The Areas Of Ecommerce Information Technology Essay

Ecommerce is frequently thought just buying and selling through Internet; people immediately think of consumer retail purchases from online companies such as Amazon. But e-commerce involves much more than electronically mediated financial transactions between organizations and customers. E-commerce must be careful as all electronically mediated transactions between an organization and any third party it deals with. By this description, non-financial transactions such as consumer requests for additional information would also be careful to be part of e-commerce (Chaffey, 2002).

E-commerce is the swap of information across electronic networks, at any phase in the supply chain, whether inside an organization, between businesses, between businesses and customers, or between the civic and personal sector, whether paid or unpaid (Cabinet Office, 1999).

Ecommerce is any business activity that involves the transformation of information through internet. ‘Electronic commerce is exchanging business information, maintaining business relations and conducting business transactions by means of internet and networks’ (Zwass, 2012).

AREAS OF ECOMMERCE

Ecommerce is the broad term. Today, e-commerce isn’t just reserved for big companies – but appealing much anyone can get involved in this (Affilorama, n.d.). It has covered various sectors including health, education tourism etc. some of the main areas where the ecommerce has penetrated are listed bellows:

In Education as e-learning

In Health as Telemedicine

In Travel and tourism: Online Hotel Reservation, Managing trips and vacations.

In entertainment: Online movie database, online games, betting sites etc.

In Service related areas: E-brokers, E-ticketing etc

In Financial sector as E-banking.

Beside the above given main areas it also has its impact on various sectors such as E-publishing, Online Auction, Online advertisement etc.

TYPES OF ECOMMERCE

Ecommerce can be divided into various categories in terms of their properties and type of transaction they perform. Various types of E-commerce are described below:

B2B E-commerce

Generally, business to business ecommerce is an ecommerce activity performed between the two Business organizations. Here one business collaborate with business partners in real-time and put management of all their processes online – from supply chain and purchasing to manufacturing and product development (Btobb2b. 2010.).

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B2C E-commerce

An acronym for “business to customer” or “Business to consumer”, a type where a business sells their products and services to the customer directly (Maybray, n.d.). This type of ecommerce is applicable to that business firm who tends to sell their product on internet. Some forms of this type of ecommerce are e-banking, e-ticketing etc. example: Amazon.

M-commerce

M-commerce referred as mobile commerce is the use of mobiles to perform the business activities. It eventually is B2C commerce but not performed in your PC’s or MAC.

SUITABILITY OF DIFFERENT PRODUCTS IN ECOMMERCE

Some types of products may be more suitable to ecommerce where as some of them may be suitable for the offline market. If we look the trends of some success full ecommerce website like EBay and Amazon, we can find that the digital products such as movies, music, software, games are more sold in this platform. Beside that the products like computer hardware, spares part of automobiles are also sold.

But the products which have less value-to-weight, or the product that have smell, taste, and touch components and products that need trail fitting and where color integrity are more essential are less suitable for the ecommerce platform (Ecommerce.insightin, 2004).

SCOPE OF ECOMMERCE IN RETAIL SECTOR

In January 2011 alone, customers in the UK spent more than £5 billion shopping online, a rise of £1 billion on the previous year. With this sharp increase, retailers are falling over themselves to spruce up their web presence and the e-commerce services they offer (Retailchoice, 2011).This growth of ecommerce means that there is a great scope of ecommerce in the retail industry. Referring to the gain acquired by various online competitors, the business firms following the traditional way are also attracted toward the ecommerce platform. This creates huge competition in the online market.

STRATEGIES TO BUILD ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

There is no doubt in the growing importance of ecommerce website for the retailers. But only creating the website is not sufficient for the business run your business successfully s. Hence for the successful ecommerce business the merchants have to think about various factors that may effects their business. Some main factors to be considered to run business successfully are discussed below.

Choice of suitable products.

Products are the main part of the ecommerce website. Before creating the website you should make sure that what types of product you are going to integrate in your website. Digital products such as DVDS, Software are more suitable. Similarly, branded an item that doesn’t need to be tasted or checked such as branded chocolates, cosmetic item etc. are also suitable. But the product that should be sold within short period and that have a lot smell are not suitable to the ecommerce website. Example: bread, milk etc. vegetables are also not that much suitable for it.

