E-commerce ? Cloudspotting Blog

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE, E-COMMERCE, E-COMM

E-commerce is the buying and selling of products or services over any electronic system for example the Internet, which incidentally is the most common system. This type of buying and selling is becoming increasingly popular throughout 2012 and is predicted to grow in 2013?along with?the process and? technology that supports it.

Currently the? ecommerce system employs technology such as: electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Typically, the use of the web is used during this process at some stage in the loop; however, as the trend for ecommerce grows we are seeing a move towards other technologies, to name a few: email, tablet devices and smart phones for facilitating ecommerce transactions.

As well as ecommerce constituting the sales aspect of a business, it also involves the sharing of data, which is necessary to carry out the sales transaction. As such, E-commerce can be interpreted as an umbrella term for several sub groups of online sales, some of these subgroups are:

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E-tailing, in other words, businesses have ?virtual storefronts? on their Web sites, often with online catalogs, that are sometimes gathered into a ?marketplace? or?shopping centre arangement?arguably the two best examples of this type of ecommerce comes from Amazon and EBay.

Ebay: Brands Online

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Electronic Data Interchange often just abbreviated to EDI, is the exchange of data from one business to another. A cited example of this is: The Bergen Brunswig Drug Company. This is how Electronic Data Exchange works for them:

1. To place an order to Bergen Brunswig, a pharmacist uses a bar code scanner to capture the Uniform Product Code.
2. The pharmacist then enters the quantity desired into a keypad on the scanner
3. Next, a microcomputer reads the information contained in the scanner and an electronic order is prepared for the pharmacist?s review.
4. The order is sent via EDI to a distribution center where the order is analyzed and re-sequenced to match the product location in the distribution center.
5. Bergen Brunswig also uses EDI for sending purchase orders to pharmaceutical manufacturers, receiving invoices, and handling charge backs.

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E-mail and fax and the use of media for reaching prospects and established customers (for example, with newsletters)

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MAKING E-COMMERCE A SUCCESS

There have been one or two recent articles from the likes of Econsultancy and others, on the characteristics that make some e-commerce sites more successful than others. At the top of that list, is search boxes, especially site search boxes! These little additions to a site have been demonstrated to directly affect and increase conversions ? that means more sales.

As noted in Econsultancy?s investigation in to successful ecommerce, ?an effective site search function on an e-commerce site has a number of potential benefits?. ?And really that shouldn?t be surprising. These days, we are all accustomed to finding the results we want not only in record speed, but with high accuracy as well, due to our familiarity with search engines like Google, as such, we now expect the same quality of results when we conduct any online search, whether through another search engine or indeed, an ecommerce website. But more than that, we expect to be able to make a search or query in the first place.

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As such, the top tip for ecommerce success given in Econsultancy?s article is:

Once any search button is set up for a site, it comes down to good design as to how successful that search button will be. It needs to be positioned so that it is easy to find. It should also be labelled, this has two benefits, it makes the function of the button clear and it helped with making it easier to find. Similarly, research suggests it is better to keep search boxes separated from other boxes on the web page, and that they should be visible on every individual page of a site! There is nothing more frustrating than having to backtrack to a homepage every time you have a query. What this all boiled down to, is the second big tip for ecommerce success:

On your search button is where everyone can find it, the trick is to make it work best for the user. That means having an auto fill function on the search box, so options are presented as it is typed in to, this can help prompt user in to looking at something other than what they had intended. The search box should also be equipped with a function for narrowing searches, to help with recalling accurate search results, which all links back to our expectation of quick and accurate searches. So it is not enough to just have the button in the first place, hence, the third and final tip for successful ecommerce searching:

• Make the Search Button Effective

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So, with all this is mind, here is one Ecommerce site that is, on the whole, doing everything right, and was ranked 8/10 by The Wall. The Wall also notes that Ted Bakers ?market capitalization? is a rather impressive ?376.43m, and that should be evidence enough that getting your Ecommerce right is a worthwhile endeavour!

So, Tedbaker.com (as analyzed by The Wall)

Ted Baker Homepage

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Pros	Cons
Very good up-selling of advantages to registering	Slider does not pause on mouse over which can be annoying
Good interactive filter options	But filters are?slow
Good response?live chat	In general, fonts?are a bit small
Good checkout: no?sign in needed to buy which makes for seamless transactions	Sign-up at the bottom of the page, not as visible as it could be
	Site search not?wholly accurate

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Another highly regarded Ecommerce site from us here in the office is ASOS, which is site that is easy to navigate and browse, with good sliders. Another reasonably good ecommerce site is Ebuyer.

On the flip side, LowCostHolidays.com is one site we find to be pretty poor in its ecommerce practice, with continual errors and a lack of ?people friendly? explanation for one.

So far, all these Ecommerce sites have been relatively standard in their sales practices online. For a breath of fresh air perhaps, or maybe just for a change, have a look at this:

Humble Bundle, an extraordinary ecommerce site as reported by The Guardian.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2012 at 2:18 pm and is filed under E-commerce, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://blog.cloudspotting.co.uk/2012/10/12/e-commerce/

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