eCommerce: Understanding, Adoption and Application

E-commerce is applying business online or we can say selling goods and services electronically with the help of advance technologies that are implemented on these ecommerce websites. In such trading you have to provide a complete product description, online ordering and inventory management within the system. It includes business activities that are B2B (Business-to-Business), B2C (Business-to-Consumers), d-commerce and m-commerce etc.

E-commerce is like any other business except it’s developed over the internet. You need to understand the thin line where it explains the compatibility of products which can be sold over the internet and those which cannot.

While designing an enterprise web application, it’s very important that it have a potential to attract customers. Typical stores attract customers by their typical storefront displays. So what you have to do while designing a website for an e-commerce? The answer will be the same; design a website which can attract your customers. A well customized website which is 100% user-friendly and SEO friendly, site which is trust worthy and protected with SSL certificates, better shopping carts and friendly payment modes etc. are the key features which can help you to build a better e-commerce website.

Golf Genie is an Atlanta based golf pocket guide provider that provides easy to absorb golf instructions has experienced poor online presence. Their website was neither SEO friendly or optimized. Later they took an initiative to redesign their website and made it optimized and user friendly for their customers; it directly affected their sales of pocket guides and the website traffic increased.

The quality of ecommerce is very important as it directly affects your online business success. A poor online presence doesn’t have capability to attract customers. It’s very important to understand the customers or the clients we are targeting to; this factor decides the designing of the website. Taking an example, if you are targeting women in the market then you should design a website which is more women oriented and eye catching.

The e-commerce solutions implemented mainly uses –

• Microsoft commerce server 2009
• Magento E-commerce
•  IBM WebSphere portal
•  Customized E-commerce solutions using .Net & J2E platforms etc.

It provides a robust, powerful and flexible e-commerce platform that enables various features like development and customization, deployment, business analysis and reporting, scalability etc. 

The additional benefits are:

1.  Personalize shopping experience
2.  Higher customer retention
3.  Greater product information
4.  Scalable to fit specific business requirements
5.  Empower the business to maximize the revenues and helps into reaching the goals
6.  Reduced operating costs

Several other phenomena’s are associated while designing an e-commerce website for a company. One needs to understand their business goals and significant strategy of their company. Understand your target consumer’s behavior in the particular market section and why you are building an e-commerce site for the company. Running blindly doesn’t make any sense; to adopt the ecommerce first understand it completely and then apply.