Most e-commerce has moved online since the advent of the World Wide Web in 1991 and the first browser for accessing it in 1993 when the Internet began to gain widespread usage. (before that the eCommerce was on systems). In recent years, with the proliferation of smartphones and the availability of high-speed Internet, e-commerce has shifted to mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even wearables like watches.
E-commerce has changed how people view the market by enabling them to shop from the comfort of their homes with just a few clicks on their smartphones. No longer do people need to plan their shopping trips or worry about gas and traffic when traveling to a nearby mall to buy their clothes, ties, perfume, and other items.
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce, often known as electronic commerce, is the exchange of goods and services as well as the sending of money and data through an electronic network, most commonly the internet. These business dealings can be either B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-consumer), C2C (consumer-to-consumer), or C2B (customer-to-business).
E-business and e-commerce are frequently used interchangeably. The transactional procedures that make up online retail shopping are also occasionally referred to as e-tail.
The widespread use of e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay over the past 20 years has significantly boosted the growth of online retail. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 5% of all retail purchases in 2011 were made through e-commerce. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, it had increased to over 16% of retail sales.
How does eCommerce work?
The internet is what drives e-commerce. Customers use their own devices to access an online store to browse collections and place orders for goods or services.
Customer browsers exchange information with the e-commerce website's server as orders are placed (making a purchase). The order information is sent to a centralized system called order management. It will then be sent to a bank computer, an inventory database, and a merchant system that handles payment information via programs like PayPal. At last, it will make its way back to the order manager. This is done to guarantee that there is enough stock at the store and money in the client's account to fulfill the order.
Managing the company's inventory is one of the key issues facing both online and offline retailers. The more branches and outlets the company has, the more difficult this situation becomes. TatbiqIT POS WordPress Plugin is the ideal solution for these issues. You can read a comprehensive article on this TatbiqIT product as well.
Savy (Chief Editor)Dec 17, 2022• 3 min read
The order manager will alert the store's web server once the order has been confirmed. The customer will see a notice stating that their order has been successfully received. The order manager will then notify the warehouse or fulfillment department that the product or service can be delivered to the customer by sending order data to those departments. A customer may receive actual or digital goods at this moment, or access to a service may be granted.
Platforms that host e-commerce transactions include online marketplaces that sellers sign up for, such as Amazon; software as a service (SaaS) tools that allow customers to "rent" online store infrastructures; and open source tools that businesses manage with the help of in-house developers.
Types of e-commerce
B2B
Instead of transactions between businesses and customers, e-commerce describes the electronic exchange of goods, services, or information between enterprises. Online directories and websites that allow businesses to search for products, services, and information, as well as start transactions using e-procurement interfaces, are two examples. According to a Forrester estimate released in 2018, B2B e-commerce will reach $1.8 trillion by 2023 and represent 17% of B2B sales in the United States.
B2C
Online retail is known as business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce. It occurs when companies offer goods, services, or information to customers directly. The phrase gained popularity in the late 1990s dot-com boom when online stores and sellers of goods were still a novel concept.
Today, there are countless online malls and stores that sell all kinds of consumer items. The most recognizable of these websites is Amazon which is a dominant business in the B2C market.
C2C
Consumers trade goods, services, and information with one another online in a process known as consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce. These transactions are often carried out through a third party that offers an internet platform for their execution.
Two instances of C2C platforms include online auctions and classified ads. Two well-known examples of these platforms are eBay and Craigslist. C2B2C, or consumer-to-business-to-consumer, is another name for this type of e-commerce because it involves businesses like eBay. C2C purchases are also possible on platforms like Facebook Marketplace and the fashion reselling platform Depop.
C2B
Consumers offer their goods and services for sale to businesses online through a sort of e-commerce known as consumer-to-business (C2B). This goes against the conventional B2C business strategy.
A market that offers royalty-free photos, images, media, and design components, like iStock, is a well-known illustration of a C2B platform. An additional example is a Job Board.
B2A
Online transactions between businesses and public administration or governmental entities are referred to as business-to-administration (B2A) transactions. Different kinds of e-services or e-products are required by numerous governmental branches. These goods and services frequently deal with legal records, registrations, social security, monetary information, and employment. These can be obtained electronically from businesses. As investments have been made in e-government capabilities, B2A services have increased significantly in recent years.
C2A
It refers to interactions between consumers and public administration or governmental entities that take place online. Although the government hardly ever purchases goods or services from people, people routinely do so in the following areas:
- Social Security: information dissemination and payment.
- Taxes: Filing tax returns and making payments.
- Health: scheduling appointments, sharing test results and medical condition information, and paying for healthcare services.
Mobile e-commerce, often known as m-commerce, describes online purchases made using mobile devices such as mobile phones or tablets. It involves payments, banking, and shopping on mobile devices. By enabling customers to conduct transactions via voice or text conversations, mobile chatbots facilitate m-commerce.
Advantages of e-commerce
Now, let’s take a quick look at some of the advantages of eCommerce:
- Availability. E-commerce sites are accessible 24/7, allowing users to explore and shop at any time, with the exception of outages and scheduled maintenance. Brick-and-mortar stores frequently have set hours of operation and occasionally close completely.
- Access Speed. Online purchases can be made in a few clicks and within five minutes. While crowds can slow down customers in a physical store, e-commerce sites run rapidly due to considerations about computing and bandwidth on both the consumer device and the e-commerce site. The loading time of the product and shopping cart pages is under a second.
- Wide availability. "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" was Amazon's original tagline. It was able to make this statement because it was an online store rather than a physical store that needed to stock every book on its shelves. With the use of e-commerce, businesses may provide a wide range of goods, which are subsequently sent from one or more warehouses when a customer makes a purchase. It's more likely that clients will be able to track down their desired products.
- Easy accessibility. Customers looking in a real store could have trouble finding a specific item. Website users can instantly search for a product using the site's search feature and explore product category pages in real-time. The are also some other features that make accessibility easier such as filtering, categorizing, and related products,...
- International reach. Businesses with physical stores sell to customers that visit them. Through e-commerce, businesses can sell to everyone with an internet connection, indicating that e-commerce has the potential to extend a company's client base.
How to have a small eCommerce Website?
We wanted to offer you a quick overview of eCommerce up until this point so you could decide if it was useful to you and your business. The frameworks and languages used by eCommerce websites differ from one another. The greatest choice if you require a website really quickly is WordPress. But starting from scratch with website design and coding is the ideal option if you need a unique website. Examples of it include the frameworks Angular, React.js, and Qwik which are the FrontEnd frameworks.
One of the top eCommerce platforms for both the BackEnd and FrontEnd of an eCommerce website is Magento. It provides a range of tools to its users, including marketing, SEO, and catalog management capabilities.
Actually, it completely depends on your business, time, and money on which of the platforms suits you.
You can see our customers' testimonials about their e-commerce softwares that TatbiqIT has created for them.
TatbiqIT, software designer & developers, focused on MENA
The following eCommerce platforms provide customers with different services. Also, TatbiqIT will help you through this way.
- Shopify
- Wix
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
- Squarespace
- Ecwid
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud (B2B and B2C options)
- Oracle NetSuite Commerce
- Magento
- Volusion
- PrestaShop
- 3dcart
To take the first step in having your own eCommerce Website, you can Contact Us. We have professional teams that pave the way for your business.
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