E-Commerce

E-commerce is the most preferred way of trading goods and services. Today more and more people prefer to buy articles through the internet and assisted technologies. The key factors driving this e-commerce revolution is social media, advances in e-commerce app development, rising preference for mobile commerce, and other digital modes. The role of e-commerce applications is the most significant here.

E-commerce, which can be conducted over computers, tablets, or smartphones may be thought of like a digital version of mail-order catalog shopping. Nearly every imaginable product and service is available through e-commerce transactions, including books, music, plane tickets, and financial services such as stock investing and online banking. As such, it is considered a very disruptive technology.

• Availability. Aside from outages or scheduled maintenance, e-commerce sites are available 24x7, allowing visitors to browse and shop at any time. Brick-and-mortar businesses tend to open for a fixed number of hours and may even close entirely on certain days.

• Speed of access. While shoppers in a physical store can be slowed by crowds, e-commerce sites run quickly, which is determined by compute and bandwidth considerations on both consumer device and e-commerce site. Product pages and shopping cart pages load in a few seconds or less. An e-commerce transaction can comprise a few clicks and take less than five minutes.

• Wide availability. Amazon's first slogan was "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." They could make this claim because they were an e-commerce site and not a physical store that had to stock each book on its shelves. E-commerce enables brands to make a wide array of products available, which are then shipped from a warehouse after a purchase is made. Customers will likely have more success finding what they want.

• Easy accessibility. Customers shopping a physical store may have a hard time determining which aisle a particular product is in. In e-commerce, visitors can browse product category pages and use the site search feature the find the product immediately.

• International reach. Brick-and-mortar businesses sell to customers who physically visit their stores. With e-commerce, businesses can sell to any customer who can access the web. E-commerce has the potential to extend a business' customer base.

• Lower cost. pure play e-commerce businesses avoid the cost associated with physical stores, such as rent, inventory and cashiers, although they may incur shipping and warehouse costs.

• Personalization and product recommendations. E-commerce sites can track visitors' browse, search and purchase history. They can use this data to present useful and personalized product recommendations, and obtain valuable insights about target markets. Examples include the sections of Amazon product pages labeled "Frequently bought together" and "Customers who viewed this item also viewed."