The Sweeping Force of Ecommerce
A Home Business Article Contributed by Alina Sandor
What is Ecommerce?
Ecommerce is the sweeping force in today's business. If you want to make your business work harder without working harder ecommerce is something you will want to look into.
But what is it?
Ecommerce is business that is conducted over the Internet. Ecommerce can be purchases made through the Web, such as office supplies, or to business-to-business activities, such as inventory transfers. Ecommerce can also include customers ordering items from your Web site, paying with a credit card (the customer enters account information via the computer) or with a previously established "cybercash" account, such as Paypal.
The purchase information is sent to a bank for payment clearance and to the vendor for order fulfillment. This transaction is handy for both the vendor and the customer because the customer can shop from the comfort of her home, and the vendor doesn't have to have a "traditional" brick and mortar shop to sell their wares. By having a virtual store the business owner is saving massive amounts of money, as well as saving time.
How Did Ecommerce Become So Popular?
Surprisingly, the government had a big hand in furthering the development of ecommerce. In 2000 the federal Electronic Signatures Act established national standards for determining the circumstances under which contracts and notifications in electronic form are legally valid.
Legal standards were also specified regarding the use of an electronic signature which is an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record. The act made electronic signatures as legal as paper signatures, allowing contracts and other agreements, such as those for an online purchase, to be signed on line. This in turn made it easier to handle ecommerce transactions.
Once consumers' were no longer worried about on-line credit card purchases, e-commerce grew rapidly in the late 1990s. In 1998 ecommerce retail, or e-tail, sales were $7.2 billion, double the amount in 1997. On-line retail was 15% of non-store sales in 1998, but this total has boomed in recent years. Online shopping has become a popular way to holiday shop, with books being the most popular on-line product order.
Over half of Web shoppers are ordering books (one on-line bookseller, Amazon.com, which started in 1995, had revenues of $610 million in 1998). Next in line is software, followed by audio compact discs, and personal computers. Other ecommerce includes trading of stocks, purchases of airline tickets and groceries, and participation in online auctions.
The Benefits of Ecommerce
The ease of having customers shop and pay online without the owner governing the purchases made ecommerce the way for business owners to make money and spend less time working. No more nine-to-five. The store could be open 24/7, whether or not the owner was even awake.
As more businesses have realized this, the more have jumped on the ecommerce bandwagon, such as the huge department chain Wal-Mart. Wal-mart offers more products than it could ever offer in one of its stores thanks to ecommerce.
