E-commerce Is Easy
Anyone can become an international merchant overnight. With new technologies available to vendors who wish to sell online, e-commerce has become feasible for almost anyone. More importantly, the ease with which inventories can be placed online means that consumers can buy anything online. Even in months where global economies are in constant recession, e-commerce sales have seen nothing but growth. Buyers and sellers are still lured to the ease and efficiency of online purchasing; more importantly, new e-commerce solutions make it possible for any vendor to sell online, regardless of his or her technical knowledge. It has become quite clear just how easy and powerful e-commerce selling can be.
The advantages of e-commerce are numerous. Obviously, shopping online provides a convenience for the buyer since it can be done at any hour, from any computer with an internet connection. It also provides outstanding product comparability, since shoppers can peruse multiple vendors of the same product almost instantaneously to find the best deal. For the seller, e-commerce widens the customer base by making products available to the global market. It can seamlessly integrate inventory control, customer management, shipping, and sales tracking systems. It reduces overhead, since physical stores are unnecessary. One of the more popular features of e-commerce shopping is its tax-free nature; in many cases vendors can avoid charging their customers state sales taxes.
Paypal has been one of the strongest leaders in the propagation of e-commerce. By providing an online transaction medium, Paypal made credit card and checking funds available for exchange between registered users. Simply put, through Paypal nearly anyone can accept credit cards online. This simple capability opened the door to basic e-commerce for Paypal users. User registration allows both buying and selling. Sellers can download the code for Paypal purchase buttons for embedding into web sites. When users click on such a button, they are redirected to the Paypal site, which allows them to direct funds to the seller. Buyers, in turn, can specify which credit cards or bank routing numbers to use when making payments. Thus, Paypal provides a secure and trusted third party through which basic online transactions are facilitated.
Yahoo! Inc. was one of the first companies to provide a customized web storefront as an e-commerce solution. For a monthly fee, users can integrate their entire inventory into a standardized online store template. Merchant accounts are also available for users who want the financial transactions to be handled by Yahoo! Inc. In addition, Yahoo! stores are all part of the company's massive shopping network, an online mall where users can search for merchandise by name, category, or price. Efficiency is a key element of this solution, since sales tracking and purchases are fully automated. With a relatively limited amount of web knowledge, vendors can build a simple e-commerce store to display their merchandise and handle all transactions.
A third kind of e-commerce solution allows vendors more control over the appearance and function of their online sales. A good example of this is JustAddCommerce, an e-commerce tool from Rich Media Technologies, Inc. While it requires more web development knowledge than Paypal or Yahoo!, JustAddCommerce allows users to customize both the purchase buttons for products and the purchase form that is completed by users during transactions using Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. The inventory for products and financial tracking, fortunately, are handled through JAC's secure website. Finally, each copy of the software has a unique serial number and password through which vendors can manage transactions and manipulate the e-commerce interface.
In spite of the available solutions, some vendors are still hesitant to integrate their business with e-commerce. While security is one of the foremost concerns, all three of the solutions above use secure servers to handle financial transactions. For those who feel that e-commerce would be too complicated or difficult to maintain, Paypal purchase buttons or Yahoo! storefronts may provide a simple enough solution. While there are some who still think that e-commerce is not a worthwhile investment, consider this: E-commerce sales increased 78 percent year on year to $14.6 billion in Q4 2002, up from $11.176 billion in Q4 2001.
It is clear that e-commerce is not only an advantageous consideration for retail businesses; it is also easier than ever to implement. The evolution in web technologies has brought about secure and sophisticated e-commerce solutions that even the least technical vendor can use without difficulty. More importantly, the promise of e-commerce continues to grow; as web users become more prevalent and do more of their shopping online, they will not only seek, but expect to find any product available for purchase on the web. Those who refuse to join the e-commerce world may soon be left behind by it.
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