E-commerce
Definition
The process of buying and selling goods or services over the internet through electronic transactions, revolutionizing retail and consumer behavior.
Use Cases
- Amazon: Online retail marketplace for millions of products with high-traffic shopping, checkout, and order fulfillment workflows. — Runs a large-scale e-commerce platform with distributed systems, global infrastructure, and extensive automation for catalog, search, recommendations, payments, and logistics. (Enables high-volume, always-on online shopping with rapid order processing and global reach.)
- Shopify: Provides an e-commerce platform that lets merchants create online stores, manage products, and process orders and payments. — Delivers a hosted SaaS platform with storefronts, admin tools, app integrations, and built-in checkout and payment options for merchants. (Allows businesses of many sizes to launch and operate online stores without building the full commerce stack from scratch.)
- eBay: Online marketplace for consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer listings, bidding, and purchases. — Operates a large marketplace platform with listing management, search, user accounts, and transaction workflows at internet scale. (Connects buyers and sellers globally and supports large volumes of listings and transactions.)
Frequently Asked Questions
- What's the difference between e-commerce and a website?
- A website can be informational (like a blog or company brochure). E-commerce specifically includes online selling features such as product listings, a shopping cart, checkout, payment processing, order confirmation, and often shipping/returns management.
- When should I use e-commerce instead of selling only in person?
- Use e-commerce when you want customers to browse and buy outside store hours, reach people beyond your local area, automate ordering and payments, and scale sales without adding physical locations. It’s especially useful for products that can be shipped or digital goods that can be delivered online.
- How much does e-commerce cost?
- Costs vary by approach. Common factors include: platform fees (hosted platforms may charge monthly plans), payment processing fees (typically a percentage per transaction plus a fixed fee), hosting and bandwidth (if self-hosted), domain and SSL, apps/plugins, marketing/ads, and fulfillment/shipping. Higher traffic and larger catalogs usually increase infrastructure and operational costs.
Category: business
Difficulty: basic
Related Terms
See Also