Online shopping is the process whereby consumers directly buy goods or services from a seller in real-time, without an intermediary service, over the Internet. If an intermediary service is present the process is called electronic commerce. A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailors and online retail is sometimes known as E-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web. Goods-money transaction is selling and buying of physical materials with Internet as business and communication medium. Services-money transaction can be such as providing consultation services on the Internet or publishing of news / information or running online dating services etc.
An online shop, E-Shop, E-Store, internet shop, web shop, web store, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall. The process is called Business-to-Consumer (B2C) online shopping. When a business buys from another business it is called Business-to-Business (B2B) online shopping. Both B2C and B2B online shopping are forms of e-commerce.
Purpose of E-Shop:
The main aim is to establish a positive reputation of the enterprise as well as sell goods and services. Internet is used as a medium like print and broadcast to promote business and earn profits. It is also used to collaborate with business partners. Major purpose is that e shop should be generic enough to satisfy the needs of a varied audience. A successful E-Commerce website can reach millions of people all around the world. This strengthens the online presence of a company. E-commerce websites support a large number of features. Blogs, press releases and forums help in bringing immediate feedback of the product from the clients. The company can position the quality of their products through these features and deliver a better product
E-Shop Structure;
The E-Shop structure model consists of following phases that can be drawn by following ways:
Customers/Clients
Public spot
Safety measures
E Goods
Billing system
Payment
The basic core is a catalogue. Customers search and browse the catalogue choose items, which are added to a virtual basket or trolley. The 'shopping' is moved to the checkout area which is a secure area. Payment can be verified and funds transferred, while the customer is online. It is suitable for shippable and downloadable products and low human intervention means a potential cost saving but also potential risk. You will know the largest online stores and high profile websites that use this model. What is perhaps not obvious is that most successful sites are supported by:
Innovative online processes e.g. record of previous transactions,
Targeted sale on entry, accounts maintenance, '1click' to system
For subsequent orders.
High quality offline processes, such as customer service, delivery
Speed, telesales, and cross-selling programmes.
Integration of business processes with the shop front and back ends
Aims of E-Business:
Following are the major aims of E-Shop:
It helps in improve service
Save time taken by customers
Elapsed time for processes
Reduce process errors
Reduce the cost of core service provision
Free staff to provide value added services
Improve morale
Give people the tools and time they need
The Impact of E-Commerce:
The advent of e-commerce has seen a dramatic impact on the traditional ways of doing business. It has brought producers and consumers closer together and eradicated many of the costs previously encountered. It is also evident that a negative impact will be targeted at direct substitutes, such as retail travel agencies, retailers of software and "bricks and mortar" music stores. However, these impacts will be small compared to the developments imaginable. Defining proper business characteristic is accustomed to the larger purchasing power in the ecommerce environment. Hence the impact of ecommerce here is to enable the traditional business process classically transformed to meet the ever changing needs of consumers. The common workplace is widely regarded as having the projections necessary to electronically procure and or sell goods through the secured network. Virtually, people have been obliged to adopt the wave of technology relating to transfer of supplies and money over the internet.
So we classified impacts of E-Commerce in following two ways:
Consumers impact
Business impact
Impact on Consumers:
E-commerce assurance significantly increased purchasing likelihood and reduced consumers' concerns about privacy and transaction integrity. However, interestingly, no significant differences between different third party assurances providers. Product risk and vendor risk had as expected negative effects on purchasing likelihood, and vendor risk had a positive impact on concerns. Also, a significant but weak interaction term in a sense that third party assurance had slightly more impact on purchasing likelihood when the vendor risk condition was high.
Most of the changes described here benefit consumers. Having prices displayed openly on The Internet gives even the worst bargainer an idea of what to shoot for, as well as offering more "no haggle" options. Competition among the smaller but more global set of dominant automakers and a continuation of the production overcapacity situation will create pressure to pass cost savings on to consumers in some form. With speed increasingly important as a competitive factor, consumers favoring convenience may be able to choose more precisely their desired tradeoff between price, customization of features, and delivery date. However, depending on the outcome of battles over Internet privacy, retailers may retain some ability to price discriminate.
Consumers based on their previous Internet purchases and viewing habits, and using this to develop predictions about their willingness to pay. Based on this information, consumers could be sent emails offering them special prices, just for them. Thus, the Internet does not always increase transparency.
Impact on Business:
The concept of E-Commerce impacts for both the vendor and consumer in today's fast moving and electronically-connected world.
For many businesses, E-Commerce is becoming the only option, as companies become more and more interested in expanding their operations online. E-Commerce has many benefits and advantages not found in the typical brick and mortar location, and therefore, explains why so many businesses are flocking to the web.
E-Commerce offers the ability to expand into global markets with a minimum of expense, thus allowing firms to reach narrow market segments that are geographically scattered.
As the Internet is a cost effective medium of delivery, the main impact of online ecommerce is its cost efficiency. And here's why: Ecommerce decreases the cost of creating, processing, distributing, storing and retrieving paper-based information. High mailing and printing costs are also lowered or, in many cases, completely eliminated as the buyer most often pays for the shipping of the products that they buy.
