E Commerce

All About ECommerce Website Development LoyicaBlog

ECommerce - you might have been hearing a lot about this lately. For several months, this has been the tech industry’s buzzword. Companies have been offering

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Loyica Team
Jul 03 2019
All About ECommerce Website Development

ECommerce - you might have been hearing a lot about this lately. For several months, this has been the tech industry’s buzzword. Companies have been offering ECommerce website development, ECommerce services, maintenance, or anything related to ECommerce. But what is ECommerce? What is it all about? What started it? And why do businesses avail of ECommerce website development?

What is ECommerce?

ECommerce (or electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of products (or rendering and availing of services) using the Internet. Most people are already participating in ECommerce, like the paying of bills online using their credit cards. A lot of experts predict that ECommerce will someday replace traditional ways of doing businesses: we will see a lot more of cashless transactions and online stores, among others.

History of ECommerce Website Development

So how did it all begin? There are a lot of reports that claim that ECommerce started around 40 years ago when people began to patronize Electronic Data Interchanges and teleshopping. In fact, we can observe that in films which settings take place in the 1970s, where people are sitting on their sofas, eating chips, watching TV commercials, and calling the numbers on-screen to buy products.

With the introduction of the internet, a lot of people now (especially members of the generations that grew up in the Internet era, like Generation Z) conduct their browsing and shopping online. Online stores have gained prominence, increasing in numbers daily. Online shopping was said to be started and pioneered by Michael Aldrich in 1979 in the United Kingdom when he connected a modified TV to a computer (made to process multi-user transactions) using a telephone line. This system, then, gained traction in the 1980s and became ubiquitous in business circles (especially among those that conduct business-to-business deals) in the UK, Ireland, and in Spain. One of the earliest and most accessible online stores was Book Stacks Unlimited, created in 1992, which was then acquired by Barnes and Nobles in 1994.

Millions of dollars have been pouring in the industry since then, often focused on top companies like Amazon that are dominating the Internet, seeking to gain a larger market share. Right now, almost all companies have noticed the importance of building an ECommerce website for themselves.

Emergence of Marketplaces and the Rise of Amazon

Around last year, Forbes released a report stating that Amazon has cracked the Fortune 500 top 10 list, with a USD177.87 billion revenue. Amazon is in the top 8, with companies like AT&T and General Motors behind it.

But Amazon saw this coming. In fact, one of the first ECommerce sites was Amazon. The company was among the first companies that launched an online bookstore in 1995 which paved the way to it becoming the world’s largest online retailer.

It proved its importance in the market by offering more selections compared to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. It was also one of the pioneering companies that offered customers the ability to add reviews on the products being sold, tapping on the inherent needs of customers for security and to learn from other people’s experiences to avoid getting bad products.

Amazon’s ability to continuously evolve and innovate, while not deviating far from customers’ basic needs, made it gain a stronger foothold in the online retail industry, and perhaps in the global marketplace.

Importance of ECommerce Website Development

So why is ECommerce so important to modern businesses?

  • It provides greater access to your store offerings

The rapid disruption caused by technology changed a lot of lifestyles- a lot of people now stay up late all night, jobs for the night shift are becoming more common, and a lot of people are becoming more active any time of the day. This means that people also access the Internet any time of the day, which, again, means that they may access your store any time. This provides limitless opportunities for modern businesses to grow. But this also makes building an ECommerce website imperative. With an ECommerce website, customers can select from your product offerings any time of the day, anywhere in the world, therefore increasing your sales.

  • It is scalable

As your business continuously grows, your ECommerce website can grow too. Additional product lines, payment options, and scheduled shipping options can be added to your website as your customer requirements and demands become more complicated. An ECommerce website is much more flexible compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar store, as you are not constrained by the physical limitations of the traditional store.

  • It is more convenient

Speaking of physical limitations, an ECommerce website also provides more convenience to retailers and shoppers alike. Shoppers do not have to go to your physical store to make purchases. All they have to is add the products that they like to their carts on your website, add their credit card details, and get informed of the estimated arrival of their products. It is as easy as that. Retailers also do not have to man the store all the time. All they have to do is have a system developed to categorize orders automatically (and even send automated responses to customers), perform transactions that cannot be automated (or at least not yet), and then they are good to go. Of course, this depends on the level of service the developer of the ECommerce website provides.

So in this article, you have learned how the business of ECommerce came about, what made successful ECommerce companies like Amazon grow, and what the benefits of building an ECommerce website for your business are, and why it is imperative for your business to have it.

So what are you waiting for? Get your business an ECommerce website now.

If you are looking for an ECommerce website development company in Dubai or even from around the world, contact Loyica. We offer ECommerce website development services to clients all over the world. With over a hundred clients in our portfolio, we assure you a smooth and excellent service from our team of experts in website development. Contact us now.

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