The buy and sell activities performed electronically is called e-commerce. E-commerce has a history of decades and continuously growing. The e-commerce industry has broadened the eyes of merchants worldwide. The purpose of inception was the ease of doing business beyond a geographical boundary. E-commerce has achieved the objective set and is ready to write a new history. Buyers and sellers are liking electronic commerce for various reasons. E-commerce has both social and economic impact since it has evolved. Technology revolutionized the way merchants were practicing commerce activities. Let’s plunge into what technology e-commerce involves.
Following are the technologies behind e-commerce:
Online Store
An online store is a virtual shop over the Internet. To complete the e-commerce cycle Internet network is required. An online virtual store can be of two types usually. One is over World-Wide-Web and usually referred to as a web store and another is in the form of mobile apps which can be installed on mobile devices and then can be used to process e-commerce activities. The e-commerce activities completed using mobile devices are called m-commerce or mobile commerce. M-commerce is possible through a web store and also through a mobile app. A responsive e-commerce website is used on mobile devices to carry out commerce activities. M-commerce has many advantages and increases the chances of a sale manifold.
Shopping Cart
A shopping cart is a software system integrated into the online store which helps in completing an online order. Usually, it is seen on the product detail pages, from where the product can be added to the cart, and after reviewing the cart, customers checkout to process payment and complete the order. The shopping cart captures all the order details of the product together with the shipping charge as set by the merchant and tax fees if incurred any. Shopping cart after capturing all the details, send to payment processing interface. The payment processor after executing payment successfully, send the order details and payment confirmation to the merchant’s screen. The merchant receives an email for the order and also it is reflected in the back-end.
Payment Processing
Payment processing is a crucial part of an e-commerce business. Nowadays, payments are getting processed both online and offline. To make online payments secured, online stores use payment gateways. Payment gateways are the intermediaries between the merchant’s store and the payment issuing authority (usually a bank). After receiving the details of the order with order amount, the payment gateway sends users to their bank’s server, after payment from the bank users is thrown back to the merchant’s site with order confirmation details. Payment gateways are secured and free from any DDoS attack. Offline payment facilities are available mostly in developing countries where people still have to digitalize their activities. Merchants offer Cash-On-Delivery for convenience.
Shipping Management
There can be various ways to send the products ordered to the customers. In the e-commerce industry, there are various logistics companies across the world to care about this part of the process cycle. The Shipping companies collect the packaged products ordered from the merchant’s outlet. Shipping companies offer the status of the shipment and live GPS location of the product in an online map. Users can track their shipment using a tracking number or consignment number. The tracking link is provided by the shipment companies.
Order Fulfillment
Most of the merchants of the world are a reseller of other product procuring companies. They receive the product details to use in their online store. After receiving the orders, small business e-commerce retailers send the order details to the product procuring company. The product procuring company sends the order to the customer directly through the shipping company. This saves inventory management costs to the retailer. Dropshipping is an example of it’s an improved version.
E-commerce Personalization
Providing a personalized experience to the users of the store captures more conversions. Personalization is the process of showing the products or things that the user is already looking for. This is possible with modern-day technologies like AI and ML. The combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning reads the data behavior of users and presents users with personalized experiences.
New technologies are adding new milestones in e-commerce. Data processing through AI & ML, delivery using drones and the list goes on. Data processing has become vital for the success of an e-commerce venture. There are many online e-commerce platforms like Builderfly to automatized the whole e-commerce business.
