The history and evolution of E-commerce

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is one of the most popular activities on the Web is shopping. Ecommerce became possible in 1991 when the Internet was opened to commercial use. Since that date thousands of businesses have taken up residence at web sites.

Originally, electronic commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce would additionally include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

However, the Internet began to advance in popularity among the general public in 1994, it took approximately four years to develop the security protocols (for example, HTTP) and DSL which allowed rapid access and a persistent connection to the Internet. In 2000 a great number of business companies in the United States and Western Europe represented their services in the World Wide Web. At this time the meaning of the word ecommerce was changed. 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.

Amazon is one of the first ecommerce businesses to establish an affiliate marketing program, and nowadays the company gets about 40% of its sales from affiliates and third party sellers who list and sell goods on the web site.

In conclusion, Online business and eCommerce is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Today the largest e-commerce is Business-to-Business (B2B). Businesses involved in B2B sell their goods to other businesses. It can help us take advantage of the lower cost, greater efficiency, and higher sales volume of doing business electronically. By implementing e-commerce, our business gains the advantages of increased production and enhanced efficiency, instantaneous information sharing between departments, easy management of supply chain, lower cost for transactions and order handling, more, better customer data and better access and service and faster turnaround.