E-Commerce

E-Commerce is short for Electronic Commerce.

It means to buy and sell by means of the Internet.

From small beginnings a decade ago, e-commerce has now matured into a huge industry in itself.

For example, in the UK ecommerce in 2006 rose by nearly a third compared to the previous year and was worth £130 thousand million (Source: UK Office of National Statistics.)

Here are a few more facts and figures:

• For every £100 spent in the UK, £27 of it was spent over the Internet
• Almost one in five business now employ ICT ecommerce specialists full time.
• About 70% of small businesses have a broadband connection.

There are different kinds of ecommerce.
> Business-to-Business where companies buy and sell goods to each other
> Business-to-Individual where you buy from an ecommerce shop such as iTunes
> Individual-to-Individual where people buy and sell from each other e.g. eBay

There are many companies selling 'ecommerce shop' software that you can add to your website, to easily get a shop up and running. They are 'Payment Gateway' firms you can hire that will handle all the tricky credit card payments for you e.g. WorldPay.

2020-10