What does Ecommerce Mean?
Ecommerce is the buying or selling of products or services through an electronic medium. The 3 Types of E-commerce include Business to Consumer (B2B) like Amazon.com and Jet.com, Business to Business (B2B) like Salesforce, and Consumer to Consumer (C2C) like CraigsList or Ebay.
Where did the word Ecommerce come from?
The word is derived from the full version – very simply: Electronic Commerce. Companies have been completing electronic transactions since the early 1960’s. At first, companies had many different types for completing these transactions and formatting electronic documents, but in 1979 the American National Standards Institute created a standard format that began to be used from then on to complete these types of transfers.
The modern internet took form in the early 1990’s and the National Science Foundation lifted a ban off businesses operating over the internet in 1991. Not until 1994 when the browser Netscape 1.0 included a Security Socket Layer or SSL capability – was when the possibility of making credit card transactions even become possible over the World wide web because they now could be encrypted and passed along making it much harder for people to steal them.
Related articles: Why is Amazon so successful?, E-commerce SEO Tips for 2016, E-commerce Web Design Guide
The evolving role of Ecommerce
The traditional view of E-commerce is evolving however from just a strictly electronic transmission, to involve the deeper relationship that is generally needed for business to transact larger amounts necessitated by Business to Business sales. Imagine you were a business that wanted to to sell online to other businesses and your services cost 100 thousand dollars. Would your customers want to just click “buy now,” or are they more likely to call you over the phone, investigate the possible relationship through a conversation, and likely even meet up with the individuals who would be doing the work or implementing the product before making that decision?
What does effective Ecommerce Web Design require today?
An e-commerce web design agency needs to be aware of these types of intricacies when creating a website that isn’t just selling 12 dollar widgets. To be clear, there is a deeper need for trust – which means prominently including testimonials, industry related organizations the company is part of, clear indications of past clients and case studies when appropriate, as well as any awards the company has won – or ratings on popular websites for rating businesses like Yelp, Google+, or other platforms.
In the case of true business to consumer websites – effective e-commerce web design is also about building trust and making sure all of the key information is available and reviews are prominent. The design of the online store should be clean, and items indicating next steps and verification of your SSL certificate for security should be branded – or appear to match the site. There are several things you can do to decrease friction throughout the sales process – check some of those out in our post: A couple seconds from add to cart – a product page checklist.
What does Ecommerce mean to you? What is e-commerce evolving into today on the web? Leave a comment below to be part of the discussion!