The term ‘ecommerce’ is abundant online, but to some, it’s a foreign term. Here’s what you need to know about this oft-used but widely misunderstood principal, and how you can use it to your advantage.
Ecommerce – What It Is
Ecommerce, or electronic commerce, is the term used to describe the act of selling a product on the internet. These ‘products’ can be anything — physical goods, services, or even information. Two popular examples of ecommerce websites include eBay.com and Amazon.com, but there are tens-of-thousands of others out there engaged in internet commerce.
Ecommerce is the blanket form of internet-based sales, which includes everything from the well-known business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) models to the lesser-known consumer-to-business (C2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and business-to-government (B2G) transactions.
What Ecommerce Provides
Ecommerce has done two primary things, one of which is that it has expanded the local marketplace exponentially. Instead of a business serving their local market through a local store, or even through a chain of local markets throughout a state or country, ecommerce allows a business owner to acquire customers from anywhere in the world, easily. Primarily, these transactions take place through a website, but sometimes email, which is sent by way of the internet, is a channel for a business’s commercial transactions.
The other notable benefit that ecommerce provides is that is has enabled anybody with even a part-time internet connection to benefit from the global marketplace. Everybody from stay-at-home parents, to students, to established business owners have been given the means to reach the masses from their location and to make a profit.
Ecommerce vs. Non-Ecommerce Websites
While there are over 200 million websites online today according to Netcraft, an internet services company based out of England, not all websites are setup for ecommerce. Arguably, most websites online today are not directly engaged in internet commerce. Examples of non-ecommerce websites include portfolio websites, or ‘brochure’ websites, which highlight a company’s products or services yet do not sell them through the website, and personal websites or blogs that abound online today.
Ecommerce, while it can seem confusing at first, really isn’t. It is a wonderful tool that has been given to all of us, from the stay-at-home parent to the already-established business owner.
