E-commerce – the Future of Shopping

Most people tend to believe that e-commerce is just about buying and selling stuff over the Internet. Actually, electronic commerce is a general term describing the electronic exchange of business information between two or more organizations' computers. For instance, consider the income tax Return electronic filing, online portals like Prodigy, online banking and online billing for services or products received. Besides, e-commerce also means buying and selling any goods or services over the Internet, electronic fund transfers and all other ways of doing business in the virtual space.

Since the Internet spread dramatically over the entire Globe, the amount of businesses done electronically has grown amazingly. A large amount of online transactions are done completely electronically for virtual services like subscriptions to premium content websites. However, most e-businesses also imply the transportation of physical goods in some way. Online retailers are also known as e-tailers and online retail known as e-tail and usually, all major retail brands have an online e-commerce presence.

Electronic means of carrying transactions between two or more businesses are referred to as business-to-business or B2B. Electronic commerce that is carried out between businesses and their consumers is known as business-to-consumer or B2C. A great example of B2C is Amazon.com. E-commerce is usually considered the sales part of the electronic business and it also consists of data exchange enabling the financing and payment of the business transactions.  

Some of the most popular applications related to electronic commerce are:

• Email


• Instant messaging


• Newsgroups and file sharing


• Online shopping and order tracking


• Online banking


• Online office suites


• Teleconferencing


• Domestic and international payment systems


• ECM (Enterprise content management)


• Shopping cart software

When thinking about modern electronic commerce, we are talking about everything from ordering digital content for immediate online use, to ordering traditional goods or services, to "meta" services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce. On the consumer level, e-commerce is mostly done over the Internet. A potential customer can go online and buy anything from books or different types of food, to expensive items like cars and real estate. Another great example is online banking –paying the bills online, buying or selling stocks, transferring funds from one account to another and even sending money to other countries and everything just from a few clicks away.

Although everything seems so incredibly easy and fast, there is one concern though. Security. How can you and your business stay safe from online theft? The answer is clear. Every time, before you have entered your credit card information and purchased goods over the Internet, make sure that the payment system is fully protected. Experienced users will always choose to do business and conduct secure transactions via protected and secured websites.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is an important security protocol that provides data security and privacy of communication over the Internet. Payment gateways on e-commerce websites are usually protected by SSL, so when you are being prompted for your personal credit card information via protected e-commerce websites, a cryptographic key is being generated. As the result of encryption, your authenticated session has a unique private key and there is only one transaction being conducted during authenticated session.

Going further, in order to promote trust among business providers and consumers online, the Internet Better Business Bureau introduces the Code of online business practices. Internet Better Business Bureau is dedicated to provide online businesses and consumers with highly trusted marketplace and client loyalty and confidence for best business relations. The BBU standards in online business transactions are specially created to assist the companies in providing public and private protection in e-commerce.

These days one of the biggest issues for e-commerce organizations is the management of secure information because more and more people become reluctant in giving out any credit or personal information over the web. This can be addressed by choosing McAfee Secure for their e-commerce websites to protect their business from threats coming from the potential issues before any damage is done. McAfee Safe protects e-commerce websites from malwares by using the best practices. The McAfee Safe trustmark on e-commerce websites also helps to build consumer trust if they know that their private information is safe.  

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