Owners of online stores are familiar with the concept of "e-commerce", they certainly know the answer to the question "e-commerce - what is it?". But if you understand the essence, then a lot of nuances come up and this term gets a wider meaning.

E-commerce: what is it?

The general concept is as follows: e-commerce refers to a certain approach to doing business, which involves the inclusion of a number of transactions that use digital data transmission when providing goods or providing services / works, including via the Internet.

Thus, this is any commercial transaction that takes place via electronic means of communication.

E-commerce system (e-commerce system) represents a kind of technology that gives the participants of the system the following opportunities on the Internet:

• To manufacturing companies and suppliers of goods / services - to offer their products to potential customers in the network, as well as to accept and process customer orders;
• Customers (customers) - to find and select on standard Internet resources goods and services at the price of interest to them and make orders.

Often in this bundle, banks are involved, for carrying out electronic payments.

The main components of e-commerce

E-commerce includes:

• Trade;
• data exchange;
• Exchange of messages (via e-mail, facsimile, data transmission to a fax);
• Money transfers;
• Electronic catalogs, reference books, message boards;
• Data collection systems;
• News service;
• Electronic forms;
• information Services;
• Access to the Internet, etc.

Advantages and benefits of E-Commerce

Unfortunately, even in the age of high technologies there are people who manage to claim: "I do not understand the newfangled e-commerce, what is it, and why is it even needed? I prefer to work in the old-fashioned way. "

Fortunately, such units, and if the "dinosaurs" are still preserved, then they conduct their business on the principle of "word of mouth" and only "for their own", without going into virtual spaces. The volume of e-commerce is growing rapidly, as well as the growth of e-commerce users, whose reviews are only positive. It is caused by a mass of advantages and benefits:

• Significantly reduce marketing and transaction costs (trade) costs;
• Solves problems of remoteness of the territorial location of the seller and the buyer;
• Conditions are created for the creation of direct interaction between market participants;
• The emergence of the opportunity to enter the world market for small and medium-sized businesses;
• The market becomes transparent: all participants of trade operations instantly receive all the information they are interested in: product prices, supply terms, offers of competing firms;
• Exit of business "out of the shadows": the problem of criminalizing market processes, avoiding taxation, etc. is practically being solved.

E-Commerce platform and available operations

E-commerce operations are conducted between legal entities, both private and public, as well as between legal entities and individuals.

The platform for the functioning of e-commerce participants is, first and foremost, online stores.

Due to the existence of e-commerce, the following business transactions and transactions are available to market participants:

• The establishment of interactions between potential customers and suppliers;
• Electronic information interchange;
• Provision of pre-sale and after-sales support to the customer who purchased the product from the online store (starting with the characteristics of products or services, operating instructions, feedback and customer feedback);
• The act of purchase and sale of goods / services / works;
• Electronic payment for a purchase (by electronic transfer of funds through a bank);
• Management of the delivery of goods, including the buyer;
• Management of the status of applications and services.

Scope of e-commerce

Areas of activity in which electronic commerce is carried out are very diverse:

• Internet Marketing;
• Online shopping;
• Commerce operations, which include the order of goods (or services), its receipt and payment;
• The implementation of cooperation of several companies on one web-resource;
• Organization of business administration (tax, customs, concessions, etc.);
• accounting;
• Transportation and supply;
• Feedback from customers, reviews.

Territorial levels of e-commerce

E-commerce is carried out at the following levels:

• regional;
• National;
• international.

The main difference in the organization of business operations at each of these levels is far from being a technological component (as e-commerce is carried out on the Internet and is of a global nature), but in the legislative one.

On the external market (unlike the domestic one), it is somewhat more difficult to implement the e-commerce system. This is due to the difference in the system of taxation, accounting, customs fees, legislation of different countries.

E-commerce Categories

This category of business can be divided into 4 types of e-commerce:

• Business-to-business (business for business);
• Business-to-consumer (business for consumers);
• Business-to-administration (business administration);
• Consumer-to-administration (consumer and administration).

For example, to a kind "business for business" the companies using the Internet for realization of orders to suppliers, reception and an invoice, carrying out and reception of payment concern.

The view "business for consumers" is the most standard online store for individuals, in other words, it is electronic retail trade. It should be noted that this is the most common type of trade at present.

The type of "business administration" includes all transactions between legal entities and state structures. In Russia, a clear example is the tax service website (assuming the possibility of electronic exchange) or public procurement and tendering sites.

The kind of "consumer and administration" has just started to spread: these are all transactions between individuals and state structures. Known in Russia, the service "Electronic government" or "Portal of public services", for example.

Thus, the basic concepts of e-commerce were defined, what it is, the scope of application and the main participants.

EPN as an example of successful e-commerce

One of the most famous and popular in Russia examples of e-commerce is e-Commerce Partners Network (ePN).

EPN is an advertising platform that unites various partner programs of some of the largest e-commerce projects (for example, eBay, AliExpress).

The scheme of work is arranged as follows:

• Any webmaster (it can be a blogger or any other owner of his own Internet page) is registered in this system;
• Gets its own link;
• Places a special code on its web page - the advertisement of the selected official partner of the e-Commerce Partners Network appears;
• Monitors the conversion of the site;
• Earns a certain percentage for each purchase of a visitor to his site, which has passed through an affiliate link.

WP e-Commerce

A large number of people are now keen on e-commerce, primarily because of the desire to create their own website, a unique online store for selling their own products. To meet this growing demand, developers focused on creating an e-commerce template (e-commerce templates). What is this we will consider further.

One such example of templates is WordPress e-commerce. It is a shopping cart plugin for WordPress (one of the most famous web resource management systems), intended primarily for creating and organizing blogs). It is provided completely free of charge and allows visitors to the site to make purchases on the website.

In other words, this plug-in allows you to create an online store (based on WordPress). The plug-in of this e-commerce has all the necessary tools, settings and options, corresponding to modern needs.