Online shopping (sometimes known as e-tail from “electronic retail” or e-shopping) is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser. Alternative names are: e-web-store, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web-shop, web-store, online store, online storefront and virtual store. Mobile commerce (or m-commerce) describes purchasing from an online retailer’s mobile optimized online site or app.
An online shop evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or shopping center; the process is called business-to-consumer (B2C) online shopping. In the case where a business buys from another business, the process is called business-to-business (B2B) online shopping. The largest of these online retailing corporations are Alibaba, Amazon.com, and eBay.
International e-commerce statistics
Statistics show that in 2012, Asia-Pacific increased their international sales over 30% giving them over $433 billion in revenue. That is a $69 billion difference between the U.S. revenue of $364.66 billion. It is estimated that Asia-Pacific will increase by another 30% in the year 2013 putting them ahead by more than one-third of all global ecommerce sales.
The largest online shopping day in the world is Singles Day, with sales just in Alibaba’s sites at US$9.3 billion in 2014.
Customers
Online customers must have access to the Internet and a valid method of payment in order to complete a transaction.
Generally, higher levels of education and personal income correspond to more favorable perceptions of shopping online. Increased exposure to technology also increases the probability of developing favorable attitudes towards new shopping channels.[10]
In a December 2011 study, Equation Research surveyed 1,500 online shoppers and found that 87% of tablet owners made online transactions with their tablet devices during the early Christmas shopping season
Product selection
Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine.
Once a particular product has been found on the website of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to accumulate multiple items and to adjust quantities, like filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A “checkout” process follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online account so that some or all of this information only needs to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the transaction is complete.
Less sophisticated stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (although full credit card numbers, expiry date, and Card Security Code,[12] or bank account and routing number should not be accepted by e-mail, for reasons of security).
Payment
Online shoppers commonly use a credit card or a PayPal account in order to make payments. However, some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:
Billing to mobile phones and landlines[13][14]
Cash on delivery (C.O.D.)
Cheque/ Check
Debit card
Direct debit in some countries
Electronic money of various types
Gift cards
Postal money order
Wire transfer/delivery on payment
Invoice, especially popular in some markets/countries, such as Switzerland
Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies
Some online shops will not accept international credit cards. Some require both the purchaser’s billing and shipping address to be in the same country as the online shop’s base of operation. Other online shops allow customers from any country to send gifts anywhere.
The financial part of a transaction may be processed in real time (e.g. letting the consumer know their credit card was declined before they log off), or may be done later as part of the fulfillment process.
Shopping cart systems
Simple systems allow the off-line administration of products and categories. The shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. The systems do not use an online database.
A high-end solution can be bought or rented as a stand-alone program or as an addition to an enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company’s 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 simultaneously from one back office. Examples are Big Commerce, Shopify and FlickRocket
Open source shopping cart packages include advanced platforms such as Interchange, and off-the-shelf solutions such as Magento, nopCommerce, osCommerce, Shopgate, PrestaShop, Zen Cart and OpenCart.
Commercial systems can also be tailored so the shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using an existing framework, software modules for various functionalities required by a web shop can be adapted and combined
