E-commerce stands for online trade or electronic trade / e-commerce
The already strong and ever-widening use of the Internet and the associated shift of product searches and product comparisons to the Internet are acting as a motor for the steady growth of e-commerce. The term is derived from electronic commerce, synonymous with online commerce or e-business.
The most common use of e-commerce is to describe the online trade in goods via, for example, online stores, Internet portals, shopping communities and online auctions. The goods traded can be physical and digital goods or also services or access to special portals or online offerings such as apps, games, music or videos. In recent years, the share of SaaS* offerings has also increased, primarily in the B2B sector.
“Classic” e-commerce in the sense of online stores or online retailing attracts entrepreneurs from brick-and-mortar or catalog mail order, so-called multichannel players, as well as newcomers to the pure online sale of goods, without store branches. The web stores are largely operated on the basis of open source store systems such as Magento, OpenCart, OsCommerce, JTL Shop3, PrestaShop and xt:Commerce, or on payment solutions such as Oxid eShop, Intershop, PlentyMarkets, etc. The virtual store in e-commerce must meet various requirements and must be adapted to complex and technical conditions. The success of an e-commerce business is decided by the findability on the web, user-friendliness, customer satisfaction with payment and delivery, online marketing, low returns rate and many more factors that keep the online retailer on his toes to make the store attractive.
These challenges often require collaboration with e-commerce service providers who are specialists in their discipline. For example, we cooperate with an SEO agency to improve search engine placement, with a logistics service provider to ship the goods, with a payment service provider for secure and low-risk payment processing, and with a web agency for the technical underpinnings. The e-commerce environment is a very dynamic business sector with rapid changes and a high rate of innovation. This requires a high degree of flexibility from all players and a well-functioning network as well as positive word of mouth on the web.
* Software as a service
