What is E-Commerce
Today is the internet world everything that you do regularly can be done online, it may be shopping, ticket booking, bill payments, refilling your mobile balance etc. In an electronic world, we might hear the “E-Commerce” word at least once a day. What is E-Commerce? Some of the expert people know very well, but what about the people who are unaware of this word? Don’t worry, go through the following article I guarantee this would be very helpful to you.
If you are new to the E-commerce world, you must be having some questions like What is E-Commerce?, How does it work? Who is using it? How to start it? etc. Here I am having easy and simple answers for some of these questions.
What is E-Commerce?
For understanding E-Commerce first, you should undergo what “Commerce” is? If you give attention to “E-Commerce” you will note that it is a combination of “E” and “Commerce”. If you read it separately and slowly you can easily understand it. Here “E” stands for Electronic and E-Commerce is Electronic-Commerce. First I will give you an example of commerce.
“Imagine you went to the crowded market and you stand like a pole without chattering to anybody close your eyes and just hear your surrounding”. Did you get anything? Of course yes, that crowd buzz is the Commerce. It is that Commerce which you call Trading. The market runs with the buy and sells concept this selling and buying does with the money. This is the commerce, the place where these services are available in a market.
Now imagine “a sound of typing very fast on the keyboard”. Here you will find very low sound as compared to the previous one but, the crowd is very heavy. This is the sound of people placing an order on the internet. So, E-commerce is the smart way of doing business. Consider, A physical furniture store and an online furniture store. The physical furniture store is the Commerce and online store are E-Commerce where trading is done electronically that is the money is transferred electronically rather than physically.
How does it work?
Everyone knows how the offline market moves. That is the whole process from raw material to the product that is available in the shops that the people buy. Do you think E-commerce is distinct from Commerce? No, E-Commerce is very similar to Commerce. Following are the various steps of E-Commerce:
- Sourcing : This is the stage where the inventory gets ready.
2.Cataloging : Here the ready product is the photo shoot for display.
3.Listing : In this stage, the photos are uploaded and product are listed for selling.
4.Marketing : This stage is the key to every business. The products are hosted and advertised.
5.Packaging : This stage is directed to the warehouse where the products are kept. Customer places the order and these orders are processed by this stage.
6.Shipping : Once the product is packed it is now ready for delivery. Shipping includes all the jobs from the courier to the cash collection(in a case of Cash on Delivery).
The advantage of E-Commerce :
There is principally two advantage of E-Commerce:
1. Standardize process: Extending the business 10 times just need increasing the product 10 times instead of setting up the 10 different shops.
2. Global reaching: With the physical shop at a place you can connect with the people nearby to the shop place. With E-Commerce, you can connect customers globally.
This was just the introduction to E-Commerce. In my initial stage of working with the internet event, I did not know what is E-commerce how does it work etc. But now I am very clear about this concept and hope you also got what it is.
