E-commerce

E-commerce Introduction

E-commerce is an online transaction that takes place on the internet. This system allows people with internet access to buy physical goods and have them delivered straight to them. When buying online, an online transaction takes place between two people, where the buyer pays the provider for the goods that they want. All this is done electronically without any physical money being involved or the buyer and provider seeing each other.

Online shopping

One of the most used and most well known platforms for shopping online is Amazon which advertises products from other companies through their system where customers can easily find them.

Amazon originally started off as a book seller online buy later branched off to sell millions more products today for them to make more money. Amazon started off as on online company and still remain today as an online business with no actual physical shops.

Another well known online shopping that plenty of people use is Ebay. This website works in similar fashion to Amazon, where they do not actually have their own products, but are simply a way to connect the buyer and seller to make a purchase and an online transaction. You can not only buy things on Ebay but you can also sell your items on there to make money. Ebay however has one difference between Amazon that it uses their own invention called 'PayPal'

This is a system that buyers can use to securely use to transfer money to the seller. The buyer pays using paypal, this means that the money is first sent to paypal, where they take a small percentage for the transaction and then send the money to the seller, this is so that the seller does not have a direct contact with the buyers private card information.

When using online shopping, trust is a very important factor, as most people do not feel safe buying online and entering their private bank account details to make a purchase. That is why both Amazon and Ebay include a 'Feedback' feature where previous customers are able to leave a review of how trusted the buyer or seller is. Feedbacks are really important for business now days, as customers will always go with sellers with the most positive feedbacks for example if they see one seller with a rating of 99.8% positive rating and another seller with 99.5% (which is still very high) they will choose the one with the rating of 99.8% and most people probably won't buy from the other seller. This system ensures less fraud will occur with online transactions between people.

Click and collect and home delivery

With the increase of business going online, some companies have incorporated a system called 'Click and collect' that allows people to order and pay for their shopping online, and then simply being able to go into store to get your shopping which is already packed for you ready to pick up, this has proven to be a convenient method for busy people that do not want to walk around the store getting their shopping and then standing in line to pay for their produce. A company like Argos also use this system as it saves the company money on delivery costs.

Something called a 'Brick and Click' is when a physical store like Sainsbury's has moved part of their business online, where people are now able to order their shopping online and then having it delivered straight to their door the same day. This type of shopping has also been very convenient for people that do not have time to do their shopping but can simply order their shopping online and do not have to carry it to the house themselves as the driver will pick up your shopping literally you front door. However some people do not like this system as they believe that the people in store picking up their order can miss out some items that they might have ordered online, or may just be out of stock but still get charged for these items.

Companies find that moving their business online can boost sales as it reaches a larger amount of people, people that do not have time to go out shopping but would rather order their shopping online which proves to be much more convenient. In addition to this, with more and more companies going online, this removes the need for physical shops, which could directly link to more shops closing down which leaves more people unemployed.