What is E-Commerce?

It must surely be unnecessary to define e-commerce by now. Having said that, if you search for e-commerce on the Web, you will find plenty on what it enables (making lots of money, generally), but not much on what it actually is. The recent "demise of the dot-com", in which many companies dependant on e-commerce have gone out of business, has caused e-commerce to be called a whole number of things. But we digress.

What is e-commerce? E-commerce is the use of the Internet to enable goods and services to be bought and sold - the Internet as a channel to market, if you will. We don't want to dwell on this here, other than to say that e-commerce generally divides into Business-to-Consumer (B2C) or Business to Business (B2B). A hype-free explanation of B2B and B2C is available from the Patricia Seybold Group, here. In fact, there are plenty of X2Y's possible, involving governments, businesses, consumers and anyone else the marketing departments can think up. If you can handle the colour scheme, a reasonable introduction to the whys and wherefores of e-commerce is given here. By the way, if you are worried about the differences between e-commerce and e-business, consider e-business as the use of the Internet as an integral part of corporate IT. In any case, don't fret, nobody else knows exactly what these terms mean either.

But what do e-commerce applications look like? There are as many forms of e-commerce application as there are ways of deploying software, but we can limit ourselves to the common models. Essentially, Web-based applications (of which e-commerce apps are an example) sport what is known as a thin client architecture, in which minimal application logic exists on the client (i.e. your Web browser is all it takes), and most of the processing takes place on the server. Either the server can be monolithic (one big box), but more likely it will be a collection of hardware and software elements arranged in a 3-tier architecture. The 3-tier architecture can be further decomposed (sic) into a component-based architecture. Confused? A good explanation of e-commerce architectures (albeit a bit short of pictures) is to be found here. We would also recommend this Microsoft article if it wasn't so long.

The Business Need for E-Commerce

E-commerce offers a new channel to market that is uniquely global in its reach and stupendously cost-effective. The rumours about e-commerce are true - it is possible to set up a commerce-enabled Web site on a shoe string (but you will have to resolve the tiny issue of letting people know it is there...)

The article E-commerce - A Disruptive Innovation in Our Network Economy does a good job of indicating why e-commerce is important and what to do about it from a business-strategic standpoint. Plus, it is short!

Deploying E-Commerce Applications

If you are a smaller business and you want to know how to set up a profitable web site, there is a good article here to tell you the basics. Also, the Idiot's guide to e-commerce is available from CNet downloads here. Both of these are designed for small businesses (or arrivistes). Larger concerns will need an enterprise-scale approach to e-commerce application delivery. An article on developing an e-commerce business strategy can be found here. We also like this series of articles, cheekily titled 23 Incredibly Easy Steps to Make the Perfect e-Business.

Finally, billing options for e-commerce are compared here.

Issues with E-Commerce

E-commerce deployments seem to commonly suffer from three pitfalls.

Integration problems. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is an acronym that does what it says on the tin - enterprise applications are complex, and need special software to make them work together. E-commerce applications by nature require access to information that has hitherto sat in discrete databases on legacy systems (that's all systems, folks). Hence e-commerce implementations inevitably hit integration problems. There's a good explanation here. You could also read this - not sure about the article, but the title's worth having.
Process problems. E-commerce also requires integration with the processes and activities of the business. Here we are, a year into the 21st century and some organisations are still printing off customer transactions and sending out manual purchase orders. An article demystifying business process integration may be found here.
Security problems. In 2000, many major web sites suffered attacks by hackers. An article summarising the issues of e-commerce security may be found here.

As for the e-commerce bubble bursting, don't worry. We have been brought sharply down to earth, as companies have illustrated (by going bust) that being e-commerce enabled doesn't lead to the pot of gold that many commentators were indicating just a few short months ago. Guilty as charged.

The Future of E-Commerce

E-commerce will inevitably increase its reach onto mobile devices. You can find an article on m-commerce here. Japan is reputed to have a lead on Europe and the US - the article here here covers m-commerce in Japan. If you want to get ready for the m-commerce boom in Europe, check the article here.

E-commerce itself will evolve based on a better understanding of the markets it servers. The Cluetrain Manifesto starts and ends with the premise that markets are conversations, and that if there's one thing the Internet does well, its to handle conversations... you work it out.

A final view of the future takes e-commerce into virtual reality. For example, this page introduces the @Mart from Active Worlds, a VR shopping mall.

Further Resources on E-Commerce

Internet.com's Electronic Commerce Guide is a useful resource, albeit confusing to navigate. Try it and you'll see what we mean.

About.com also has an e-commerce page that seemingly collates articles and tips for small businesses wanting to sell over the web. If only that was all there was to it.

A good structured set of e-commerce links can be found at the eCompany web site. A good but totally unstructured set of links is to be found at ITpapers.com.

M-Commerce World is a good starting point for all things m-commerce.