E-Commerce : Platforms

Before digging into E-commerce platforms, let's first understand what an E-commerce actually is?

E-Commerce...

According to the Tokenization Rule, E-commerce is the combination of "E" and "Commerce". The word Commerce means trade or buying and selling of items, goods, services, hardwares and, softwares... etc. And "E" stands for "Electronic", electronic means something like electricity, like signals, like something in the form of electrons(at lower level). 

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So, the word "E-COMMERCE" means:

"A type of trade, that is done using electronic devices (computer, mobile or ATM machines etc)." 

And to achieve electronic commerce, what's the most important thing? think over it! 

Yeah that's correct! your own Internet is the most important thing to do E-commerce. 

Major areas of E-commerce are:

• On-line shopping or retailing
• On-line bidding or auction
• On-line software/hardware selling
• On-line service providers
• E-books trade
• and other On-line or electronic trades...

When it started...

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The concept of E-commerce, emerged when in 1960 (almost 50 years ago) ARPANET or Advanced Research Project Agency Network established. This network is US based and was used for the communication between Standford University and MIT for some specific field related projects at that time. 

According to The Guardian, Mr. John Markoff wrote in his book, "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer industry", that the first e-commerce was the trade of the harmful drug (Marijuana). 

Mr. John Markoff wrote:

In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana. (John Markoff , 2005)

So that was how e-commerce started. Today there are a lot of e-commerce platforms, and this market is expanding with each passing day. The plausible reasons for the exponential growth of this business are:

• Ease of use
• Portability
• Ease of Accessibility
• Ease of Communication
• Good for elderly people, as they don't need to go to market for transactions (By the way, youngsters are using it more! I guess..)

The concept of E-commerce is very much related to cloud computing, as companies who are providing e-commerce services are using cloud services for accomplishing this task.

Now, let's have a look at E-commerce platforms...

There are two types of E-commerce platforms (the place where you can do on-line trade):

1. On-line trade through websites provided as a whole
2. On-line trade by your own websites (designed and deployed by yourself)

The first category includes:

• Amazon
• Ebay
• Alibaba
• Daraz.pk
• Ali Express
• and other websites like these.

The second category includes:

• WooCommerce.
• Magento.
• BigCommerce.
• 3dcart.
• Shopify.
• Kibo.
• Big Cartel.
• and other on-line platforms where you can create your own website for creating your own on-line market for e-commerce.
• You can integrate these with the first category (amazon) for enhancing your e-business.

E-commerce is the Big market. You can earn billions by investing into it with strategy. But the biggest challenge of this market is to keep Honesty and authenticity.

Thinking Point!

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Will block-chain enhance or effect e-commerce in anyway? Think about it and comment, in the comment section below :)