Five
years ago, I started an article saying,
"A term that has been much bandied about in the press
recently, 'ecommerce' has little meaning for those who haven’t been
following the revolutionary business activities developing on the
Internet."
At
that time not many people had been following those revolutionary
selling activities. I
also had to explain: "Ecommerce is short for electronic commerce,
which simply means the buying and selling of products and services by
businesses and consumers over the Internet."
It
was news then that “a merchant decides to sell his products on the
Internet’s World Wide Web. He
puts together an online catalog, which will show the products he has
for sale. The site has a
shopping cart so that a customer can choose the products he wants to
buy and place them in the cart.”
Today,
it’s difficult to believe that readers needed to be told, "When
the shopper has completed his product selections, he fills out an
order form with his billing and shipping addresses, provides his
credit card information and checks out. The customer then gets an
order confirmation either at the site or by email.
Just as with purchases made from mail order catalogues, the
order is then shipped according to instructions given online."
I
then also wrote that "Some of the most active ecommerce sites
include Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble, CDNow, Egghead Computers,
FashionMall, Electronic Boutique, Land’s End, Macy’s, Virtual
Flowers, PCMall, WallMart, Martha Stewart and Crate &
Barrel." Interestingly
enough, they still figure among the most active ecommerce sites,
though many more have since been added, with Ebay
taking the lead.
The
5-part tutorial
that I mentioned 5 years ago, for the merchant who wants to develop
ecommerce, is still online. The
site shows how to generate an e-business plan; design a site that
caters to online customers; deal with things like credit cards, tax,
shipping, and security.
The
tutorial helps the merchant to decide whether to build, buy, or rent
an e-commerce solution to manage the site's transactions. It also
covers ways to attract new customers by refining marketing programs.
A look at this site can also help the potential customer
who’s thinking about buying online to better understand what’s
involved in shopping on the Internet.
The
numbers of online vendors with Web sites has undergone an astounding
increase over the past few years.
According to Yahoo’s
figures for shopping sites, antiques and collectibles has almost 4000
pages, arts and crafts nearly 10,000, automotive more than 25,000,
financial services over 42,000, health nearly 44,000, real estate
almost 46,000, and travel and transportation more than 93,000.
As
of August 1st 2002, Google
listed 2,770,000 pages on the Web devoted to ecommerce.
On May 1st 2005, the listed 15,800,000 pages.
According
to Ecommerce
Times, "the early days of e-commerce depended on just five
categories -- computers, online brokerages, online travel, books and
music, and auctions -- to generate 75 percent of sales."
“Analysts,"
they add, "have predicted that those categories soon will
generate only 50 percent of online sales, as shoppers diversify their
purchases to include clothing, pharmaceuticals, groceries,
communication services and general merchandise."
"Groceries
are an area that went through a big wave of interest a couple of years
ago, then went through a valley last year, but may start to come back
this year," Giga Information
Group analyst Andrew Bartels told the E-Commerce Times.
The
Ecommerce Info Centre has
a useful collection of 40,000 links organized by categories including
Info Sources, Services, Products, Technologies, Small Biz and B2b.
They even have a section on raising funds for Non Profit
organizations. Business.com
has a search engine and directory for business information.
The
Web site About has a section
on Electronic Commerce that runs daily articles on ecommerce and keeps
an archive of articles that goes back three years.
They also feature an ecommerce 101 with FAQ’s, tutorials and
general information and a subject library of useful resources.
The
Ecommerce Guide has daily
ecommerce news updates along with a long list of practical links to
various facilities on the Internet and a host of resources for online
vendors.
One
vexing situation plagues the domain of ecommerce:
too many online vendors are selling ecommerce solutions.
Website design, hosting, domain names, auto-responders,
shopping carts, credit card facilities and more have been over-hyped
and oversold. It would
seem that the major business online is catering to online businesses.
Recently
even academic institutions have been getting into the act.
A number of MBA programs have been designed around ecommerce.
The Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in the USA has been a leader in the integration of
ecommerce into their graduate business programs.
A number of universities
like North Carolina
State offer concentrations in e-business in connection with their
MBA programs. The
University of Colorado offers an E-Business MBA.
Many
other universities and colleges throughout the world, in the UK,
Europe, Australia and New Zealand offer programs in ecommerce.
For individual courses in ecommerce, the Google
Web Directory has an
extensive list with links to the sites.
If
you’re thinking about selling anything online, it’s important to
take the time to learn how it’s done properly.
Nothing is more frustrating to a potential customer than
clicking to put items in a shopping cart, fill in a form for a credit
card charge, and then have the transaction rejected.
According
to Traci Gere, Analyst for The New York Times, "E-commerce
services are the silver bullet that will enable companies to take
advantage of the true business opportunities on the Web."
That will be true as long as they learn to do it right.
Next,
let’s look at ecommerce from the consumer’s point of view.
Many people
have questions about whether or not it’s safe to shop online.
It is if you keep a number of guidelines in mind.
The
U.S. Federal Trade
Commission has provided a useful site for consumer protection.
The advice and articles they provide apply worldwide to any
ecommerce transactions:
Make
sure that you know the merchant you want to buy from.
If you don’t know a merchant by established reputation, check
with a Better Business Bureau or
look for information on the Web through your favorite search engine.
A
number of consumer guides have been listed at the Shopping
Spot Web site. They
also provide price comparisons, information about frauds, scam alerts,
consumer opinions and product reviews.
The
Consumer Web Watch carries an updated news service devoted to keeping
shoppers informed of their research and findings concerning issues
that affect online buyers.
According
to Robyn Greenspan, only 29 percent of people surveyed recently said
they trust e-commerce sites either "just about always" or
"most of the time" while 64 percent trust them "only
some of the time" or "never". Internet users show a
similar degree of skepticism towards consumer advice sites — only 33
percent trust them and 59 percent express low levels of trust.
In
the UK, Trading
Standards Central offers a “one stop shop” for consumer
protection information.
The
Consumer
Affairs section of the European Commission has links to numerous
subject areas related to health, food and other consumer concerns.
These include pages on ecommerce and information society,
distance selling, comparative and misleading advertising and fair
commercial practices in both French and German.
You
should make sure that any merchant you deal with online would protect
your privacy. Read their
privacy policy to be assured that they don’t sell or give away your
personal information to others. Be
wary of any merchant who asks for information about you that isn’t
necessary for the commercial transaction.
Many
people ask whether it’s safe to use a credit card for online
purchases. It’s just as
safe online as it is off, so long as the page where you enter your
credit card information is secure.
Vendors will let you know when their site is secure so that
your data is protected during transmission.
Save
copies of confirmations of your online orders, keeping track of
prices, dates of shipment, shipping costs and expected delivery dates.
Look for an email address to write or a phone number to call in
case your purchase doesn’t arrive when expected or in the event that
you’re unsatisfied with the product as delivered.
Google’s
Advocacy
and Protection Page has a very comprehensive listing of links to
Web sites related to consumer information, including protection.
We can expect an increasing number of consumers developing
confidence in online shopping just as we can be pretty sure that many
more vendors will be doing business online
One
of the great features of ecommerce is that it can save everyone money.
Vendors can reduce the expenses of doing business on the Web,
and shoppers can find bargains and savings doing their buying online.
Who
knows? If everyone gets
into the ecommerce act, we may ease the air pollution from our regular
trips to the shopping malls and reduce paper use enough to save part
of a rain forest.
