Online shopping

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, eshop, e-store, internet shop, webshop, webstore, online store, or virtual store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.

The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs. All types of stores have retail web sites, including those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogs. Online shopping is a type of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions

Webshop

The term "webshop" also refers to a place of business where web development, web hosting and other types of web related activities take place (Web refers to the World Wide Web and "shop" has a colloquial meaning used to describe the place). Buying online introduced new ways of reducing costs by reducing the number of staff needed. It is a more effective way of getting products to people and spreading into different demographic The world's first recorded B2C was Gateshead SIS/Tesco in May 1984.
 

In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server and browser.In 1994 other advances took place, such as online banking and the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza Hut.During that same year, Netscape introduced SSL encryption of data transferred online, which has become essential for secure online shopping. In 1995 Amazon expanded its online shopping, and in 1996 eBay appeared. More recently Overstock has also become one of the world largest and reliable online shopping stores.

 

Payment

Online shoppers commonly use credit card to make payments, however some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:

• Debit card
• Various types of electronic money
• Cash on delivery (C.O.D., offered by very few online stores)
• Cheque
• Wire transfer/delivery on payment
• Postal money order
• Reverse SMS billing to mobile phones
• Gift cards
• Direct debit in some countries

Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which site does its business. Other sites allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a transaction might be processed in real time (for example, letting the consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or might be done later as part of the fulfillment process.

While credit cards are currently the most popular means of paying for online goods and services, alternative online payments will account for 26% of e-commerce volume by 2009 according to Celent.

Product delivery

Once a payment has been accepted the goods or services can be delivered in the following ways.

• Download: This is the method often used for digital media products such as software, music, movies, or images.
• Shipping: The product is shipped to the customer's address.
• Drop shipping: The order is passed to the manufacturer or third-party distributor, who ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical location to save time, money, and space.
• In-store pickup: The customer orders online, finds a local store using locator software and picks the product up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model.
• In the case of buying an admission ticket one may get a code, or a ticket that can be printed out. At the premises it is made sure that the same right of admission is not used twice.

Shopping cart systems

• Simple systems allow the offline administration of products and categories. The shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. These systems do not use an online database.
• A high end solution can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's own webserver and may integrate into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
• Other solutions allow the user to register and create an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops at the same time.
• Open source shopping cart packages include advanced platforms such as Interchange, and off the shelf solutions as Avactis, Satchmo, osCommerce, Magento, Zen Cart, VirtueMart, Batavi and PrestaShop.
• Commercial systems can also be tailored to ones needs so that the shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities required by a web shop can be adapted and combined.