Basics of E-Commerce


h1 September 8th, 2008
The process of business communication and transactions online via the internet is known as e-commerce or electronic commerce. Through e-commerce transfer of funds, selling of goods and services is possible in terms of digital communication. This is one of the most important concepts to evolve of late after the invention of internet. The exchange of products and services could be done more quickly than before and time and distance could not pose a threat to halt in the process of e-commerce. You can categorize e–commerce in three different sections, those are:

1. Business to Consumer or in short B2C where the focus of the company is on selling selected consumer products to consumer who are internet literate and often willing to buy products.

2. Business to Business or B2B where different business houses involves in the process of e-commerce and which may be between established supply chains or with new trading partners.

3. The last one is Business to Administration (B2A) which is still in its early days of development. In this kind of e-commerce the interaction is in between business community and public sector organizations.

The reasons which are considered as the architecture of e-commerce are many. it provides products or product line for the potential customers at a competitive price for their convenience. The customers get user-friendly experience from e-commerce sites. The business house could get professional image and an attractive website. Customers are lured with incentives so that they could come later for purchasing again. These software’s address the reliability and security concerns of customers about online transactions. The business process is engineered through streamlining business process.

Still there are some drawbacks in this process. It does not allow the dealer to understand the psyche of consumer why they choose you and not anyone else. The time required for shipping or manufacture is under estimated. There always remains the fear factor about personal security of customers.

In order to eliminate such problem consumer and vendor understanding about the process of e-commerce is necessary. Here the consumer has to first choose a product from the list in the webpage of the vendor which then followed by a secured online transaction by means of online transaction server. There all the information about the customer is encrypted. Once the transaction is completed through credit cards or bank cheque, the concerned vendor ship the products to the customer. The payment is completed with the help of certain software applications specially designed for this purpose.