The cost of marketing of promotional material also drops drastically. Another major advantage that most companies see is the increase in sales E-Commerce brings, and increased sales typically mean increased profits as well.
Yet another impact of E-Commerce is moving a business online is that it allows the flexibility to target market segmentation, which in turn allows companies to focus on a select group of customers, thus having a competitive advantage in giving them what they want and satisfying unique needs.
Doing business online also impact on removing barriers of global trading due to the fact that the Internet is a zero-cost delivery channel, and thus, many products and services, which are generally delivered as a physical object or service, are now delivered virtually in the form of data. This removes barriers such as time, distance and of course cost.
By having better visibility across the supply chain, company inventory levels can be reduced, as supplies are more predictable. With lower inventory levels, costs can once again be automatically be decreased.
The cost savings and efficiencies from sharing and economies of scale can have a profound effect on the profitability of any online business. As a result this has lead to the development of collaborative working practices around the world, as collaborating businesses manage, share, and enhance project work regardless of location.
It is important to consider, however, that buyers or customers also benefit from doing their buying online. As sales opportunities expand for the vendor, they also increase the buying opportunities and power for the buyer. It's a win / wins for all involved.
Consumers also benefit from less expensive products and services as e-commerce allows customers to shop the convenience to shop from any location and at any given time of the day.
Techniques, Methods & Tools Used to Design E-Solution
Besides implementing the tested and tried strategies e-commerce businesses should experiment and develop new tactics. They must consciously allocate a part of the budget to encourage and test original ideas for promotion and sales.
Techniques and Tools:
Following are the techniques and tools that must be in mind in order to design E-Solution for E-Business.
Check out if the ecommerce solution has the right option for your business. For this, you must consider the nature of your own business. Is your business a subscription site or an online store? If it is a subscription site, you will need an ecommerce solution to handle aspects such as membership fees and other charges. But if it is an online store, you will need an ecommerce solution to handle sales.
Even if you have an online store, there are several kinds of ecommerce solutions that you can select from. Most of them will have the shopping cart feature, and that is what you must go for. Here, it is important that users can make their own accounts on your website so that they can have a shopping cart. The shopping cart must also allow them to store their products from one visit to another.
At the same time, it has been observed that most online shoppers will not even browse the catalogs when they are making their purchases. Most of them have particular brands in mind. For such shoppers, it is good if you could opt for an ecommerce solution that provides a search bar. The search feature could take them directly to the product page. There is another advantage of this. If you power your search bar through a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo, they could provide you with some supplementary income each time someone makes a search through them. You must let your ecommerce solution know about this if you are interested in making some additional money through your website in this manner.
There are two basic ways in which ecommerce solutions will allow your customers to pay. In the first mode, they can convert your website to have an Internet marketing account, so that you can collect the payment directly. Or, if you do not want that, ecommerce solutions could help you collect payments from a third party website from where it could be directed to you. If you make your own website your payment gallery, you will be saving on fees for the third party, but you will be making your website look more commercial. You will need to make your decision on this, and select your ecommerce solution carefully.
Important Issues in Designing E-Solutions:
Following are the important issues that related to E-Solution designing:
The basic of any e-commerce shop would be its ability to fetch more and more customers. These days, when it has gained so much importance and almost become an indispensable part of our lives, we would like to cover the main points for a good and effective E-Commerce website design and development.
E-Commerce site should be professional and attractive enough so that the very first impression makes the best of it.
The E-Commerce site should be goal-oriented so that it does not sway away from the conventions, and distract the customer unnecessarily.
Undoubtedly, E-Commerce site is the one that represents your organization, and customer satisfaction ought to be the utmost priority.
An effective E-Commerce site should be able to understand and empathies, and respond to the customers demands.
The web page should be communicative enough so that it can deliver the very idea of the purpose of your site.
Navigation should be simple enough so that the visitor gets everything in front of the eyes. One should not be looking for the menus all around the website.
Standard CSS, tags, and a clean code structure and a filter search options are mandatory.
A secured check out process, with the option of multiple payment gateways, a dynamic product catalogue at the administrative end with no hidden charges are the important elements that top the list.
Effects of External Factors:
Following are the three major factors that effects of E-Commerce:
Environmental factors
Communication factors
Technological factors
Environmental Factors:
Environmental factors are those changes in the business environment that create threats in addition to opportunities for an organization and are usually beyond the control of management.
Environmental factors cover the scope in which a firm conducts its business, its industry, competitors, access to resources supplied by others and dealings with government.
Environmental factors consist of:
Competition intensity
External support
Suppler/customer
pressure
Regulatory issues
Corporate governance
Communication Factors:
The importance of communication for holding a relationship together has been stressed in the literature as, "the glue that holds together a channel of distribution" To achieve an effective communication strategy, the basic problems to be resolved, concern the questions of the Target, media, message and timing. They are all dependent on each other and the order in which they are mentioned is irrelevant. Communication factors include:
Target
Media
Message
Timing
Technological Factors:
Technological factors represent the existing, planned and possible technologies that can form Part of E-Commerce success. Technological factors consist of:
Enterprise
Integration
Compatibility
Relative advantage
Security and fraud
