Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, internet shop, webshop or online store evokes the physical analogy of buying products or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall. It is an electronic commerce application used for business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B) or business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C). Online shopping is popular mainly because of its speed and ease of use. Some issues of concern can include fluctuating exchange rates for foreign currencies, local and international laws and delivery methods.

Product reviews

Online shoppers can easily learn from previous experiences of different products, mostly by reading user or expert reviews. Many online stores allow customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different products.

Store reputation

It is important to do business with reputable online stores to avoid possible Internet fraud and to easily exchange or return when things go wrong. Shoppers often read store ratings or reviews by other customers if they are not familiar with some online stores.

Some general guidelines apply when choosing an online store

• Honesty in providing product information and availability
• Speed of orders processing
• Shipping cost and speed: online package tracking is popular
• Return/exchange policy: the time frame customers can return/exchange; who should pay the returning shipping; if there is any restocking fee etc. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are prohibited from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000 http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/general/oft698.pdf)

Some online stores also provide live chat with their representatives in case customers need to discuss the product.

Price comparison

An advantage of shopping online is being able to use the power of the internet to seek out the best deals available for items or services. For example if one is buying a mobile phone he/she should enter "mobile phone" into a search engine or a price search engine. Most price comparison services have the advantage of store ratings and reviews. The differences between the online prices and local store prices also relies on the shipping cost and tax.Besides that, consumers also can shop 24 hours non-stop online if they wish to.

Discounts

Main article: Online shopping rewards

There are multiple websites that compile coupon or discount information for most online merchants.

Shipping costs

Offsetting the discounts to varying degrees are shipping charges; shipping a small number of items, especially from another country, is much more expensive than making the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some retailers of small, large-ticket items (such as electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.

Means of payment

Online shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems enable users to create accounts and pay by alternative means, such as

• Debit card
• Various types of electronic money
• Cash on delivery (C.O.D.) Note: Very few online stores will ship C.O.D.
• Cheque
• Wire transfer/delivery on payment
• Postal money order
• PayPal
• Google Checkout
• Reverse SMS billing to mobile phones
• Gift cards
• Direct Debit in some countries

Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which site does its business. Other sites allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere.

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Security issues

• User and payment data is encrypted by SSL when it is transferred on the Internet.
• Quality seals can be placed on the Shop webpage if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all requirements of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online shoppers; the existence of many different seals foils this effort to a certain extent.
• The ability of the online merchant to determine the identity of the purchaser is still the major security issue. Repudiations of involvement with online transactions can happen even 6 months after the date of transaction.
• Privacy of personal information is a big issue. In spite of Privacy Guidelines of the OECD, for example, privacy violations still occur and hamper eCommerce from developing to its full potential.

Shopping cart systems

See also: Shopping cart software

• Simple systems allow the offline administration of products and categories. The shop is then generated as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a webspace. These systems do not use an online database.
• A high end solution can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is usually installed on the company's own webserver and may integrate very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
• Other solutions allow the user to register and create an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops at the same time.
• Open Source solutions can be adapted and installed on a webspace.
• There exist commercial systems that can be tailored to ones needs so that the shop does not have to be created from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities required by a webshop can be adapted and combined.

Free software

• osCommerce
• Zen Cart

History

• 1990: Tim Berners-Lee wrote "The WorldWideWeb browser" using a NeXT computer.
• 1994: Netscape released the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. "Adult" materials were also commercially available, as were cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 in late 1994 introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
• 1995: Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com and the first commercial 24 hr. internet only radio stations "Radio HK" and Netradio started broadcasting. Dell and Cisco began to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
• 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
• 1999: business.com was sold for US $7.5 million (purchased in 1997 for US $150,000) The peer-to-peer filesharing software "Napster" was launched.
• 2000: The dot-com bust.
• 2003: Amazon.com: first-ever full-year profit.

References

See also

• Bricks and clicks business model
• Electronic business
• Electronic commerce
• Internet fraud
• Shopping cart
• Streaming media
• Open catalogue
• Online flower delivery
• Online banking
• Online auction business model
• Online advertising
• Online Catalog
• Online food ordering
• Online Personal Shopper
• Online advertising
• Online wallet
• Online trading community
• Online pharmacy
• Online video game rental
• Online DVD rental
• Online used car shopping
• Virtual shopping

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