce organizations is the management of secure information because more and more people become reluctant in giving out any credit or personal information over the web. This can be addressed by choosing McAfee Secure for their e-commerce websites to protect their business from threats coming from the potential issues before any damage is done. McAfee Safe protects e-commerce websites from malwares by using the best practices. The McAfee Safe trustmark on e-commerce websites also helps to build consumer trust if they know that their private information is safe.  

For more information – www.arnima.com/Solutions/Web-ECommerce-Design.asp 

That Was Then This is Now: E-commerce and Online Banking

It’s hard to believe that not all that long ago – in the distant past – there was no such thing as e-commerce. There was no place to sell goods to an international audience via the World Wide Web. All the consumer goods that are marketed and sold online today could only be purchased through a catalog, strictly to local consumers, or perhaps not at all.

But advances in technology changed all that. Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, emerged through the technology of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), which enabled businesses to send commercial documents, such as invoices or purchase orders, electronically. With the growth in the use of telephone banking, credit cards and ATMs, e-commerce began to evolve in the 1990s.

Commerce Takes on the World

It was during this decade that the Internet went worldwide, although it took the rest of the decade to create secure connections, as well as a digital subscriber line (DSL), allowing people to access the Web 24/7. By the new millennium, companies in the United States and Europe developed a presence on the Internet, offering their services or goods to an international audience. As a result, the term e-commerce has come to define the capability to purchase goods securely on the Internet via an electronic payment.

Business on the Internet has also given way to virtual commerce, or that which is conducted exclusively electronically for items deemed virtual. For instance, consumers might pay for access to what is considered premium information on a website. The concept of e-commerce has also opened the door to additional electronic terminology such as e-tailers which are online retailers, or e-tail, indicating retail sold online.

The act of companies who conduct business to business transactions via electronic commerce is termed Business-to-Business, or B2B. B2B transactions may involve a commodity exchange for any interested party, or a private electronic market (PEM), which connects a limited group of buyers or sellers in one market.

The Consumer and Business Advantage
This ability to conduct business to a worldwide audience has provided individuals with a whole new method of shopping. For the first time ever, customers could shop 24/7 from the comfort of their home. Instead of driving from one business to another in order to compare prices, it could be done online. And orders could be customized in a way specified by the buyer.

E-commerce also represented a revolutionary way for companies to conduct businesses – opening the door to a global marketplace. The system makes good sense for businesses on so many levels. For instance, the costs associated with processing orders and customer service is less through an automated process. Automated tools make it possible to communicate with online customers via e-mail regarding the status of their orders with virtually no additional cost to the business. And who can imagine an international online vendor squeezing their million-item inventory into one single catalog? Thanks to the Internet, companies can now create online catalogs that would never fit in an ordinary mailbox.

Other advantages of e-commerce have been realized, for instance, in staffing differences. Without having to pay the high cost for staffing the order processing department, businesses have been able to pass the savings onto their customers. Once a business website is established effectively, the costs for order taking fall to nearly nothing.

E-commerce has also grown the way financial institutions do business. For example, online banking allows customers to shop for the best interest rates, mortgages, and customer amenities from their home computers. Managing finances can be handled from nearly anywhere in the world – monthly payments can be made, monies can be transferred, and payroll deposits can be made without ever setting foot in a brick-and-mortar bank.