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In its broadest sense, E-commerce is anything and everything having to do with buying and selling products using electronic tools — computers, PDAs, cell phones, or whatever else. More commonly, E-commerce refers to business-to-consumer (B to C) Web sites that allow customers to place orders online. This still includes a broad range of sites including major retail chains, small local stores, Web-only stores, and individuals selling on aggregate sites such as eBay.
E-commerce is powered by Web-based programs commonly called E-commerce Software or Shopping Cart Software. For most small and medium sized businesses, it's much more cost effective to create a store using an existing shopping cart software solution such as ShopSite, rather than trying to create the entire E-commerce solution from scratch.
When you consider what's involved, it's helpful to look at the two different ways people deal with E-commerce. First is the customer's viewpoint. For a customer, E-commerce is all about finding and ordering the right products. Potential customers are thinking about only a few things:
Second, the merchant's viewpoint. For the merchant, it's a lot more complex. There are several things you have to consider, and third-parties such as shipping carriers and payment processors you have to work with. Here are just a few of the things you'll need to think about:
There are several different components involved in any E-commerce software. If you've worked in a brick-and-mortar store, you probably already know about displaying your products, managing your inventory, and accepting payments when customers buy your products. You may also already know about the variety of advertising, pricing, and incentives you need to draw customers to your store. A Web-based store has all of those components to it, along with taking orders and shipping the products. Fortunately, good shopping cart software includes tools to help you with all of these jobs.
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