Ecommerce has been around for quite some time now. It started out as selling via auction sites like eBay and then evolved to include other venues like the World Wide Web, through which buyers could access sellers from all over the world. Nowadays, ecommerce has also evolved and taken on additional features that have made it more convenient for people in many different ways. The evolution of ecommerce also opened up avenues for buyers and sellers beyond the conventional physical markets.
Ecommerce started off as a simple transaction of buying and selling products online. But as the Internet started to develop, it was necessary to come up with another consumer behavior, the one of shopping. This led to another phenomenon known as ecommerce fulfillment, where sellers started providing services like shipping and other related things to help buyers complete their transactions online. This is another consumer behavior that required an entirely different business model.
This brought forth the need for developing a completely new ecommerce business model. Developing a business model is not something easy especially if there is no prior base to work from. The eBay model, which was built on the back of eBay auction model and the Google Shopping Cart system did not take long to evolve into an entirely different ecommerce business model. But to evolve this, there were several things that had to happen.
For ecommerce businesses to flourish beyond the scope of eBay, an online payment system had to be developed. This brought about the need for developing an electronic commerce system. Payment systems for ecommerce businesses range from merchant accounts to ecommerce merchant accounts. Another requirement for ecommerce businesses is for a proper and efficient online payment gateway. A payment gateway allows consumers to convert monies from their local currency to another currency used by the vendor. Without an online payment gateway, consumers would have to convert their local currency to the foreign currency used by the vendor before they can purchase the product.
Dropshipping ecommerce businesses are able to benefit from worldwide selling communities. Dropshipping refers to selling products online through a manufacturer or distributor. Online sellers who choose to use dropshipping companies have access to a global market. Dropshipping allows ecommerce businesses to sell their products globally without having to spend thousands of dollars on establishing a physical store in each city across the globe.
Another requirement for ecommerce businesses is the need for a marketing strategy. In the case of b2b businesses, marketing involves creating a list of prospective customers. Market research is needed to determine which customers are interested in buying the product. In the case of b2c businesses, market research is done only to establish the prices of the products being sold. Once these two requirements have been met, then the online seller has to find ways of attracting customers to their site.