The introduction of the new digital economy has helped to create a very individualistic and independent society.
Selling on the web has gotten increasingly complex with more channels and partners than ever before. Now, You can use the internet and sell your products and services to the customers you have never seen and who may be living miles away from you.
The concept of selling online which is now referred to “Electronic Commerce” started in early 1970’s with the invention of buying and selling, electricity, cables, computers, modems, and the Internet.
The word “Electronic Commerce” was originally invented to describe the process of conducting business transactions electronically using technology from the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which gave an opportunity for users to exchange business information and do electronic transactions.
Electronic Data Interchange EDI started in the mid-1960s, when companies in transportation and some retail industries were attempting to an office that don’t rely on (too much) paper works.
In the mid-1970s, EDI was formalized by the Accredited Standards Committee of industry representatives, and more varied companies began to adopt EDI through the 1970s and 1980s.
As the first generation of e-commerce, EDI allowed companies to exchange information, place orders, and conduct electronic funds transfer through computers. Later, EDI was replaced by ASC X12, a protocol developed by the American National Standards Institute in 1979, designed for sharing business documents and information electronically.
Since then, a range of the technologically-driven innovations of the 1970’s to 1980’s such as the development of networks, protocols, software and specifications contributed to the rapid expansion and growth of today’s’ Electronic Commerce. One of the examples is the Digital Subscriber Line or DSL
which allows faster and better connection and a persistent connection and also online transaction capability to the internet.
Actual online shopping didn’t come into being until 1979. Michael Aldrich gave the “concept of teleshopping” which revolutionized the way businesses happen, while Jane Snowball, a resident of Gateshead, England has the honor of being the first person to make an online purchase.
The modern phase of e-commerce was marked by a shift to a more open source, OS commerce approach, as began with the 1990 creation of a web browser for searching the World Wide Web (Invented Tim Berners-Lee, this system made the Internet accessible to the common man, not just the academician), though Internet commerce as such only became allowable in 1991.
Another instance of ecommerce from the viewpoint of individuals connected to some sort of computer Internet system. CompuServe (which is considered as the first popular provider for home PCs) began offering a connection to various merchants with the use of electronic mall.
It didn’t catch on as much as CompuServe hoped, but it serves at the first examples of ecommerce in a form similar to what we have today.
People saw new technologies evolving with new market, Netscape releases the Navigator browser in 1994. Pizza Hut offers online ordering wide variety of products being available online on its Web page. Netscape used SSL encryption that made transactions secure. Since then people began to define the term ecommerce as the process of purchasing of available goods and services over the Internet using secure connections and electronic payment services.
In response, a substantial number of businesses in Western Europe and the United States built out their first basic ecommerce websites.
Shopping has evolved dramatically over the years: the history of ecommerce owes a great debt to Amazon and eBay.
Amazon was one of the first big companies to sell goods over the Internet . The company was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995. They started out as an online bookstore and then quickly diversified by adding other items, such as CDs and DVDs, software, electronic parts, video games, appliances, clothing, furniture, toys and other household items.
eBay has built an online version of “person to person” trading community on Internet with the help od the World Wide Web. Buyers and sellers are brought together (by creating an account)in a manner where sellers are permitted to list items for sale and the buyers are allowed to bid on the items which they are interested on. It is accessible from all seven continents of the world that has allowed the establishment of a community of millions of regular people to small businesses and even large businesses taking part. All inventory could be stacked in warehouses until ordered, and pricing was no longer fixed: customers would bid for products and even pay more than retail prices during eBay auctioning.
Popular shopping apps
The main reason why eBay is successful is the enormous amount of items that are available in every kind of condition that are priced from one cent to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
These companies revolutionized the face of the Internet, as well as the way we buy things. From make-up and clothes to CDs and home appliances have been added to the Internet market and it continues to grow.
Ecommerce is changing rapidly and everyone’s a fan of buying or selling online. Either way it’s typically seen as more convenient than the traditional alternative.
Today is the day and the age of tablets, phablets and smartphones. And the art of selling online with the service of social feedback, where users could share their purchases and publish their experiences with products is increasing with more and more people (including shoppers and buyers) accessing the Social Media via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
With so many different tactics and ways to engage through social media, it’s worth testing different technologies and researching where most of your target customers are staying on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook and refine your social commerce strategy accordingly.
Social networking isn’t exactly new, but social shopping imperatives are constantly evolving.
Moreover, consumers are no longer totally reliant on corporations and are increasingly looking to conduct their own business transactions. Be sure to come back in the coming weeks, when we’ll describing the different types of consumer based ecommerce as well as the emerging social media commerce.