An Easy to use shopping cart.

The other main things to be considered is the easy to use user interface. Better is the user interface, more costumer are attracted to your platform. Use of more graphics than text is encouraged.

Better and secure payment system.

Payment and Security is the main thing that a business firm should consider while establishing the ecommerce. There are various options available such as PayPal, Alert pay, Payoneer etc. But among them PayPal is the best option as it is highly recognized, secured and fast. Its alternative may be Alert pay.

Fast delivery

Delivery of goods to the costumer at a given period of time is one factor that affect the consumer behavior to online shopping. Faster the delivery is of the business, costumers are attracted towards your business.

Regular update of your website.

Costumers are attracted towards the new items and products daily. The use of same product for a long period of time may change the interpretation of customer towards your site. So, updating of daily new products is important for the business to be successful.

Offers and Scheme

Offers and Scheme is the best way to attract your costumer towards your business. Providing various types of scheme and offers during the various festivals and occasions is a plus point for the business organization. Certain percentages of discounts on your products are some examples for it.

Disadvantages of Ecommerce.

Security

Security continues to be a trouble for online businesses. Consumers have to sense confident about the honesty of the payment process before they entrust to the purchase.

System and Data truth

Data security and the fact of the system that handles the data are serious concerns. Computer viruses are out of control, with new viruses discovered each day (GoArticles, 2012). Viruses can cause unnecessary stoppage, backups of file and data, data storage problems, and other difficulties and danger of hackers trying to access files and corrupting records adds more pressure to a earlier complex operation.

System Scalability

A business develops an interactive boundary with consumers by the use of a website. Finally, statistical analysis verifies whether visitors to the site are recurring customers or not. If the company expects 2 to 6 million shows up, website performance is bound to incident degradation, delay, and ultimately loss of consumers visits (Scribd, 2009). To stop such problems from occurring, a website must be scalable, or upgradable on a regular routine.

E-commerce is not free

Till now, achievement stories in e-commerce have enforced large business with profound pockets and good financial sustain. According to Manjeetss (n.d.), small retailers that go head-to-head with e-commerce giants are fighting losing combat. Since in the brick-and-mortar situation, they just cannot battle on price or product offering. Brand trustworthiness is related to issues like this, which is thought to be less significant for online firms. Brands are predicted to lower search costs, maintain and create trust, and correspond quality. A search engine can come up with the best music deals, for example, yet customers continue to flock to trusted entities such as HMV (Sites.google, 2011).

Customer Search is not efficient or Cost-effective

On the surface, the e-marketplace seems to be a best market, where international sellers and buyers share and trade without intermediaries. However, a closer look signifies that new types of intermediaries are necessary to e-commerce. They include electronic malls that assurance authenticity of transactions. All these intermediaries add to transaction fees (Dart, 2001).

Consumer Relations Problems

Not a lot of businesses realize that even e-business cannot live on over the long term exclusive of faithful consumers.

Products populace won’t buy online

Imagine a website called furniture.com or living.com, where venture capitalists are investing millions in selling home furnishings online. In the case of a sofa set, consumer would want to sit on it, feel the texture of the fabric etc. next to the sofa test; online furniture stores face a costly come again which makes the product difficult to sell through online (Carolinachair, 2001).

Corporate susceptibility

The ease of use of product details, catalogs, and other information about a business through its website makes it vulnerable to access by the rivalry. The plan of extracting business intellect from the website is called web framing (Ap-institute, n.d.).

High danger of Internet Start-up

Many stories unfolded in 1999 about victorious executives in established firms leaving for Internet start-ups, only to find out that their get-rich dream with a dot.com was just that – a dream (Albany, 2001).

Conclusion

Understanding the strategy of e-commerce has became essential while implementing or before implementing e-commerce in industry. Collecting articles, evidences, performing research is the best way to raise ones business. Along with advantages there come disvantages also. So it is very important to develop strategy solutions to overcome the risk arise from implementation of e-commerce.